Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (38 page)

We didn’t share this with Georgia, but she went back in as well. We all had dinner, but afterward she came up to me, upset. She said that in the basement, she’d just felt something around her throat. After putting a lot of hope in the ceremony and our work, she appeared frustrated and frightened. More than that, it looked as if she was starting to become hysterical.

In the episode I’m seen cautioning Chip that the family’s on the edge. I was basically telling him not to be too superdramatic, not to scare them more than they were already.

At this point, I decided to try a second Dead Time, not so much to contact the entity but to empower the clients, to make them understand that whatever was going on, conquering their fear and reclaiming their home was up to them.

I don’t know if it’s the state of Maine or that particular area, but we again had a very active session. Chip sensed a presence once more. A slight animal moan came from upstairs, so we followed it there. A motion detector in one of the bedrooms went off. Again, the entity seemed to be moving around a lot. Finally, Chip felt he’d narrowed it down to a spot outside one bedroom. There, Katie said she sensed it watching her.

And I actually saw something.

Just for a second, I glimpsed a shadowy figure moving, kind of walking. It wasn’t short, as Katie described. It was adult-sized, more like what Georgia had seen, a shadow that blended in with one of the doors.

Whatever it was, I felt the thing was as present as it was going to get. Chip invited Georgia and Katie to confront it, to demand it to leave their home.

Georgia began very softy, almost whispering. “By the lord Jesus Christ . . .”

The more she spoke, the louder and angrier she became. “You have no power here! You have no right here! Get out of my house now!” she shouted.

As she rallied her rage, you can actually see, on camera, the change that came over her. It reminded me of Helen in “Dark Man” or my own experience alone in the house during “Pet Cemetery.” Georgia believed the thing she was confronting had been hurting her daughter; now she was fighting back. I can only imagine how liberating it must have felt.

Katie was there with it, too. When Georgia found strength, Katie took that signal and found strength within herself.

FDR said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. I don’t know if that’s true, but to my experience it’s always more than half the battle. The next day, that difference in them remained. A lot of the agitation I sensed in Georgia when we arrived had melted. They both seemed relaxed and happy, more comfortable in their own home. Katie was pleased she’d come home, so they could fight it as a family.

I buried blessed medals on the four corners of the property and gave one to Georgia as well. After that, the activity really, finally, seemed to stop. I think it was a cumulative effort, started by Brent and Ron, but culminating with Georgia and Katie reclaiming their home.

I do feel we never got to the heart of the story. I hadn’t previously worked with cases where someone claimed a half-human creature was sitting on her chest. It was something we had to learn about on the fly. We did manage to help the clients find the power to face whatever it was that the vortex, or circumstance, allowed inside their home, so that much was a success.

Often, the people who contact us for help seem to think they need some magical, complex piece of investigation and religious ceremony to remove the spiritual. In truth, the number one cause for spirit removal is through client empowerment.

Almost always, whether it’s through parents who feel powerless that their child is experiencing phenomena (as in “Sixth Sense”), a bar owner who feels like the activity is negative and trying to destroy his business (as in “Beer, Wine & Spirits”) or in this case, a woman and her daughter who felt that a spirit creature from the woods was taunting them, getting rid of their fear and teaching them to get back on their feet is the most powerful weapon.

We live in a very technologically oriented society, many of us increasingly detached from religion, spirituality, and nature. When faced with whatever supernatural force is out there, we’ve lost an older sense of how to cope with it. We’ve forgotten that the supernatural is part of a normal life’s journey. So we work to reconnect our clients with the spiritual, to help them remember that there is something more out there than money, jobs, and TV. You can try to spend your whole life trying to ignore the other side, but when it comes knocking, it is one guest you cannot refuse.

N
ATIVE
A
MERICAN
M
YTHS

In trying to determine the nature of the spirit that attacked Katie, I considered a number of possibilities relevant to the beliefs of the Almouchiquois/Algonquin tribe that had once lived on the land.

The
wendigo
was part of the Algonquin belief system. It was a malevolent cannibalistic spirit that humans could either transform themselves into or become possessed by. Humans committing the crime of cannibalism were more subject to takeover by this spirit. The wendigo were giants—thin and famished, but also gluttonous—constantly eating human flesh. There was no indication of a wendigo spirit in this case.

Trickster
is a more general term for a figure that appears in many myths: a clever, clownish spirit that likes to play tricks on both human and god. Coyote is a popular trickster from Native American myths. The Algonquin shared traditional beliefs with the Anishinaabe, which had a number of trickster figures, including Nanabozho and Wemicus. Tricksters are not malevolent figures and therefore can be easily ruled out.

But also among the Anishinaabe was a belief in dwarf creatures called
memegwesi
. Hairy-faced, riverbank-dwelling dwarfs, they often travel in small groups, appearing only to children and those of “pure mind.” Their short stature makes an intriguing connection, but the memegwesi are not half animal.

E
ILFIE
M
USIC ON
“S
HAPE
S
HIFTER
”

During this case, Josh and I encountered some really strange audio phenomena. At Dead Time, we were facing the woods, sitting around a candle as Ryan and the clients worked inside. As we asked the standard “Who is here?” and “Where do you come from?” questions, we heard a sound that started off as howling, then became more like laughter.

The sounds would always occur after we’d asked a question. The noise would get louder and softer, moving around the edge of the woods. It was the strangest thing we had ever heard. The laughter was the craziest, since it sounded like a bunch of people laughing at us. Luckily we were able to get it on audio.

Some people have suggested to me that it was possible there were coyotes roaming around, but this was one of the very few times that something this inexplicable happened for me during Dead Time.

Chapter 19
Out of the Shadows and Into the Limelight

What the hell is this?

Between “Shape Shifter” and the next case, “Requiem,” UNIV-CON took place. That was a very special experience for the team and me, since it was there we premiered
Paranormal State
. Of course it was a huge honor. To premiere my own show at UNIV-CON had been a dream of mine since we first came into the media spotlight during the Cindy Song case.

There was an audience of about seven hundred paranormal enthusiasts and Penn State students. Both sides of my family came up; my mom, my stepdad, my siblings, my grandmother, my dad, and my paternal grandparents were all there. I had maybe sixteen relatives there.

Before that, my impression was that my dad’s side of the family felt my paranormal investigations were basically stupid. They came from a very small town and led a pretty insular blue-collar lifestyle. I was the first Buell to go to college. So I think they didn’t understand it. You’re investigating ghosts? What the heck can you do with something like that? Now, all of a sudden, I was doing a TV show, which, I’m pleased to think, helped changed their perspective.

My mom’s side had been a little more open-minded and supportive. She’s told me she was sorry for not believing me during my childhood experiences, and for not knowing what to do. I don’t hold anything against her for that. I talk to her almost every other day. I go home whenever I can and miss them when I’m not there.

After all, my parents are human beings. My mom and dad were just out of high school when I was born, dealing with a lot as they were raising me. If I had led a similar life, right now I’d have a nine-year-old son. Adding to that, I imagine myself trying to get a career off the ground while my spouse is in a war, working and taking care of the kids and having no time for myself. If my son started complaining about seeing a grinning, floating monster in his room, I wouldn’t necessarily know how to deal with it, either.

By now, I’d seen cuts of the first thirteen episodes. This would be the first time, however, anyone outside our circle would see the show. The place was packed. It was crazy. All the A&E people were there, along with the entire crew. Before I went up onstage, they coached me on what they thought I should say: It wasn’t a finished version, the premiere will be December tenth, and so on. Unlike the “Dark Man” shoot, their input here didn’t rattle me. I was already as nervous as I could get.

Chip introduced me and I stepped up, trying hard to contain myself. Until then I hadn’t done much in the way of public speaking. I’d do workshops at the conference with smaller groups, but I never addressed a big crowd like this. I went up, introduced the show as best I could, and then sat down in the front row with Heather, Katrina, Eilfie, Serg, and Josh. We were all there, all jumpy as hell.

Finally, the lights dimmed and the show went on. I was still panicky, but as soon as it played, I sat back and started watching. The episode was “The Name”—definitely one of the signature shows from season one. I felt it was one of the strongest episodes from a TV show that was completely different from what people were expecting.

When it was over, it received a standing ovation. Katrina looked at me. “You must be so proud. I’m very proud of you. Get up there.”

So I went up again, along with the team, and we all did a quick Q&A. Part of the reaction we got was “What the hell is this?” Some people said it was cool to see the spirituality in this format, but others were, well, “Where’s the evidence? Where’s the investigation?”

One guy asked if this was really based on the PRS team “because you are all, coincidentally, very attractive.”

I think people were expecting something more like
Ghost Hunters
, which at the time was the only major ghost reality show out there. It enjoyed three years of being the only outlet for those interested in the paranormal, but that was about to change. We were going for something different. I explained that finding evidence was only part of what we were about, that the story we wanted to tell also included the client. Still, I could see where someone watching “The Name” might think the whole series was about demons. It was one of our best, but looking back, I wonder if we should have shown something simpler first, more direct, like “Beer, Wine & Spirits” or “Pet Cemetery.” Viewers may have had an easier time appreciating “The Name” if they’d known more about where we were coming from.

At the same time, moving forward, I took the comments to heart. For the last four episodes we became more focused on delivering certain things. We tried harder to bring more evidence in, and to experiment more, by using Frank’s Box (see sidebar on page 353) in our final episode, “Asylum,” for instance. There’s always room for improvement, and now that we had a small sense of what audience reaction might be like, we could look at things from a new perspective.

Chapter 20
Sickness and Suicide

I went out to get it and his skull was still in it.

We went into our next case, which would eventually be called “Requiem,” after the feedback from UNIV-CON. The case itself came to us sometime in September 2007, when we received an e-mail from a college student named Kristy Warren. Her family had moved into their house in Morris, Pennsylvania, about eight years ago. That was the summer before Kristy entered third grade, making her about seven years old at the time, not far from the age I was when I had my first experiences.