I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (6 page)

As a kid, I used to fear that my life would be wasted. I would agonize over how I was going to live this finite life. We have only so much time, after all, and I didn’t want my only experiences with different cultures to be on TV or in the pages of
National Geographic.
I wanted to visit the Kansas plains, the Virginia battlefields, and the California coast. I wanted to see the world instead of being stuck in just one part of it. I wanted to feel the energies of new places and different people, and I wanted to experience the glories of history. But as I get older, I can see the benefits of settling down in a small town where you know everyone and become part of the lore. I absorb energy like a sponge everywhere I go. It allows me to see the world and my purpose in it. I wish everyone could do that. I wish everyone could see more than where they are today, and see how vast and wonderful the wide world is while also appreciating the beauty of the little corners.

The guy in Pioche who escaped Vegas said that he was running from something. I don’t remember what it was (or maybe I just don’t want to give his secret away), but he was seeking peace in this small town.

MAYBE I’M THE SAME.

Sometimes I zone out like Walter Mitty, and that’s not always a good thing.

You know that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it”? Some days that’s me. I walk through the paranormal door to discover all I can about the spirit world, and I develop a deep connection to the other side that sometimes overtakes me completely, whether I want it to or not. After a paranormal investigation, I seem to have a residual connection with the spirits that I don’t know about until days, weeks, or even months later…when
they
want to make contact, not the other way around. It’s almost like being kidnapped, or at least forced to go somewhere and listen to something regardless of how you feel about it. I worked hard to open a door, but now I can’t shut it.

Recently I was driving home from my mom’s house through Las Vegas, and at a stoplight I was suddenly transported back to La Purisma Mission in Lompoc, California, one of the first investigations we did for
Ghost Adventures.
It had been the site of some pretty barbaric events, and the spirit energy was so strong there that it stayed with me, but I never knew that it would someday take hold of my mind. While my car was stopped at this light, I was back in the eighteenth century, sitting around a campfire with the women and children of the Chumash Indians. Everyone was laughing and happy. I was there, really there. It was as if I had gone back in time at a Vegas stoplight, of all places. It was so vivid that I couldn’t shrug it off as a simple flashback.

These reflections from past investigations float in and out of my life like the flute music we captured on the tribal grounds. I feel as though a part of me stayed with the spirits there, and at certain moments those spirits can call upon me and demand that I listen. They can still communicate through me. They seek relief from their pain by igniting visions within me. I get so deep into these visions that it’s hard to break free. At that stoplight, I was back in the 1700s. It was a sunny day. The women were making pottery. The children were playing and having a good time. I could feel every bit of it, and I had to force my hand to reach forward and turn on some music just to get myself straight enough to drive home.

La Purisma isn’t the only example. I get it from all the places I go. The spirits select me, and I never know which ones are going to come and when. In certain locations I can almost transport myself back in time to those moments we’re investigating. At Gettysburg, for example, I could smell the sulfur and death in the air and see the sun shining on the scorched battlefield in July 1863. I could hear the screams of the men having their legs sawed off. Long after I left the battlefield, I felt the pain of bullets hitting a soldier in the chest and fell to the floor in agony as he would have fallen as he took his last breath.

One time I was at home relaxing in a chair and
boom
—I was in a recliner at Waverly Hills Sanitarium with the other patients who were dying of tuberculosis. We were on the breezeway, where the terminally ill spent their days. There was a woman with curly hair. I believe it was the one whose picture was on the wall there—the one I left flowers for. I shared comforting stories with this woman before she died.

I don’t know what it is, but it seems like a part of me gets left behind at these locations, and the spirits can find me through that. It sounds crazy, but these episodes are happening more and more often now, and they’re more powerful every time, which makes me wonder if they’ll ever get so strong that I won’t be able to get myself back. Will I pass out on the floor and be trapped in another time while doctors try to figure out what’s wrong with me, and eventually call it something they understand, like a stroke?

Many times it’s stronger than just a vision, and my emotions are part of the experience. I really feel that it’s an ethereal connection that I made during the investigation by opening myself up to the spirits. It’s almost like I’m transplanting or channeling them through me and me through them, but it’s stored deep inside me and comes out only at certain moments.

You could say that I’m a human satellite. The spirits reach out to me because they know I have a good heart and a good soul. They know I was sent there for more than a TV show. It’s my destiny and my fate. In the beginning, I was more focused on taunting evil spirits and enticing them into a fight, but now I feel like I do more. I help people, but I also help spirits.

When you have a family member who’s in pain, what do you do? You talk to them and show through your empathy that you’re also in pain. You comfort them with words and touch and let them sense that you’re hurting, too, which relieves them. That’s what I do for these spirits. I don’t just help them; I also guide them through the astral plane. We humans are constantly striving for happiness, so is it so hard to imagine that spirits who were once human would want the same thing? We all want to be free of pain, disease, violence, and suffering. Life is a fight against these adversities. Even when we’re happy, we fear falling toward a state of illness, trauma, insecurity, or whatever.

Most of the places I’ve investigated have been the sites of atrocities and disasters that resulted in pain, suffering, and death. These places are vortexes of supercharged emotion, and I believe that the physical surroundings—the trees, the rocks, the walls—can hold onto the energy of those disasters. But more incredibly, so do I, and I frequently experience delayed pain from making contact with spirits. I’m sure we all try to avoid death, but I believe it’s this moment of mortality when a person dies that imprints a spirit on its surroundings and keeps some spirits earthbound because they’re still fighting to get their lives back. Wouldn’t any of us do the same?

When I’m not filming, I don’t go out a lot anymore. I’m not around people as much as I used to be. I don’t leave my house like I did a few years ago. Instead, I travel back to the places I’ve been to visit the spirits there; even though I’m physically at my house, my mind is always away. I visit these spirits just like you would visit your friends. Usually I see smiles and happiness, which I’d like to think is because I came to see them. I know how strange this sounds, but I don’t care. I know it’s real.

I deal with the world of the unknown and the unexplained. I can’t explain why these things happen to me, but they do. All I can do is welcome it and try to learn from it. But I also worry that something darker may be aware that I’m involved in it. Am I making things worse by opening myself up?

I had a friend who had something dark come through while he was opening himself up to a loving spirit. He’s smart, educated, and likable, but he was not aware that something evil could find him. He was so focused on opening up to a good spirit with love and compassion that he never saw the dark one that blindsided him. Your soul is like the Stargate. If you open it up too long to the spirit world, bad things can come through, and they’ll attach themselves to you. His sessions with the loving spirit were too long and too open, and he was unprepared for what could happen. His armor wasn’t strong enough to combat anything dark. His emotions were focused on the good things, and that left him vulnerable to the bad thing that came through and still affects him to this day.

Dark things have tried to come for me, but I’m always ready for them. I train myself and my soul to be strong while I visit other times and spirits. I gain knowledge from others in the field: parapsychologists, psychic mediums, and demonologists. I prepare and cleanse myself with prayer, meditation, and communing with Mother Nature. If you try to contact spirits without doing those things first, something bad will take notice and try to destroy you. The more you work in and around the paranormal, the more you open yourself up to the dark side of it, which is dangerous. You’re vulnerable to paranormal diseases that you can’t get rid of. This isn’t the thrill ride that many people think it is. There are health risks and life-or-death situations that most people don’t understand.

I don’t fear the visions I have because most of them are sad or happy and pretty nonthreatening. However, some are evil, and those are the ones that concern me. One such episode shook me to the core.

I usually get visions in the daytime, but of course we all dream. One night I dreamed that I had powers. I was a ghost with the ability to move things. I was at a bar and made a glass slide into my hand like a parlor trick. The next thing I knew, a giant satanic creature with hooves and backward antlers was standing in front of me. Then he had control of me. I was frozen as he opened his mouth and mine opened at the same time, against my will. Smoke came out of his mouth that I was inhaling, and then suddenly I woke up. I was shaken, but I got over it.

Fast-forward a few months. I hadn’t told anyone about that dream, and out of the blue I got a text from Chris Fleming, a psychic medium and friend. He’d heard that I bought the Demon House and wanted me to be careful because there was a satanic creature with hooves and backward horns in the house that was aware of me. I was chilled like never before. How could he have known? “I just know,” he told me. He’s done things like this in the past and is always spot on, so I heeded his advice when I finally set foot in that place.

In addition to my connection to the dead, I’m gifted with the ability to connect with the living on a deeper level. I am an empath, meaning that I can feel the emotions of others near me. From a young age I’ve had a hypersensitivity to others’ emotions. I know it sounds silly, but I can be at home watching a talk show featuring a man telling a story about his son who was killed in a car accident, and the next thing you know I have tears running down my face. I don’t feel just a little emotion; I feel strong emotion and a real connection to the person telling the story, much more than the average person sitting on their couch eating potato chips would. This is just who I am. Long ago I realized that my emotions are finely tuned instruments that can tap into and synchronize with others. I can feel what other people feel at the same intensity and at the same time, especially sadness and happiness.

Emotion
is a very important word to me. Being an empath is what helped me cross over into paranormal investigation. My hypersensitivity is a valuable skill during an investigation because spirits run the gamut of emotions, from anger to pain to sadness and confusion. This is why I took so much criticism in the early days of
Ghost Adventures.
I get it even now sometimes, like when I was emotional at Preston Castle or laughing uncontrollably at the Stanley Hotel or feeling enraged at Poveglia, Italy. I do what an empath does, and this is why my body is an important instrument during an investigation. I can sense when spirits are around me, and I can feel their emotions and energy. Sometimes it is draining and takes its toll, but it’s opened me up personally. I get deeper connections and better evidence—voices, communication, orbs—because I can connect with the spirits.