Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown Read online

  I asked him, “What if we just stopped PRS or gave it to a new team of college students? We can move on and do something great. Something we really want to do.”

  Leaning over the dock beside me, he responded without hesitating. “But I want to do PRS. Why don’t you want to do PRS anymore? You’re just starting to see the organization grow. We have so much we can accomplish.”

  “Maybe” was all I said. I knew it looked like we were on the verge of expanding, that a lot of what we’d set out to do was finally happening. “I guess I’m just wondering if these are things I really want to do anymore.”

  “Look man,” Serg said, “why don’t you just tell me what’s up?”

  I tried to gather my thoughts. Why was I conflicted? When it came down to it, I was still thinking about the two demonic cases from 2005. I’d been warned I’d face something like that again. I knew if I kept investigating, sooner or later I’d have to. Could I? Did I want to?

  Then there were the missed opportunities. I was the one who didn’t show at parties, or had to leave suddenly because “something came up.” I regularly lost close friends. We drifted apart because I wasn’t there.

  And where was I? Sitting in a dark room challenging a spirit (or the empty air) to come forward and face me, to leave a tormented family alone.

  I looked at Serg. “I guess I can’t make up my mind if I want to do something normal or something extraordinary.”

  He knew I was the one who had to make the decision, so we left the conversation at that. We stood on the dock, watching the waves rise and crash against the stone and cement that held the wooden structure together.

  One thing I love about summers in the South are the sudden and unrelenting storms that roll through with no notice. That evening, we had one of the most extraordinary I’d seen in a while. A tornado, a weak one, touched down on the lake and traveled to the land, throwing chairs and other small structures all over. As it ripped through, I tried to get as close as I could, to watch the chaos.

  I saw a streak of lightning and heard the thunder boom almost immediately. That meant it was only a few hundred feet from where I stood. Remembering how in high school I’d sneak away with my parents’ car and go storm chasing, I laughed. I also remembered the looks on my peers’ faces when I said I was going to hunt tornadoes. They thought I was utterly insane.

  The thrill of being there, though, even if you don’t get to see one, is extraordinary. Just the thought I might actually witness something, just the chance—however small—kept me going back again and again. And yes, to me, investigating the paranormal was a lot like that.

  I spent the rest of the summer constructing a tree house for Roman, my youngest brother. It was a great distraction, a perfect way to not think about investigations or the looming possibility of a documentary show. The finished project was two stories, with a tire swing on the roof, and a rope pulley that let you swing off the tree house, all the way across the backyard to another tree. A week after I was done, it was nearly time to head back to Pennsylvania, get ready for school, hopefully find a job, or another passion, and continue to build PRS.

  The day before we left, I received a phone call from Betsy. The decision had been made. A&E had given the series the green light for thirteen episodes. She congratulated me, but warned we’d have to start work very soon. They planned to start filming in October, which only gave us about five weeks to get everything in order.

  The news should have been stunning, but I was sort of numb. Instead of any intense emotion, I had a million questions. When did she think we’d start? When was the show coming out? Did they have a name?

  I broke the news to Serg and my family. There was no big celebration, partly because even I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant. I’d talked to producers for years. I’d had interest from the Syfy Channel and MTV, but nothing had panned out. Was this different? Emotionally, I wasn’t sure. I was in a kind of wait-and-see mode. But it did seem I had my life mission set, at least for the next year.

  September consisted mostly of dialogue with production and the team. We usually recruited new members for PRS in early October. Each semester, I’d put up some flyers, attract interested people, and then accept new trainees. PRS held regular weekly meetings. At its most successful, we averaged about twenty members. We had the same meeting space for years—218 Thomas, a classroom that fit us all comfortably.

  This year, production paid for newspaper ads, and that wasn’t the only thing that would be different. The announcement that we’d be doing a TV series created a boom in attendance. We had to rent out a different room to hold the fifty-plus people that were showing up.

  Most were just curious. Who were these students who were getting a TV show? A lot of film and theater majors showed up, too, to ask if we were hiring. I had to explain it was a documentary show that would follow what we normally do within the club, so, no performances.

  Because I wanted PRS to be as professional as possible, I’d established a club hierarchy long ago. Anyone could be a member, if you paid your dues, but to be an investigator, you had to take a semester-long training class that met once a week, take five exams (one each for vocabulary, psychology, applied theory, investigation rules and regulations, and a general overview of the history of paranormal investigation), write a ten-page research paper, and then go on three extensive paranormal investigations. You also had to go through a background check and take a psychological exam. If you were a student, you also had to let us see your grade point average in order to watch over your academic performance.

  An investigator began as a candidate, and then moved up to trainee, assistant investigator, field investigator, field marshal, admiral marshal, and, last, director.

  When I explained, the producers loved the idea of having trainees as part of the show. Audience members could get to know the paranormal world along with our newcomers, and see their progression to investigators. I agreed. A trainee could represent the casual viewer, someone who didn’t know what an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) or EMF (Electromagnetic Field) detector was. It would be a way to teach the audience, explain things.

  On the flip side of that, while our producers expressed their confidence in our experience, with Adam gone, another more adult figure would lend an air of authority. I’d spoken to clients on the phone who assumed I was a forty-year-old professor, only to be surprised when a baby-faced twenty-two-year-old showed up on their doorstep.

  Trainee recruiting wound up like a casting call. We met with hundreds of students of every type (jocks, frat boys, sorority sisters, athletes, etc.). It was terribly important we find people who had a genuine interest in the paranormal and weren’t just interested in being on television. There weren’t very many.

  One of my favorite interviews was with an aspiring film student who said he really wanted to see a demon. When I asked what he’d do if that happened, he said he’d use the tools and camera equipment to defend himself.

  “So,” I said, “what you’re saying is if you see a demon, one of the most powerful forces in the supernatural realm, you’d throw your camera at it?”

  He didn’t make the cut. Another interviewee, who looked a lot like Seth from the movie Superbad, said if he ever actually saw a ghost, he’d run screaming like a little girl. Another pass. I usually left the session feeling like I’d wasted my time.

  While I’d been busy looking for trainees, the producers did the heavy lifting on finding an adviser. They knocked on every Penn State department door and for a long time, all we received—from people claiming to be educators and researchers—were insults. I found it hypocritical and disappointing. We weren’t asking them to be believers, just to be what he or she were—a psychologist, a scientist, a researcher. If they felt that there was a natural explanation for something they witnessed, they’d be welcome to express that.

  Looking back, I realize that there was a level of fear. Openly being a part of a paranormal investigation is perceived as career suicide. Even as
a journalism student I’d encountered intense disdain from professors who felt that I had a lot of promise but should drop that “silly little paranormal hobby.”

  Joyce, with a PhD in neuroscience, was the only candidate who was open to the idea. At the time, she wasn’t employed by the university, but she later became part of the neuroscience staff as a full-time researcher. She was also a complete atheist. By that I mean that she was not simply a skeptic. She didn’t believe in God at all and likely never would.

  I tried debating that with her. “If there were irrefutable proof that God existed, what would you feel? Happy? Sad?”

  To her credit, she looked as if she was seriously entertaining the question. I couldn’t help but feel there was a sting of panic, as if the idea that a God existed was frightening. After all, if there were absolute proof God didn’t exist, it would shatter my world. Likewise I thought the opposite would shatter hers.

  We didn’t come to any agreement, but I liked Joyce as a person. We shared a major obsession with the Joss Whedon TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we both enjoyed dive bars. It became clear quickly, though, that there was a wall between us. As Joyce traveled with us, scouting cases, she was quick to discount every paranormal claim. She was like Scully on steroids.

  One day during the trainee interviews, a vaguely familiar woman walked in. She introduced herself as Katrina Weidman and said we’d met before. Years ago, at a PRS meeting, she’d told me how her young brother died at an early age. On his deathbed, he described heaven to his parents. The experience shook Katrina. She also claimed she grew up in a haunted house and felt she might have psychic/intuitive abilities. As she grew older, they seemed to be getting stronger.

  When she started talking about psychic powers, I was turned off. At the same time, it was obvious Katrina knew the paranormal culture, and had her own experiences.

  As we talked, she impressed me. She answered my questions honestly and questioned her own abilities. When I asked if she wanted to be a full-time psychic, she laughed. “And be a Miss Cleo? No, I don’t think so.”

  Exploring her abilities wasn’t even the main reason she wanted to join. She just wanted to learn more about the paranormal.

  I also asked if she wanted to go on a demonic case (which seemed to be fascinating to a lot of people, as if they expected it to be an amusement park ride).

  “I don’t think I’m qualified to handle a demonic case. And, like, who would want to go on a demonic case? It doesn’t sound like it’d be fun, you know?” she said.

  My thoughts exactly.

  As for why she’d originally dropped out of PRS, she explained that at the time her life got too complicated. She’d had a bad semester, sprained an ankle, had a bad breakup, and someone broke into her apartment. Now she was a senior, very excited about learning more, and ready to take on the responsibilities. As we wrapped up, Katrina added that she was fine to just be a part of the organization, with or without the documentary show, if we’d give her a chance. That also made an impression, and in the end I agreed to give her that chance.

  Four others were admitted as trainees; one was a film student sophomore named Heather Taddy. Like Katrina, she’d attended a few PRS meetings, but was always in the background. She wore bright punk-rock kind of clothing, huge earrings, and hair all over the place. To my experience, the people who tended to stay with the club were more low-key. Heather’s appearance screamed, “I’m crazy. I’m in a rock band!” She seemed like the kind of person who got involved with ghost hunting as a thrill.

  Once we sat down, she seemed more interesting. She didn’t have much of a paranormal background, aside from playing with a spirit board with her cousin, and occasionally ghost hunting for fun, but she was genuinely fascinated. She’d even kept a PRS flyer she saw in Altoona years back and brought it to the interview.

  I remember the producers being very excited about her. She did have a personality unlike any other I’d encountered at Penn State. She was unique, which is exactly the kind of person we like in PRS. She was also an aspiring filmmaker interested in documenting the paranormal. That especially excited me. In the past, PRS had tried, unsuccessfully, to have a team documentarian record our findings for a future archive project. So, I agreed to let her in.

  Training was to start in two weeks. Given that the program had an overall 70–80 percent dropout rate, if we started with ten, we expected two or three to stay. Most don’t realize how tough we make the classes. They think they’re joining a college club that will take them ghost busting. When they find out it’s a serious effort to study the paranormal, most either lose interest or can’t take the workload.

  Once, a trainee wrote a scathing letter about how stupid our requirements were. He argued it should act like a normal college club. Anyone who was interested should go on investigations. Instead of requiring essays, we should focus on socials and fund-raisers. Needless to say, he dropped out to pursue something else.

  I never understood that train of thought—to do things like everyone else. How can you do anything extraordinary by doing things the usual way?

  Much as I had my biases about who wouldn’t work out, I was wrong about Heather. Training began in conjunction with our fifth annual paranormal conference, UNIV-CON. Out of the five trainees, all of whom were expected to volunteer, only one showed up—Heather Taddy. I wonder if she remembers the look of shock on my face as I saw her guarding the entrance door to a lecture, wearing a UNIV-CON staff T-shirt. At that moment, I decided that I shouldn’t underestimate Ms. Taddy. She showed up as needed and worked the entire four-day conference.

  A PSYCHIC BIAS

  Viewers of Paranormal State may think I have great faith in psychics, but the opposite is actually true. Succeed or fail, as an investigator I work to follow strict rules of evidence. Psychics trust their abilities, some to an unreasonable extreme. While their answers seem definite, they often can’t be proven. That makes it too easy for a charlatan to take advantage of the vulnerable and emotionally distressed.

  On principle, I have no problem with someone claiming to have an ability, but many of the psychics I’ve encountered also seem to have a huge ego, and an unwarranted influence over people.

  In my experience, those who charge exorbitant fees tend to get belligerent if you question their abilities—even politely. My feeling is that if you walk around claiming to speak to the dead, you’d best be used to—and even welcome—some serious scrutiny. Doctors and lawyers are always under scrutiny. They have governing bodies that handle matters of training and malpractice. Psychics do not. Unfortunately, many people come to them baring their souls and ready to empty their pocketbooks just to hear what they want to hear.

  To me, if someone has an ability, a gift, he or she has a responsibility to share it. It’s not a right, but rather a privilege. I understand the need to make a living, but I’ve seen psychics charge upward of one thousand dollars for a reading, and, worse, to my mind, offer to cross loved ones over to the other side—for a price.

  Overall, I don’t believe in 99 percent of the psychic claims I hear. Since the show has come out, I’ve met many self-proclaimed psychics, or mothers hailing their children as the next Chip Coffey. In order for me to believe in their abilities, they have to drop hard, undeniable testimony, and prove without reasonable doubt, that they had no prior knowledge. I also refuse to let psychics perform readings for me.

  That said, there are a rare few I do trust as human beings. Yet, even today, no matter how many times I walk through a house with a medium like Chip Coffey or Michelle Belanger, no matter how much I enjoy their company as friends, I question them every time. They have to prove themselves again and again. And any information they intuit is always taken with a grain of salt—until tangible evidence can be found to back their claims.

  Chapter 4

  Triple-Time

  Even my sister is haunted.

  After UNIV-CON in mid-October, production went into full swing. I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Normally we’d spend two weeks preparing for a case. Club rules required that at least one or two secondary witnesses be screened before a case could even move forward. There’d be preliminary interviews, a psychological evaluation, and interviews with any medical and psychology experts the clients had been working with. Then our tech, research, and occult departments would evaluate the case. In the process, we’d come up with a battle plan. We’d even try to get photographs and blueprints of the house in advance.

  Then, of course, we had to raise money for car rentals, gas, hotel rooms, and other supplies. Typically I’d work extra shifts at a restaurant. Much as I despised the work, it was fast cash.

  Now I had a team of producers and filmmakers bringing back video of the clients and the location. Anything I needed, they provided. Plus, for the first time, PRS had a few thousand dollars for equipment. To an organization that operated with a few hundred dollars and rented university equipment, it was a huge sum.

  The shooting date for our first episode was pushed back to mid-November, giving us ample time, I thought, to pick the first case. Previously, PRS received a few dozen inquiries a month. Among those, one or two piqued our interest. In the past, it was a sufficient case flow. We took our time working on one case. We could go back and revisit a site if need be. In some instances, we’d go back three or four times.

  Now that was a problem. As much as production wanted to honor our work process, the network expected thirteen episodes by March. That gave us four months to do thirteen investigations, an average of three a month, tripling what we were used to covering. There was some definite pressure to find a pool of interesting cases.

  Taking advantage of the Halloween spirit in October, we put out flyers and press releases all over Pennsylvania. Dozens of calls and e-mails came through. Suddenly PRS was operating full-time. Every member had to pull extra shifts to sift through the responses.