The alarm made an awful racket, and the team jumped into action. They pulled on their suits, strapped on their gear, and hopped into the van, lights and siren blaring. Time was critical; a level 3 haunting was no joke.
The team arrived at the site: a big old Victorian era house. The rounded window
panes of the upper floor glowed dull orange with a silhouette periodically flickering past. They glanced up at the black smoke billowing from a large brick chimney. Snow crunched underfoot as they trod past a bare oak tree filled with crows.
"Ghost Exterminators! We're here to help!" The team announced themselves, and walked through the partially open front door into the dark entryway. As they crossed the threshold, their equipment sounded an eerie tritone warning almost immediately. The experienced veterans were already one step ahead, tightening masks around their faces, and checking one another in turn. Something thumped sharply above them.
The team promptly split up. Two headed up the main staircase, while the other two began their descent to the basement. Both groups left a trail of strategically placed flood lamps as they went. Upstairs, the pair of Ghost Exterminators encountered a very frightened middle-aged man who screamed about an evil spirit, while pointing frantically at a blank wall. The pair simply proffered a mask, calmed him down, and then began to escort him downstairs and outside.
An ambulance pulled up with impeccable timing; it had been automatically summoned by the team's sensory equipment. After a short conversation, the man was taken to the hospital. The pair went back into the house, and began a systematic search.
Meanwhile, in the basement, the other two Ghost Exterminators were at work in the utility room. They shut off the gas mains first thing, and then popped open the access panel on the furnace. They already knew what to look for, and sure enough, they immediately spotted the cracked heat exchanger and clogged air intake. The latter was an easy fix, and they even happened to have a replacement of the former in the van.
Finding no one else in the house, the team reunited outside, climbed in the van, and headed back to the station. There would be some paperwork, and the equipment needed recharging. Ghosts weren't always this simple. Carbon monoxide poisoning was an easy fix, but schizophrenia was much more taxing to deal with. At least they could rest easy tonight knowing another ghost had been slain.