He left Magda Críbben with mixed feelings: disappointed that he had no one with whom to share the past—and they were exciting times for him—but also relieved that there was no one left to expose his former life as Maurice Stafford.
Although his exterior inspection of Crickley Hall had been fruitless, he remained drawn to it, for his few months there as a boy had marked him for life, an experience that had shaped his nature—and, though he could not know it, his destiny.
When Pyke returned to London and his job as librarian, he asked for a transfer. Somewhere in North Devon, he indicated. Meanwhile his interest in things otherworldly continued and he soon found himself fascinated by all aspects of the occult. But the dreams came back with full force and Cribben's ghost had regathered its strength, although now it appeared as a murky blackness, barely resembling the figure of a man, more of a noxious ragged mist, a strong unpleasant odour always preceding the manifestation. Despite its lack of clear definition, Pyke always knew it was Cribben's shade, for its overwhelming malevolence was the same and with it there always came the familiar swish-thwack sound, only as a kind of distant echo it was true, but nevertheless there to remind him of the punishment cane, the harbinger of pain that had terrified the orphans of Crickley Hall so. The dreams also revived their intensity—and their clarity—so that sleep became an ordeal once more. Pyke suffered his second psychological breakdown.
Considered to be a danger to himself as well as others when his rages got out of control, he was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric ward of a large London hospital. Fortunately for Pyke, treatment for mental illness had improved significantly since he was a boy and within three months his condition had improved enough for him to be discharged (the doctors weren't to know that his apparent return to normality was because the hauntings and the power of the nightmares had waned again, making it easier for him to cope).
His position at the library had been generously held open for him, although the chief librarian regarded Gordon Pyke's request for a transfer to the West Country a priority: the slower pace of life would be of benefit to his neurotic employee. As luck would have it, a vacancy for an assistant librarian shortly came up in the large Devon town of Barnstaple and Pyke duly went down to the beautiful county and took the job.
Growing older did not dim his interest in psychic phenomena and spontaneous psychic activity. If anything, his fascination with the subject increased as the years went by, for he longed to know what lay beyond death and he needed to be assured that Cribben's ghost was not hallucinatory, a figment of his own imagination (which would mean he truly was mad). He read the works of respected psychical researchers from which he learned that certain people could attract and concentrate psychic forces. He also learned that nobody yet knows the boundaries of what is considered normal, nor the extremities of that which is considered supernormal. He learned practical methods of detecting the possible presence of a ghost by the simple use of a thermometer or thermograph: when a ghost is present it seems to create a partial vacuum which results in a drop in pressure and temperature (the atmosphere certainly became cold whenever Cribben's spirit appeared to him). And it was also reaffirmed to him that a ghost is generally an earthbound spirit trapped in the physical world because of trauma at death or unfinished business (what could Augustus Cribben have left unfinished? he asked himself yet again). He also learned that a violent act can sometimes leave a psychic imprint on a place that later will attract supernatural activity (even he, so very much alive, was strangely drawn to Crickley Hall, so why not spirits too?).
Pyke was absorbed with the works of psychic investigators and began to wonder if he himself could become one. Divorced, a routine, undemanding career, plenty of spare evenings and weekends—why not become a part-time ghost-hunter? He certainly had good knowledge of what was involved by now. Over the following months he acquired some of the basic equipment recommended for such investigations, simple things like notebooks, thermometers (including the greenhouse type), coloured pencils and crayons, synthetic black thread as well as white cotton thread, tape measures (one of them an architect's thirty-three-foot leather-cased winding tape), talcum powder, drawing pins, graph paper, torches, and also more expensive items like cameras for colour, black-and-white, and infra-red film, a Polaroid camera, tripod, digital camcorder, spring balance (for weight of objects if moved), strain gauge (for measuring force to open or close doors), voltmeter, portable sound-recorder, frequency-change detector, instruments for measuring atmospheric pressure, vibration, wind force and humidity, and a magnetometer. There were other more expensive and sophisticated items that would be useful, such as closed-circuit television, a capacity-change recorder, or an Acorn computer that had the ability to monitor changes in temperature, light and vibration, and having sound-recording equipment attached, but Pyke decided he'd collected enough for his amateur status. The good thing was that no licence or degrees in psychic phenomena were required.
He joined various associations connected with parapsychological studies and psychic research and attended spiritual meetings (which he was surprised to discover thrived in both towns of Barnstaple and Ilfracombe) where he made useful contacts. Through these, and by placing small discreet ads in local newspapers and freesheets, he began to gain clients who wanted his 'expertise' in investigating hauntings in their homes, pubs and once even a theatre. His efforts generally met with success, often finding quite natural reasons for supposed supernatural or paranormal activity, while at other times confirming that yes, there was a ghost or ghosts on the premises.
When Pyke reached the age of sixty-five, he retired from the library and devoted more of his time to ghost-hunting. There were never very many cases to investigate or explore, but just enough to occupy him in his retirement. He had even written papers on some of his investigations and submitted them to the London Society for Psychical Research, which had never published any but had kept them on file, commending him for his work. In order to drum up more business, he made use of a cuttings agency which sent him any news items or features from the south-west journals concerning suspected or alleged hauntings. These he would follow up by getting in touch with the 'victims' involved (always quickly, to get in before any fellow investigators who used the same methods of finding cases) and offer his services. The fact that he was financially comfortable (he had never squandered his small inheritance and the money he received from the sale of his old London home, and there was still a reasonable residue left) meant he did not have to charge would-be clients—he only asked remuneration for his expenses—and this made him instantly attractive to them.
He invariably presented himself as a knowledgeable and sympathetic sceptic and his apparent normality, plus his engaging manner, swiftly won people over. Yet despite his usual successes and resolved cases, he had never discovered the cause of his own hauntings.
Over a period of time, he had approached four reputable mediums in the hope that they would come up with an answer to the mystery, but the first two had regarded him with something like fear in their expressions and had asked him to leave immediately, while the third had cried out, then collapsed in a heap on the floor only moments after going into a trance. Her husband, who had been present, demanded that Pyke leave the house and never come back. The fourth and last, without even going into a trance, had warned him that he would be tormented by hauntings until something was resolved and only he could know what it was. Bewildered, he had asked the medium how she knew this, but she had avoided looking at him directly in the eyes and refused to reply. But as he had reluctantly turned and was walking away, she called after him, her voice quiet yet her words distinct.