The Instrument of Last Resort

My first true paranormal investigation began not in a crumbling Victorian or a blood-soaked battlefield, but in a defunct tuberculosis sanatorium perched on a windswept hill in the Catskills. The organization was called Spectral Analysis & Contingency Team, or SACT, and its founder was a woman named Evelyn Marsh. Evelyn was a former concert pianist who had abandoned her career after a near-fatal car accident left her with a strange sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. She had a meticulous mind and a rigorous scientific approach, always seeking a logical explanation for the phenomena we encountered. But she also carried a battered leather case containing a custom-made device she called ‘The Instrument of Last Resort’ – a fusion of a modified Geiger counter and a theremin, designed to detect and translate subtle energy fluctuations into audible tones. She claimed it was the only tool that could ‘hear’ the echoes of the deceased, though she never used it lightly.

It was February 14, 2009, a Saturday, when I joined the SACT team for a preliminary sweep of the former Meridian Hills Sanatorium. The building had been abandoned for decades, its windows boarded, its hallways filled with the dust of forgotten suffering. Our team included Evelyn, a retired electrical engineer named Roger Pemberton, and a young paranormal enthusiast named Tessa Nguyen. I was there as a writer, documenting the process for a magazine article. The air was cold and still, smelling of mold and decay. Evelyn handed out flashlights and EMF detectors, and we began our tour of the ground floor. The rooms were empty shells, walls stained with peeling paint, floors groaning under our weight. At first, everything was quiet – only the sound of our footsteps and the occasional creak of the building’s old bones.

As we ascended to the second floor, Roger’s EMF meter started to fluctuate erratically. He frowned, tapping the device. ‘Battery’s probably low,’ he muttered. But then Tessa, who was recording audio, stopped and held up her hand. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered. We all fell silent. There it was – a faint, rhythmic ticking, like a distant metronome. It seemed to come from the end of the corridor, where a door stood slightly ajar. We approached cautiously. The ticking grew louder, more insistent, and I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. Evelyn’s eyes narrowed. She opened her leather case and carefully extracted The Instrument of Last Resort. ‘Something is here,’ she said, her voice calm but tense. ‘Something that wants to be heard.’

We entered the room. It was a small office, its desk overturned, papers scattered like fallen leaves. In the center, an old wind-up phonograph sat on a table, its crank slowly turning – but there was no record on it, no power source. The ticking seemed to originate from its speaker horn. Evelyn approached, holding the Instrument before her. As she brought it closer, the device emitted a low, mournful hum, rising and falling like a voice. She closed her eyes, her fingers hovering over the controls. ‘It’s a woman,’ she murmured. ‘She’s humming a lullaby. Something about a storm.’ I felt a lump in my throat. The humming grew clearer, and I could almost make out words – a nursery rhyme about a boat on a lake. Then, abruptly, it stopped. The room fell silent again, but the air felt heavy, expectant.

Suddenly, Roger’s EMF detector spiked so hard it shattered in his hand. He yelped and dropped it. At the same moment, the phonograph’s crank spun violently, and the horn emitted a blast of static that made us all cover our ears. Then it, too, stopped. We stood there, hearts pounding, in the resulting silence. Evelyn lowered the Instrument, her face pale. ‘She’s gone,’ she said. ‘But she left something behind.’ She pointed to a corner of the room. There, against the wall, was a small music box, its brass edges tarnished. It was open, and a tiny ballerina was spinning slowly, playing a haunting melody – the same lullaby we had heard. Tessa knelt and picked it up. ‘It’s humming,’ she said, ‘but the mechanism is broken. Look.’ She showed us the inside – the winding key was snapped, the gears rusted and immobile. Yet it continued to play.

We spent the next hours trying to find a logical explanation. Roger tested the music box for hidden speakers or magnets – nothing. Evelyn checked for electromagnetic anomalies – none. I searched for any wires or power sources – nothing. As dusk fell, we decided to call it a night. But as we were leaving, Evelyn stopped at the doorway. ‘There’s something else,’ she said. She returned to the table where the phonograph sat, and picked up a yellowed photograph that had been tucked under its base. The photo showed a young woman in a nurse’s uniform, smiling, with a child in her arms. On the back, in faded ink, was written: ‘M.R. and D.R., 1937, Christmas.’ Evelyn looked at the photo, then at the music box. ‘I think we found our source,’ she said. ‘But we didn’t find the answer to why she’s still here.’

We returned the music box and the photograph to the room, deciding to leave things as they were. As we drove away, I glanced back at the dark building. In a window on the second floor, I saw a flicker of light – a silhouette, holding something. It was gone in an instant. For weeks after, I couldn’t shake the image. I did research on the sanatorium, and found a local newspaper article from 1937 about a nurse named Margaret Rivers who disappeared during a blizzard, along with her five-year-old son, after a patient escaped and took them hostage. The patient was never found, and their bodies were never recovered. The article mentioned that Margaret was known for humming lullabies to comfort the children in the tuberculosis ward. A nurse’s uniform, a child, a lullaby – it all fit.

I told Evelyn about my findings. She listened in silence, then nodded slowly. ‘She’s not trying to scare us,’ she said. ‘She’s trying to tell her story. She wants someone to know what happened.’ We never went back to the sanatorium. Evelyn retired the Instrument of Last Resort, saying it had served its purpose. But sometimes, late at night, I swear I can hear a faint, music-box melody – a lullaby – coming from nowhere, and I’m reminded that some stories refuse to remain buried. And I wonder: if we had stayed a little longer, would we have heard the rest? The truth is, I’m not sure I want to know.