The Barton Avenue Detectives were definitely very busy that week. They met for lunch every day at school to discuss their plan, and then in the afternoon they went over to John's house to get everything ready. After rummaging through the attic for old Halloween costumes to wear, they raided John's basement for junk they could use for ghostbusting equipment.
Their first thing they made was a curse detector. They taped some extra wires to the outside of an old-fashioned radio and then put a small flashlight inside so the station dial lit up. They hid an old wind-up mouse inside too because of the noise it gave off as it wound down. Sally made a cellular version to complete the package by untwisting some coat hangers and sticking them onto one of the walkie-talkies with some black tape.
"The big detector detects the curse, the smaller one tells which kind," explained Sally.
She turned the walkie-talkie on and waved it around the refrigerator. At first nothing happened. But soon soft squeaks came out of the receiver and even a few creepy moans.
"Didn't know you had a curse on your fridge, did you?" Sally said to John.
"Hey, that's all right," said John. "How'd you do that?"
"Simple," said Sally. "Hey Jessy, you can come out now!"
The broom closet opened and Jessica stepped out, holding the other walkie-talkie. Sally demonstrated the trick again for John, she waved the first walkie-talkie through the air around the fridge. Jessica put her mouth up to the mike on the second walkie-talkie and made the strange and mysterious sounds. The boys all laughed when they saw how it was done.
"You think Gus and Jerry'll fall for it?" asked Mike.
"Sure," said Sally. "When we get through they'll think they're in the Mummy's Tomb."
"How’s your witch routine coming?" asked John.
"It's pretty good," said Sally. "We've been working mostly on our trance. First we roll our eyes and then we twist around for a while. When we're done we faint and fall down."
Jessica and Sally went through their routine for the other detectives. When they were done John had to admit that banshee witches were just as good as the regular kind. Better in fact.
"That was definitely awesome," he told them.
"Listen," said Ben. "I was thinking. If you guys are going to be banshees, maybe I could dress Bently up as a weredog.”
