Dear David,

This summer, I moved off campus into a Victorian Gothic style duplex. While sharing the unit with two other roommates, I’ve been noticing an inordinate amount of house noises and bumps in the night. My partner thinks that my senses are heightened due to anxiety, but there’s one specific area of the house that sets off my internal alarms: the bathroom. 

[David’s Note: The rest of this email intimately details this client’s house, including a .zip file with the heritage designation of the household, recordings of the noises, and sample photos of active hotspots.]

Hello, [REDACTED]!

Thank you for choosing Dave’s Spectral Solutions!

Apologies for the delay in reply! My secretary Ian forwarded your dossier to me after your phone call last weekend, but I was only able to skim it before our busy season kicked off. With all the Trent students back, we’re up to our knees in exorcisms and investigations, as your kind (undergraduates) love to bring all kinds of spiritual baggage around with them. 

Speaking of students, it looks like you received a coupon in a Nondescript Student Care Package! Unfortunately, the coupon code you sent along has expired, as it was only good for our Back-to-School Blowout sale, but I’ll honour it by giving you 10% off my initial consultation. Hope this helps! You will be invoiced for this email. 

Before we discuss your file in person next week, I’m hoping to give you a walkthrough of what I offer as a paranormal investigator. While admittedly new to this profession, I feel that my recent Amazon purchases of a Spiritbox (a radio that ghosts talk through), and several 100% pure copper rods will be essential in my differential diagnosis of your haunted house. 

I went ahead and already printed out the pictures of key hotspots you detailed. I already used my aforementioned dowsing rods to conduct this preliminary investigation, facilitating a “vibe check” and seeing what location makes the rods do that 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 thing where they touch. I believe that those in the trade call this “frotting.”

At any rate, I have a legitimate and real sense of where the most ghosts are hanging out in your home. Unfortunately, I also have the displeasure of telling you it is not just the bathroom: it’s also the toilet.

 As a matter of fact, anywhere there’s plumbing my dowsing rods frot 3 out of 5 times. In the ghost hunting business, we call this a piss spirit. 

Specific to your situation, piss spirits account for the knocking in the ceiling you reported in your first email and tend to live in a household's toilets. You told us you’re experiencing the most activity when you use the bathroom, as interrupting this ghost’s slumber with any kind of bodily excretion makes them extremely mad.

In short, you are probably shitting on one of many spirits haunting your toilet. Sorry that nobody told you sooner. 

As we begin to establish a concrete sense of where spectral activity is happening in a client’s home, our team usually breaks into the customer’s house to have a bit of a poke around. Be mindful that I won’t tell you when this is happening, but you WILL be invoiced for our time.  

Coincidentally, we’re hellbent on filming promotional footage of my business, so if you complain about any of this to the police, I will sicc the DBIA on you. Since I’ve become incorporated as a downtown small business, they’re basically my personal shadow council of NIMBY goons, and they’ll send you a bunch of condescending emails if you’re mean to me. It’s your call! The customer is always right :)

After you get a boom mic shoved in the faces of everyone within your household, we’ll film various hotspots for a consecutive 48 hours. This is not to bother you, but to help! We’re trying to solve a problem that you created for yourself. 

The footage from this period will be used by our in-house specialists to fulsomely diagnose your problem, which we’ll then take back to our head office to scout out a plan. 

Another funny coincidence about your case—we will be using this footage in our reality show pilot titled Spiritspelunkers, so I’ll need a filmed testimonial from you as soon as we’ve finished our treatment of your space. You need to tell us we did a good job, regardless of the results. You have a contractual obligation to be nice to me.

From my current interpretation of your case file, it sounds like we’ll need to entirely replace your septic/plumbing system. Most piss spirits are a result of well water, as the City of Peterborough tends to chemically alter its town water to reduce its use as a spectral conduit. They told me this in an FOI I’m not allowed to show you.

Completely unrelated, but this past summer, we had a landlord contact us about several of these spirits occupying a complex’s septic system but refused to excise them on the account of our upfront cost. Let's just say that complex now has a ghost nest with over 6,000 new residents. That could happen to you!

We try to be optimistic about cases as endemic as yours, but in the ghost hunting business, you must be as transparent as possible. We cannot guarantee we’ll get rid of all of them, but seeing as you’re a boring homebody, you probably need some liveliness in your home. Jesus. 

Anyway! Thanks again for choosing Dave’s Spectral Solutions! Can’t wait to meet you in person! Attached to this email is an estimate for our services and a full diagnostic work-up. We do not accept any insurance at present. 

DO NOT TRY TO COME AND MEET US PHYSICALLY. Our offices are located in Sadleir House, but seeing as it’s crawling with phantasmagoria, we should circle back and plan to meet up somewhere a little less lively with the afterlife, since you’re so sore about the piss spirits you’re doing unspeakable business upon. I’m thinking George St. Tim’s.

Dear David is a monthly advice column that posits itself as the alpha and omega of knowledge; the absolute last bastion, where all questions go to die, but not if David has anything to say about it. Arthur Journalist David King is the expert, the vanguardist pillar of this endeavour, and your question will be answered, but at a cost.