The Debunker

The only thing haunted about the doll was its atrocious craftsmanship.

It sat on Corvin Cross’s desk, a garish thing of porcelain and cheap lace, its painted eyes staring vacantly at the ring light that illuminated its every flaw. To the camera, to the thousands of viewers watching his live stream, it was ‘Matilda the Mournful,’ a vessel of unspeakable sorrow. To Corvin, it was a collection of poorly assembled components and psychological triggers.

“—and the so-called ‘tears of blood,’” Corvin said, his voice a smooth, confident baritone that was a staple of his channel. He leaned into the frame, his face a mask of earnest inquiry. He was young, perhaps twenty-eight, with sharp, intelligent features and dark hair styled with a care that suggested order amidst the chaos. He wore a charcoal grey sweater that was both professional and approachable, a calculated choice. Behind him, shelves groaned under the weight of technical manuals, disassembled electronics, and various ‘haunted’ artifacts sealed in evidence bags.

He picked up the doll with a deliberate, almost clinical touch. “Our client claimed these stains appeared every night at precisely 3 AM. A classic witching hour apparition. Spooky, right?” He offered a wry, conspiratorial smile to the camera. “Until you apply a simple thermal camera.”

A feed from a separate device flickered onto the stream, overlaying the main video. The doll’s face glowed with a false-color heat signature.

“Note the concentration of heat here, in the cranial cavity,” he continued, using a laser pointer to circle the area on screen. “The porcelain is thin, and the client, bless her, keeps her apartment at a balmy twenty-four degrees Celsius. The interior air, saturated with moisture from a nearby humidifier, condenses on the cooler surface of the eye sockets—specifically where this red dye,” he produced a cotton swab and dabbed at the eye, coming away with a faint pink stain, “has been carefully applied to the porcelain. Heat rises, moisture condenses, dye dissolves and capillary action does the rest. It’s not a tear. It’s a terribly inefficient distillation process.”

He set the doll down. “As for the movement…” He didn’t even need his tools for this part. He simply gave the doll a gentle nudge. It rocked forward with a pronounced, heavy lurch, then back, then forward again. “The center of gravity is in the head. It’s top-heavy. A draft from a vent, a truck rumbling past on the street below, any minor vibration will set it off. It’s not reaching for you. It’s obeying the laws of physics.”

The chat scrolled rapidly beside the video feed.

<LMAO got em>

<RIP Matilda>

<He’s so hot when he’s smart>

<But what about the whispers???>

“Ah, the whispers.” Corvin’s smile turned triumphant. He picked up a small set of precision screwdrivers. “The ‘ethereal pleas’ heard by the client. Let’s see who’s really talking, shall we?”

With practiced ease, he popped off the doll’s head. The camera zoomed in. Instead of a hollow space or stuffing, there was a intricate little circuit board and a micro-speaker no larger than a penny. A tiny SD card was slotted into it.

“A twenty-pound audio module from any number of online electronics retailers,” he announced, plucking it out like a surgeon removing a tumor. He connected it to his laptop via a USB adapter. A file directory popped up on screen. It contained three audio files:

[whisper_help.wav], [whisper_alone.wav] and

[whisper_despair.wav].

He played the first one. A hushed, raspy voice filtered through the studio speakers: “…help me…”

The chat exploded as the truth revealed.

Corvin didn’t even smirk. He opened audio editing software and pulled up the spectral frequency analysis. “The human ear is easily fooled. But software isn’t. See this consistent, repeating pattern in the lower frequencies? That’s the digital signature of the text-to-speech engine ‘EtherealVoice 2.0’. It’s a fifteen-dollar plug-in. Someone recorded the output, added some reverb to make it sound spooky, and loaded it onto this card. The trigger mechanism is even simpler.” He turned the circuit board over. “A light sensor. When the client turns off the lights at night, the ‘haunting’ begins its scheduled performance.”

He reassembled the doll with a few quick twists, holding it up for the camera. It was just a doll again. An ugly, inert object.

“And that,” Corvin said, placing it aside and looking directly into the lens, his expression now serious, almost stern, “is the anatomy of a deception. There is no spirit here. No sorrow. Only circuits, condensation, and a profound misunderstanding of basic science. The only thing supernatural here is the amount of credulity some people are willing to sell.”

He paused, letting the sentence hang in the air. It was his crescendo.

“Remember,” he said, his voice dropping to a compelling, intimate register, “if it can be explained, it belongs to us. Not to ghosts.”

He gave a single, sharp nod. “Stay skeptical.”

The stream ended. The ‘LIVE’ light on his camera blinked off.

The performative energy drained from Corvin’s posture instantly. He slumped back in his chair, the charismatic showman replaced by a tired young man in a cluttered office. The only light now came from the grey Edinburgh afternoon filtering through the window, illuminating the dust motes dancing over stacks of books and half-dismantled gadgets. He ran a hand through his hair, messing up its careful order. Another case closed, another mystery reduced to its mundane, mechanical parts. It was satisfying work, profitable work, but sometimes the sheer banality of it all was… tedious.

He picked up ‘Matilda the Mournful’ and carried her to a shelf designated ‘Solved - Return to Client’. She took her place between a ‘mystically-charged’ crystal that was just mildly radioactive and a painting of a sad clown that allegedly caused nightmares due to a subsonic tone emitted by a vibrating nail in the wall behind it.

He was about to switch off his laptop when a specific, soft ping cut through the silence. It wasn’t the generic sound of a new email. This was the sound he’d programmed for one specific, high-value client alert system. His eyes focused to the screen. A single notification box glowed against the dim and dark wallpaper set on screen.

[Subject: Urgent & Discrete Inquiry - Loch Ness]

[Client: Alistair Grant, Grant-Lennox Holdings]

[Priority: Maximum]

[Message: Please find the details attached. A retainer has been deposited to your account. Discretion is paramount]

Corvin stood unfazed, his hand hovering over the power button.

Loch Ness.

It was the big one. The granddaddy of all modern myths. A tourist trap wrapped in a legend, fueled by wishful thinking and bad photography. It was the kind of case he’d built his entire career toward, the ultimate platform for the ultimate debunking.

A slow smile, different from the one he used for the camera—sharper, hungrier, entirely genuine—spread across his face. The tedium of the afternoon evaporated, burned away by the sudden, bright flare of ambition. He sat down, the chair groaning in protest. The office, with its shelves of defeated horrors, seemed to lean in closer.

He clicked the email open.