Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  We gathered some other photos of people from the same time period, and showed them all to Larry. When I asked if he recognized anyone, in short order he pointed out the image we believed was Jane. This, he said, looked like the woman in the window. For us, this was very important evidence, just like the moment where Matthew picked out Timothy in a photo lineup in the “Sixth Sense” case. I can understand why some people don’t see this as amazing as say, an EVP, but for us, this is just as big, if not bigger. If a client is able to pick out the photograph of a family they’ve never seen alive, that has been verified as having once lived in the house, and they’re convinced “this is who I saw,” it’s a huge piece of evidence arguing for the existence of ghosts. This young man clearly saw something, and he said it looked exactly like Jane Anne Witzel.

  From everything we gathered about the case, from historical investigation, testimony, paranormal investigation, and psychic walk-throughs, Jacob and Jane Anne Witzel fit the profile of the spiritual personalities to a T. It all seemed to add up.

  Is this absolute proof? No. But, given the awkward relationship Ally’s parents had with Larry, I don’t envision them sitting around looking at antique pictures together. To me, it made more sense to believe he’d actually seen Jane Witzel.

  Having taken the research as far as it could go, I agreed to bring in psychic CJ Sellers, whom I’d worked with in “Dark Man.” In this episode you can see why she’d earned my respect.

  To the best of my knowledge, CJ didn’t know anything about the house. Yet when she entered, she didn’t throw out millions of bits of information hoping to get something right. She was drawn immediately to Ally’s bedroom. There, she sensed a couple, specifically a female who was old-fashioned, churchgoing, and proper. This spirit, she felt, disapproved of two people living together without being married. Even so, the energy didn’t feel negative to CJ. It felt warm, protective.

  Interestingly, the spirits didn’t feel trapped or want to do any damage. According to CJ, they wanted to stay on in the house, and coexist peacefully with the new family.

  At the end of the psychic walk-through, I showed CJ the photos we’d shown Larry. She likewise pointed out Jane Witzel, saying it felt like this was the spirit she was in touch with.

  In a profession where hard proof is hard to come by, we were doing pretty well.

  Afterward, CJ sat down with Larry and Ally. I thought she did a great job not coming across as judgmental while expressing the attitude she was getting from the spirits. For their part, Larry and Ally understood that the disapproval and concern from the spirits were based on hundred-and-fifty-year-old values.

  I also want to briefly mention the “lives of the investigators” subplot for this episode. This one involved Katrina talking to Heather about intuitions and dreams she’d had that sometimes came true. The producers thought it’d be interesting to have her speak with CJ about them. CJ explains, basically, that like any muscle or talent, it was an aspect of her that could get stronger if Katrina decided to exercise it.

  Katrina’s interest in developing her psychic ability was something I kept a close watch on. To be honest, I had no desire to have a permanent psychic on my team. In the past, it’s led to bad situations in PRS. Alleged psychic testimony can bias the rest of the team’s viewpoint so much that we have a policy in place that does not allow any investigator to knowingly use any psychic talents on a case without written consent.

  This isn’t just my thought process. Sergey, Josh, and Eilfie also have hesitations about the use of psychics. As for the psychics we use on the show, they’re called in, they give their reading and then they leave. Far be it for me to stop someone from pursuing a potential talent, but I didn’t want that issue mitigating the team’s objectivity. That said, I think Katrina did a great job trying to find that balance her first year in PRS.

  Meanwhile, since the research had worked out so well, we went into Dead Time with a very solid theory. One aspect that didn’t make it into the final cut was that, aside from Larry, two African Americans were present. To test the family’s theory that the apparition only appeared to African Americans, I’d brought in John Ford and an old friend of mine, V. J. Cox, who lived in Pittsburgh at the time.

  As we tried to contact the Witzels, just like back at Schwab Auditorium, we had battery problems. Flashlights were dying out for no apparent reason. Some people think this is hyped, but our crew is a group of seasoned TV production people. It’s second nature to them to keep things charged and ready.

  As far as it being evidence of a presence, part of the problem is that you never really know when the battery’s being drained. If it’s fully charged and some paranormal activity drains it to 80 percent, the battery still lasts thirty minutes. All we do know is that at certain times and in certain places, batteries don’t last as long as they should. Why? One theory is that the spirits use the energy themselves, the same way they use the emotional energies of the clients.

  I’m not saying that a bunch of nineteenth-century spirits are taking out their straws to sip on battery acid. They probably aren’t even aware that they are affecting our machinery. Nonetheless, whatever elements make up a spirit, it seems that they pull from electrical currents in a big way. Think about it. The spirits don’t have a body. How are they supposed to manifest and move objects? They need some sort of fuel just as we humans need to consume oxygen and food for energy. Perhaps spirits have unknowingly learned to adapt, now using our technology as a way to feed in order to manifest?

  During Dead Time, V. J. became very emotional and claimed he felt a spirit move through him. John Ford, on the other hand, didn’t have any unusual experiences.

  There is a moment in the episode where I say, “I’m getting chills.” It may seem that this is the result of some activity, but the truth is a bit embarrassing. It was late, it was really warm, and CJ has this incredibly soothing, nonconfrontational way. She was very relaxing to listen to. So, I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on contacting the spirits, but fell asleep.

  Everyone tells me my head just fell forward. To me it felt like I was out for a second, but apparently I was out for a good minute. To make matters even worse, apparently I started snoring. It was definitely not one of my finest moments. As I shook myself awake, I got chills from my sleepy limbs. Nothing paranormal there.

  The most exciting thing about Dead Time nearly slipped by me completely. After a lack of activity in Ally’s room, we relocated to the master bedroom. As CJ and I attempted communication, suddenly we heard an old-fashioned telephone ringing from somewhere in the dark house. At first I rolled my eyes. “Someone in production forgot to turn their cell phone off.” As we continued to learn and adapt around each other, one thing I was trying to get them into the habit of was turning off their cell phones. This was only the fourth investigation; there was still a learning curve.

  After we called off Dead Time, I walked down the stairs to meet Eilfie and one of the producers. “Hey, who left their cell phone on?” I asked the producer, Alan.

  “No one. We thought maybe it was you guys. We were trying to look for that noise.”

  Eilfie and I looked at each other. “Well, I was with the other team and it wasn’t us,” she said. I obviously knew that it wasn’t us. Suddenly, Eilfie and I ran off excitedly, trying to see if we could find the source of the telephone. Since we were on opposite locations of the house, we pinpointed it as directly above the first-floor kitchen. We tried calling their house phone and other cell phone numbers. The sound was not heard again. Despite all of us combing the house for an old-fashioned telephone, we didn’t find one. Ironically, though, there is some significant decoration of an old-fashioned telephone throughout the house curve.

  It was incredibly frustrating. The phone rang about five times, so if I’d realized at the time, it could’ve been tracked down. Everyone was disappointed that we’d missed a prime opportunity, so, between this case and the next, “Man of the House,” we took a good hard look at how t
o be more careful during Dead Time.

  We did come away with some evidence. The ring was captured on audio, so we compared it to the rings of all the other phones in the house. There was no match. I also asked the clients if they’d heard anything like it, but they hadn’t.

  It was a weird event in any case. Jacob and Jane Witzel were from the middle of the nineteenth century, and there were no phones at the time. It did raise the possibility that there were more spirits about. We had some indications of that. One night, for instance, Ally told us that she’d woken up in bed and saw not the older woman but a younger man looking at her. Since it didn’t bear on the main story, it was left out of the episode.

  During Dead Time, CJ also offered to carry any messages the spirits had to the family. She told us that they wanted to stay and coexist. As it turned out, the Sokolowskis felt the same way. When people watch this episode, some ask why we didn’t perform a house blessing or ceremony to get rid of the spirit. My answer is this: If the spirit gives us any indication that it feels trapped or wants to move on, then we’d feel a personal obligation to do so. On the other hand, we also accept the possibility that some spiritual presences in a home are there by choice, for whatever reason. In that case, it’s up to the homeowners, since it is now their space. If the spirit wishes to remain, we ask the homeowners if they have any objection. If they don’t, then the spirit remains. If the clients do, then we have to have an intervention.

  On the other hand, if the spirits give us an indication that they want to leave, but the clients don’t want them to, then we will consider trying to remove the spirits even if it’s against the clients’ will. (Believe me, there are many instances of this happening. There are several ghost tourist locations that try to capitalize on the pain and suffering of the deceased, not even willing to entertain the possibility that they are there against their will. These owners will not allow anyone to go in there to remove the spirits because it would be bad for business.)

  In this case, I talked it over with Eilfie, Sergey, and Josh, and we felt comfortable that we were dealing with a completely benevolent haunting, and therefore agreed to not interfere with the family’s—and spirits’—wishes.

  This brought us to an unusual resolution. It was sort of like the end of Tim Burton’s film Beetlejuice, with dead and living getting along in harmony. Normally I’d be suspicious of that, but given everything else going on in the family, acceptance seemed the right way to go.

  The next day, in a very moving moment for Larry, CJ conveyed that he did have Jane’s approval. After that, we even managed to open up a dialogue between Larry and Ally’s parents. For the first time, they talked things out. Larry had the opportunity to tell them how uncomfortable he was, not just from the spirits, but with them as well. By the end of it, they were laughing together.

  Sometimes, whether it’s paranormal or not, if we help remove the spirits or not, the shared experience is what matters the most. As Linkin Park put it in a song, “The journey is more important than the end or the start.” In having shared this experience together, Larry and the Sokolowski family had something in common. This made the case feel, to me at least, very complete.

  Very often in these investigations, threads are left hanging, mysteries unsolved, clients’ problems unresolved. But this investigation was satisfying on many levels. On the one hand, I felt it was a genuine haunting. On the other, the emotional aspect had a satisfying conclusion. The ghost actually seemed to help unite the family.

  Ally said she had less trouble sleeping in the house now that she felt she knew who the ghost was. Larry claimed he wasn’t having any more problems. A couple of years later, we contacted the family to see how they were doing. They assured us that they were fine, that they still had some minor, harmless paranormal activity but it wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle. All around, aside from kicking myself over the ringing phone, for me this was energizing, one of the success stories.

  PSYCHICS AND SUCH

  Psychic is an umbrella term for someone with the ability to discover hidden information and/or influence the world through their minds alone. There are many subcategories, but the definitions tend to overlap and vary depending on the source and history. Here’s a rough guide.

  Mediums are people who communicate with the dead. The word gained popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, during the rise of modern spiritualism in the United States and Britain. Mental mediums sense spirits and communicate for them. Physical mediums act as conduits for spirit energies, allowing them to act physically on the world, either by speaking directly through the medium, causing objects to move or materialize, and even transfiguring, where the face of the spirit appears on the face of the medium.

  Seers are able to see future events, through their own intuition or in combination with rituals or tools, such as crystal balls, tarot cards, runes, or the I Ching. This subcategory includes prophets, and span all the way from the ancient Greek Oracle of Delphi to the sixteenth-century Frenchman Nostradamus to today’s tarot readers and astrologists.

  Clairvoyance (meaning “clear vision” in French) is a general term that refers to the ability to gain information through means beyond the normal six senses. The subcategory remote viewing is more specifically the ability to visualize an unseen person or object and its location. Through the Stargate Project beginning in the 1970s, the United States military attempted to use so-called remotes to locate objects and other targets. The program was successful enough to continue operation through the 1990s.

  Other types of psychics include the telepath, who has the ability to read minds, and the telekinetic, who has the ability to move objects.

  True psychics are hard to come by. Amateurs, frauds, and the self-deluded abound. Because people under emotional duress tend to be vulnerable, it’s crucial to proceed with extreme caution before placing faith in a psychic. Many of the effects are easy to fake through such things as cold reading, discussed elsewhere.

  KATRINA WEIDMAN

  Why the fascination with the paranormal?

  The fact that my parents kept buying and moving into haunted houses probably had something to do with it. I was always the girl at sleepovers who brought the Ouija board. My friends, tears in their eyes, would call their parents to take them home.

  I don’t know what was worse for my parents, to have their daughter say, “I want to be an actor” or “I want to be a paranormal investigator.” In my case, neither took them by surprise. As I worked on my degrees in theater and integrative arts I also spent hours studying to be an investigator with PRS.

  What was your most unusual interview?

  During “Pet Cemetery,” talking to Coley, a little girl. She was very hard to understand. All I could make out was her little voice saying, “I want to die; I don’t want to die; I want to die.” If you watch my face it pretty much sums up my feelings. Ryan does a lovely impersonation of my reaction.

  What was it like handling your own case?

  Loved it. I’ll never forget the moment during “Beer, Wine & Spirits” when Ryan told Heather and me, “This is your investigation, girls.” We just kind of stood there with blank expressions. I don’t know how I didn’t see it coming. The night before, Eilfie kept asking if I’d read my PRS handbook. “Did you bring it with you?” It was an odd question to ask at one A.M.

  I made a lot of rookie mistakes, but in the end I felt like Heather and I stepped up. It was the first time I really felt like I was part of the team.

  What was your most difficult interview?

  Brian, the client from “Beer,” just because it was my first time sitting down with a client without Ryan. I wound up forgetting a lot of key points and I don’t think I did a very good job making Brian feel comfortable.

  What’s the one thing you’d like people to know about PRS?

  What people see on TV is only a snapshot of what we do, and a fragment of who we are as people. We actually have personalities and know how to smile. People are always surprised to l
earn that when they meet us.

  We also don’t head home to sip martinis from diamond encrusted glasses poolside. That’s what TV life’s supposed to be like, right? We work extremely hard. We search for cases, do tons of interviews, plan new experiments, and do exhaustive historical research, all before we step foot on the property. Afterward, we spend hours reviewing the evidence and compiling a report.

  How has working with PRS changed your views of the paranormal?

  I used to be afraid of death. Now, I believe it’s just the next stage. I used to think a ghost was someone who’d died and couldn’t move on, but the word doesn’t do justice to the possibilities. It could be from another dimension, an intelligence that attaches itself to human life, or echoes of moments of time. Maybe we’re ghosts to the transparent figures we scream at and run from. That’s what I find exciting about this field, the possibilities.

  Sometimes I look back at the work I’ve done with my friends, who’ve become like brothers and sisters, and wonder what I’d be doing if my parents never bought that first haunted house. I didn’t know it, but it was one of the best purchases they ever made.

  Chapter 9

  The Client That Haunted the Ghosts

  I asked how often she did the EVP recording. “Every day.”

  After “The Woman in the Window,” we filmed “Man in the House,” right up until a few days before Christmas. With that behind us, it was time for Penn State’s winter break, giving us three weeks off from school. I’d always planned to take the show outside Pennsylvania, and without classes to worry about, this was the time to do it. Our producers were based in New York City, so they put out some press there and uncovered a few cases. We wound up shooting two in New York, which would become “Paranormal Intervention” and “Beer, Wine & Spirits,” and a third in Massachusetts, “School House Haunting.”