Amy continued asking the spirit questions. Zac panned the camera around the group, to show that no one was moving in any way that could cause the soft tapping sounds. Whatever was happening was authentic.

Well, there was a chance Skye was doing something, but she wasn't faking the taps.

"Is your name Diane?" Amy asked, and received two taps.

"Were you a nurse here, in the ER?" Amy asked.

Two taps.

"This is amazing," Nora whispered.

Zac agreed silently. Amy was holding an actual responsive conversation with a woman's ghost. It was incredible.

Amy's next question was interrupted by a soft gasp as Derek pointed to the ground to her right. Zac moved the camera to follow his gesture, and caught the exact moment an invisible foot left a distinct print in the thick dust layered over the linoleum floor.

As they watched, each person holding their breath, a second footprint appeared in the dust, and then a third.

"Is that you, Diane?" Amy asked.

Two taps echoed softly through the silence of a half dozen held breaths, and then another footprint appeared. The group watched, eyes locked to the dusty ground, until the footprints reached a curtained area near the far wall. The curtain shifted, as if blown by a soft breeze or nudged by a busy hand.

The lights flickered then failed, casting the emergency room into darkness. The group yelped and Zac caught a few bitten off curses.

"Diane, was that you?" Amy asked.

There was a long pause, and then a single tap.

"Are there other spirits here?" Amy asked.

The two taps were rapid and urgent. Was Diane trying to warn them about something?

Zac looked in Skye's direction. Then he recalled that the camera had a night vision mode, and turned that on. He saw Skye shift in place and look around. The camera couldn't catch her expression, but her movements looked uncertain.

Did they need to get the ghost hunters out of the emergency room? Were the other spirits dangerous?

"Flashlights, everyone," Derek said.

Several lights clicked on. Zac shifted the camera so that he had a free hand to reach for his, and returned the camera to a normal lighting setting. Zac noticed that most of the flashlight beams found Skye before sweeping to search the room.

"Look!" Amy's hand pointed to the curtain, illuminated by the strong beam of Skye's borrowed flashlight.

A woman's silhouette was clearly visible against the dusty fabric. It looked like the flashlight beam had hit the nurse, casting a distinct shadow. Only, there was no one standing in the beam of light.

"Is- is that you, Diane?" Amy asked. She paused as two taps answered her question. At the same time, the woman's shadow nodded.

The shadow's arm rose and stretched to point towards the boarded up doors that had once admitted patients to the emergency room. Zac panned the camera in that direction.

"Are you trying to convey a message? Is there something you need to tell us?" Amy asked.

Zac thought the message was pretty clear. Diane wanted them to leave. Zac turned to look at Skye. While everyone else was staring in utter fascination at the woman's shadow, Skye's gaze darted around. What did she see that no one else could?

Two rapid taps answered Amy's question. The shadow made a shooing motion, again towards the exit.

Abruptly, the woman's shadow vanished and the temperature in the room plummeted. Tiny puffs of vapor floated around the ghost hunters' faces as they breathed.

"Diane?" Amy called out, but this time no tapping answered her.

"Tell me you got that," Tate said to Zac.

He nodded. "I did. I'll need to play it back on a screen to know just what I got, but I was recording."

"We should play back the recorder," Skye said. "Maybe she answered Amy's questions. Maybe she has a message for us."

"Skye's right," Nora said. "That's the most response we've ever gotten from a spirit. If she has something to say, we owe it to her to listen."

"Let's get to the base," Derek said. He paused, and turned to the room at large. "Diane, if you can still hear us, thank you."

The group filed out of the Emergency room. The ghost hunters were practically vibrating with excitement. Zac wished he could share their enthusiasm.

The temperature in the hall outside the ER was drastically warmer. Whatever had caused the sudden drop must be isolated to the emergency room. Maybe the danger was isolated to there, too.

Zac hoped that was the case, but he didn't think their luck was that good.

Back in the ghost hunter's base, the groups voices wove and threaded together as everyone tried to talk at once.

"Okay, okay," Derek called out, "I know we're excited, but we have to do this by the numbers. Zac, plug on in to laptop A, get us a playback of the ER. We need to see how what you recorded matches up to what we saw. No one look at that screen yet. Everyone, grab a notepad and write down everything you can recall, every detail."

Nods all around. Nora explained softly to Skye and Zac that taking notes before checking technology allowed them to correlate eye witness accounts with recorded events, and prevented the recordings from influencing their recall.

After Zac set the camera to upload, he took a notepad and wrote down a few brief notes about what he saw, heard and felt.

Amy finished her notes first, and then connected her recorder to the second laptop.

"Everyone done?" Derek asked.

Nods all around.

"We'll watch Zac's playback first, then check Amy's recording for EVP," Derek said. "Sometimes the computer needs a minute," he explained to Zac and Skye.

Zac's camera had recorded everything the group saw. The footprints in the dust appeared with shocking clarity. The taps were audible, if fainter than they had sounded to the group. Even the shadow on the curtain was visible.

Was it a good idea for them to have this footage? It was too late to erase it now. Zac looked to Skye, who shrugged one shoulder before turning to Nora to enthuse quietly about the quality of the video.

"I've got it," Amy announced, lifting a pair of earphones off her head. "Y'all have got to hear this."

The group gathered around the second laptop. Amy pressed a key, and the recording started to play back.

Amy's voice echoed from the speakers, "Is anyone here?"

In the pause she'd left for a response, there was the faintest whisper of sound. A single word, yes.

"If you can make yourself heard," Amy's voice continued, "Please do."

There were no words this time, but the tap they'd all heard was loud and clear on the recording.

"I heard that. Is there a spirit with us?"

Another tap filled the breathless silence of the room, followed by another, slightly stronger 'yes.'

"That's wonderful, thank you for responding. Can we do one tap for no, two for yes?" Amy's request was followed by a sound that could only be a soft laugh, and then two distinct taps.

It was probably a good thing that the ghost was amused.

"Is your name Diane?" Amy's voice asked.

Before the two taps that had confirmed the ghost's identity, there were a few words. Zac couldn't quite make them out. Part of it sounded like , "no, me" Maybe "Know me?"

"Were you a nurse here, in the ER?" Amy asked on the recording.

Two more taps, and a much clearer phrase. "Am a nurse."

That was interesting. Although she seemed aware enough to respond to questions, did the ghost not know she was a ghost? Or did she still think of herself as a nurse despite being deceased?

There was a longer pause, during which other voices could be heard reacting to the footsteps in the dust.

"Is that you, Diane?" Amy's voice asked.

"I'm here," Diane, presumably, replied and followed her unheard answer with two taps.

Then there were several gasps and curses. That was when the lights went out.

"Diane, was that you?" Amy had asked.

"No," Diane's voice was clear and sharp on the recording. The single tap punctuated the answer they hadn't heard.

"Are there other spirits here?" Amy's voice asked.

The two taps were rapid and urgent. Diane didn't answer verbally, but on the recording other voices could be heard whispering and muttering.

"Flashlights, everyone," Derek's voice ordered.

"Look!" Amy's voice announced the appearance of the ghost's shadow.

"Is- is that you, Diane?" Amy asked on the recording.

"I'm here," Diane replied, followed by two taps.

"Are you trying to convey a message? Is there something you need to tell us?" Amy had asked.

Two rapid taps answered Amy's question. And Diane spoke two more words. "Code Green."

"Code Green? So all clear, everything's good?" Tate guessed.

"I don't think so," Nora said. "A hospital wouldn't likely use a code for that, they'd just announce 'all clear.' But I have no idea what code green would have meant in Diane's time."

"Do you have a list of codes the hospital used when it closed?" Skye asked. "Diane seems like she's pretty aware. Maybe she heard something back then, and she repeated it to us."

"Huh, that makes sense," Amy said.

Nora flipped through the file folders she'd spread out on the counter, while Amy and Tate clicked through information stored on the laptops. After a moment, Nora triumphantly held up a sheet of paper.

"I have the codes," Nora announced. "Green… code green means disaster or evacuation."