Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  With the body having been found in the pond, we took an old boat and put it into the water. As we did, rain mixed with snow began to fall. It was already freezing. Now we were getting soaked. I wouldn’t argue that the rain was paranormal, but there weren’t clouds in the sky earlier.

  Eilfie and I got into the boat. I would row while she did the ritual. It was a tiny boat, and every time we made the slightest movement it rocked as if a tidal wave slammed into it. So there we were, pagan and Catholic, rowing to the center of the pond.

  I was concentrating on making sure the boat didn’t tip over, but I could still see the crew running frantically from one side of the pond to the other as Eilfie chanted. I later learned they were barely able to get any sound. Until then, the film crew had no audio trouble to speak of. The moment Eilfie began chanting, they had major problems. The same equipment never had further problems, and to this day, they can’t explain what happened.

  Fortunately, Eilfie repeated the same chant to each of the four corners, the cardinal points on the compass—north, east, south, west—so they were able to record enough for the show. Unfortunately, that also meant I had to turn the boat in the proper direction and keep it steady while she chanted.

  The resulting scene is so powerful, the way it’s shot is so cinematic, when I watch it, it’s hard for me to remember that this is a documentary-based show.

  Though the entire ritual is not Judeo-Christian, it does quote in part from a Talmudic prayer called Kriat Shema, which is recited before going to sleep, and mentions the archangels.

  Before me stands Raphael

  Behind me stands Gabriel

  To my right, Michael,

  To my left, Uriel . . .

  Years and several seasons later, when people ask what my favorite episode of Paranormal State is, “Dark Man” is always near the top of the list. One of the reasons is I just love watching the banishment ritual scene. Another is what happened on the final day.

  Once we ended Dead Time and moved on to the ritual, Helen went to bed. I didn’t hear from her at all until the next day, when she appeared, in contrast to her former somber look, a bit sunnier. Despite my fears for Helen’s emotional stability, she seemed fine. I think she was just angry, understandably so, and needed to say her piece.

  Early that morning Heiser and Lance decided to go to a local church. I tagged along to say a prayer for Helen. As we walked out, the priest, as was the custom, greeted his parishioners. When we passed, he grabbed my hand.

  “Wait,” he said. “Who are you three?”

  I was startled, but quickly figured it was easy for him to spot newcomers.

  “Oh, we’re just travelers.”

  “Traveling? For what?”

  “Um, just trying to help a family here in town.”

  “Help a family? Is it charity work?”

  “Well, Father, I’m not sure what you call it. We’re just trying to help them overcome some grief and set things right.”

  “Then it is charity work. God bless you.”

  I tried to downplay what he said, reminding myself that while we were helping people, we were doing a TV show. That took the charity out of it, didn’t it? As we walked to the car, I turned to see that he was still watching. Then again, I asked myself, who says TV has to be selfish?

  Later that morning, CJ called Helen. “I have Chris with me. He says he’s crossed over, that he’s with his grandmother and he’s happy. Never stop talking to him, never stop remembering him, but know that he’s happy where he is,” she said.

  It was what Helen had been waiting so long to hear. But complex emotions, especially grief mixed with all that guilt and anger, don’t vanish overnight. I knew we needed to bring in a therapist. Counseling is often a much-needed and powerful component of our work. Though the client may have only one session, we hope they’ll consider continuing. In this case, production helped find Diane, a grief counselor, and while most of these sessions with clients are not recorded, this one was.

  “Even though you know in your head you couldn’t do anything, in your heart, you’re a mom, and you think you should have saved him,” Diane said. “And you know that Chris is safe now.”

  “Yes, I do,” Helen said.

  As I sat there watching, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe we’d helped Helen move in a positive direction.

  Our final sit-down is something I’ll always remember. I was supposed to go over the investigation, summarize what we found, and suggest how Helen could handle the future. In this case, though, she did most of the talking.

  “You opened me up to the fact that I’m a pretty strong person,” she said. “And I can handle more than I thought I could.”

  Pleased, I told her that while we’d all been focusing on the Dark Man, Helen still had someone bright in her life—Justin. He was still alive, and together they needed to move on.

  “I hope you understand that what you’re doing is not just hauntings. You’re helping people in a lot of different ways that maybe you don’t even realize,” she said.

  That became a sort of motto for Paranormal State. It was intended to be a reality show about college students as ghost busters, but after that it was clear to everyone that something more was going on. It wasn’t a new idea, and everyone contributed to making the show head in that direction, but it only became fully realized during Helen Isenberg’s case.

  I remind myself about that whenever I grow frustrated or tired. The work may be tedious and stressful, but there is good that comes out of it. At that moment, when I smiled at Helen, there wasn’t a single bit of darkness in that house.

  I wish I could say the happiness I experienced with Helen at the end of the investigation lasted for her, but she continued to struggle with Chris’s death, and the activity did pick up from time to time. I saw her on occasion over the years and we kept in touch, until May 2009, when she passed away—three years after her son died.

  I was in Iowa shooting the documentary feature American Ghost Hunter with investigator Chad Calek when I heard about it. Helen and her family had gone on a cross-country vacation, ghost hunting out west. She became ill suddenly, returned home, and died.

  I wasn’t able to attend the funeral because I was so far away, but Eilfie and Josh were there to represent PRS. We still keep in touch with Justin and the family and I think about Helen regularly. As much as she claimed we made a difference in her life, she made a difference in mine. She motivated me to keep going. With her gone, writing this chapter has been difficult, but despite the suffering she experienced, when I think of her she regularly brings light and motivation into my life. Although I’m sad that I never got to say good-bye, I’m also very happy because I know that she’s with Chris.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF GHOST HUNTING

  Nearly two thousand years ago, an ancient Roman author, Pliny the Younger, put down what may be the first written account of a paranormal investigation. In it, a philosopher named Athenodorus rented a house that was unusually cheap. That night a ghost tied in chains appeared and led him to the courtyard before vanishing. Athenodorus dug up the spot the next day and found a skeleton bound with chains. After it was buried properly, the ghost never appeared again.

  In 1862, a paranormal research organization called the Ghost Club was founded in London. It boasted some famous members, including Charles Dickens and Harry Price, an early psychic investigator.

  A few decades later, famous philosopher and psychologist William James founded the Society for Psychical Research, which attempted to use the scientific method in collecting evidence of apparitions, haunted houses, and other phenomena. It began in the United Kingdom but spread to other countries as well.

  In the 1920s, Harry Price spearheaded investigations with the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. In the fifties and sixties, the work was continued by German and American independent researchers such as Hans Holzer, who first coined the phrase “ghost hunter,” and the world-renowned Ed and Lorraine Warren. In the seventies and
eighties, various independent investigators conducted field research and laboratory experiments.

  The advent of the Internet, as well as movies and TV shows such as Ghostbusters, Unsolved Mysteries, In Search of . . . , and The X Files led to a rise in the popularity of paranormal investigating. Reality shows such as Ghost Hunters on the Syfy Channel and, of course, Paranormal State continue to increase interest and feed an ongoing boom.

  Today, scores of paranormal research groups exist across the world. Small businesses even sell ghost-hunting equipment, such as electromagnetic field detectors, white noise generators, and infrared motion sensors.

  Unfortunately, the boom can also lead to inexperienced groups and people looking for a thrill to cause property damage, or worse, as in Ohio in 2007 when a group of teens decided to check out a “spooky” house. The reclusive owner feared he was being robbed and opened fire, permanently paralyzing a seventeen-year-old girl.

  SHADOW MEN

  Both fiction and paranormal literature are full of references to dark figures appearing in the night, most often as a quick movement in the corner of the eye that vanishes when you stare straight ahead. Sometimes it seems to move. Explanations range from the eyes playing tricks on a tired mind, pareidolia (explained in a sidebar on page 147) to ghosts, aliens, time travelers, or beings from another dimension. They have also been associated with the alien abduction experience.

  With the popularity of investigating paranormal phenomena at a height, reports of shadow men (also known as shadow people) are on the increase. Some claim to have photographed these apparitions, while others say they see them clearly for long periods of time.

  Stories about misty ephemeral figures go back thousands of years. The word “shade” is a synonym for ghost that goes back to ancient Greece and the Old Testament. The term in ancient Hebrew, tsalmaveth, means literally, death-shadow.

  Chapter 6

  Loose Ends

  I bury the dead, like the boatman who takes them across the river Styx.

  During “Dark Man” everyone was just getting to know one another. We were all trying to figure out what did and didn’t work. As quickly as our next case though, which would come to be called “The Cemetery,” the relationships became more relaxed. That was partly because the location, Clearfield, was only thirty minutes from State College. The shorter travel time helped our tight schedule.

  Being college students, the shooting schedule had to work around classes. By and large there was a two-and-a-half-day shoot for each case. We’d leave Friday, then get back Sunday night to be in class Monday. Here the extra time allowed for some of our best investigatory work, most of which, unfortunately, didn’t make it to the final cut.

  It was November when we learned about Matt Franson, a cemetery caretaker in his midthirties, and his bride, Chandra. As part of his job, Matt lived in a house with a barn adjoining the cemetery grounds. He’d lived there six and a half years and had experienced some activity on his own. He had felt paralyzed and seen a female apparition. But it was when Chandra moved there in June 2006 that their troubles really began.

  Chandra began experiencing intense pains. Her back ached. At times her hands and feet became so inflamed she had trouble getting out of bed. Within two weeks of their wedding they started hearing noises, whispers, someone calling Chandra’s name. Soon Chandra was hearing the voices every other day.

  Matt, meanwhile, was having what he described as hallucinations. In the episode, he talks about lying in bed and seeing a woman climb out of a clothes basket, but he also described seeing the ceiling above him crack open. Tiny spiderlike creatures swarmed out and down the walls.

  This couple was obviously in distress. Instead of enjoying their lives as newlyweds, they were feeling upset and threatened. The thought of investigating an entire cemetery for the first time was also very exciting to us. For the producers it made for a nice visual location, so the choice was easy.

  We also decided to shoot a short sequence at a football game on campus. Originally the concept for Paranormal State was that it would include more details about our lives as students. Cameras followed us to parties, bars, Heather’s band playing, that sort of thing. A reporter even quoted one of our producers as saying they hoped some of us would start relationships with each other. This episode has a sequence where Heather and Katrina ask Serg if he’d consider dating someone from PRS.

  But with only twenty-two minutes and some great, detailed cases, that concept didn’t last. PRS pretty much was our lives, so it wasn’t as if we had time for socializing. The early shows, though, make the effort, hence the football game.

  We shot the game Saturday, which was fun, but complicated. It’s hard not to get noticed when you’re walking around with cameras pointed at you. The press passes the camera guys had also happened to be the same colors as the visiting team, Michigan State, so people razzed them.

  We tried to get a shot of me walking down the steps, but as I went, everyone cheered and high-fived me like I was a big time celebrity. It was awkward trying to watch the game, but even with all that, I was happy to get to one before being wrapped up in production.

  Next came the briefing. For the curious, the case file numbers I rattle off indicate the year, the month, the number of the case for that month, and a letter, p for parapsychological research and f for field investigation. All the cases on the show are field research, so this case number was 2006.11.26F, meaning we received the call and opened the file for a field case in November 2006.

  Our Saturday briefing took place the day after I’d gone up to meet Matt and Chandra. By then, they told me a number of things about the case, including that an urn with unidentified ashes had been buried on the property, that the Fransons were born-again Christians, and that certain members of Matt’s family apparently disapproved of their decision to contact us for social and religious reasons.

  The clients also expressed strong feelings about not wanting to work outside their own beliefs. So during the briefing, I jokingly ask Eilfie not to bring her cauldron and Serg not to mention his agnosticism. When the episode aired, viewers gave me flak: How dare you say that to Eilfie?

  I see how it might’ve come across, but Eilfie knew where I was coming from. We’re being invited into intimate, usually very sensitive emotional situations. When the clients clearly tell me that they’re not open to other beliefs, I don’t see any sense in adding to their tension. It could easily get in the way of finding out what’s going on and helping. Now that the show’s been on the air for several years, more people know who we are and what we believe, so it’s become less of an issue.

  Looking back, it’s also interesting that during the briefing I remind my team that spirits are human, and not all had happy-go-lucky deaths. In this case, there wound up being a different idea about the nature of the spirits involved between myself and the clients.

  From my first meeting with them, Matt and Chandra came across as very reserved. I didn’t feel they were hiding anything, just that they were quiet. I do remind myself that when a bunch of strangers come to your home with cameras, you can be anyone you want for a couple of hours. Usually, though, our clients are worried that they’re crazy. Just showing up and expressing a willingness to believe them often gets people to open up. Here, though, it took time.

  Matt did strike me as unhappy. There were things in life he said he enjoyed: rock, video games, and horror films, but he also said his family disapproved of that. It seemed his whole life revolved around maintaining that cemetery. When I asked what it was like, he joked that the customers never complained. He also said it was a special job. “I bury the dead, like the boatman who takes them across the river Styx.”

  It didn’t seem to be a position he’d aspired to. He’d studied film at Penn State, but things didn’t work out. My sense was that now he felt stuck there.

  The cemetery opened in 1881 and Matt’s family had been in charge ever since. His great-grandfather and his grandfather before that were caretakers. His
father, Bill Franson, broke the tradition and became a successful banker and Matt’s siblings since found different careers. Matt may have felt like he slipped backward.

  Meanwhile, Matt and Chandra, who was about ten years younger, had married after two months of seeing each other. It was a big change that happened very quickly.

  As I’ve said, I’m not a psychologist, but I’d spent time working with Adam, who’d been trying to figure out how psychology fit in with the paranormal. He shared his sense with me that wherever there’s a trauma, dysfunction, or even ongoing unhappiness, the paranormal tends to parallel it, as if it finds a weak spot and fills it, or feeds off it.

  Here there was potentially a lot going on emotionally.

  To try to draw out Chandra, Katrina and another investigator sat down with her and went through their wedding photos. The few smiles she gave us turned out to be the biggest reaction we got from her.

  As for their relationship, from what I saw, while Chandra had her say, she sometimes looked to Matt before answering my questions. It wasn’t as if she were afraid, more like she looked up to him.

  Between the emotional dynamic, the mysterious urn, and the hallucinations, there was a lot to look at, but the most urgent problem was Chandra’s physical pain.

  She told me she’d never experienced anything like it before moving in, but now it was constant. She’d been to a doctor, had blood tests and an MRI, but there were no conclusive results or even a theoretical explanation.

  To try to figure out what was going on, I brought her for another exam, with Thad Diehl, a chiropractor at the university. He examined her thoroughly, and failed to find anything wrong. He did say that the types of pains she was having were more appropriate for an eighty-year-old.

  Matt already had told me his own theory about what was happening. Feeling paralyzed and seeing a ghostly woman crawl out of his laundry basket made him think a female ghost had grown attached to him. Now she might be jealous of Chandra. He and Chandra both felt it was attached to the urn that had been buried on their property.