Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  At the house, things started the first day she moved in. At night, she heard footsteps overhead. Over time, she said there were bells ringing, lights going on and off, and a gross fecal odor following her around. Meanwhile, she said that Lucy was constantly begging Sybil not to leave her alone. The dog was particularly uneasy if Sybil, or anyone else, went up to the second floor. At one point Lucy developed a limp, as if something in the house had hurt her.

  One night, Sybil said she found herself mysteriously locked in the bathroom. She was able to get out, but that was enough for her. When she bought this place, she hadn’t sold her first house yet, so she moved back to her old home. Now she didn’t want to sell the house because she felt it unfair to pass the problem on to someone else.

  When we arrived, she hadn’t been at the property for a while. I tell you that place was creepy. It was in the middle of nowhere. The closest neighbor was a quarter mile or more away. If you screamed loud enough maybe someone would hear you.

  “If you want to go in you’re welcome to, but I think I’ll stay on the porch,” Sybil said.

  So, in I went. I’m not the type who typically senses things. In “Beer, Wine & Spirits,” for instance, I didn’t feel the same creepiness others did. Here, the moment I walked in, the whole place felt dark. There was definitely heaviness in the air.

  Among the activity, Sybil mentioned a ringing bell. As I first toured the house alone, amazingly, I heard it. It sounded like a toy or something musical.

  I was thinking, “Wow.”

  In trying to pinpoint it, though, I eventually figured out it was the refrigerator. Once I unplugged the fridge, the sound stopped. That turned out to be one of the few mysteries here that was actually solved.

  From the state of things, it was obvious Sybil had left in a hurry. There were half-unpacked boxes and plastic bins all over, so she hadn’t even completely moved in. Remodeling had begun on the second floor, where she planned to put her bedroom, but it was never finished. I searched for evidence of an animal infestation that could explain the strange sounds and smells—and caused the dog’s reaction—but I didn’t see anything.

  Next I tried to coax Lucy in. She wouldn’t go past the threshold of the front door. The moment I started up the stairs to the second floor, Lucy barked and kept barking. You can see this in the episode; the sequence is completely in real time. I hit the stairs and the dog becomes upset. Lucy would not go in.

  Dark as the property and the house felt to me, the feeling definitely intensified on the second floor. It was different, as if at any moment something would jump out at me.

  Something else that didn’t make it into the episode was the fact that we’d brought Xander, my own dog, with us. Given Lucy’s reactions, I wanted to bring him into the house to see what he did. Once we took our first look at the place, everyone tried to talk me out of it, including the producers. At the time we didn’t even know how many dogs had died here.

  It may seem callous that I wanted to take my pet in, but I knew in my heart Xander wouldn’t be hurt. I’d stay with him, and I wouldn’t let him run around unattended. Serg, who co-owns Xander, was open to trying it, but he felt everyone else had a good point. Why take the chance? So we decided against it.

  That created the issue of what to do with Xander. I couldn’t just keep him locked in a car, so I had to find a kennel, which led to an interesting turn. The kennel we found was run by a dog whisperer. This isn’t a psychic. It’s someone who’s studied dog psychology well enough to communicate with canines in ways they understand. This connection provided an opportunity for the case, which I discuss toward the end of the chapter.

  Meanwhile, Eilfie did some great work researching the property’s history. She managed to come up with a list of all the previous owners going back to 1893. There were at least a dozen. I don’t necessarily attribute the large number of owners to the paranormal. In cases where there really does seem to be something going on, it’s particularly important to explain whatever aspects are explainable, to leave a clearer picture of what, exactly, is unknown.

  A more “natural” explanation for the number of owners is the home’s remote location and size. It was a starter home, inexpensive and small enough for a single person, or, at most, a couple with one child. There were also those who’d buy the house to stay in over weekends. Could other reasons have caused people to move out? Sure. But the turnover wasn’t surprising.

  The most recent owners, Sybil told us previously, were her son and daughter-in-law, Melanie, and their daughter, Coley. They’d owned the two dogs we knew of that had died.

  Katrina interviewed Melanie. She hadn’t really noticed anything off at the house until their first dog, Zeus, got out and was hit by a car. About a month later they’d bought a second dog, Bailey. In short order Bailey also got out and was hit -and killed.

  This was genuinely odd. The house was in the middle of nowhere. We spent a lot of time there, and a car came by maybe only once every half hour. There was no blind spot, so when a car did drive by, you’d be able to see it coming a good distance away.

  After the death of the second dog, their toddler, Coley, developed an invisible friend she’d named Deppy Zoe. Invisible playmates at that age are common, more likely the result of an active imagination than a child seeing spirits, but naturally Katrina asked Coley about Deppy Zoe.

  “Did she say anything to you today?”

  It was like the kid had multiple personalities. In a squeaky voice, Coley said, “I don’t want to die in the road.” Then, in a deep voice, she said some things we couldn’t make out. Finally, in a third singsong voice, she added, “I want to die.”

  The look on Katrina’s face is priceless. It was such a strange moment the producers thought about investigating that angle, centering the episode on a witch named Deppy Zoe. It made sense that Coley would be a little weirded out after hearing her mom discuss their lost dogs. This little girl had lost two pets in a violent way in a short time. That’d be tough for an adult, let alone a toddler, to process.

  Melanie told Katrina that after the dogs died, she woke up in the house once and felt a presence. But she’d had no experiences beyond that. Sybil’s son didn’t want to talk to us. He hadn’t had any experiences and wanted to let it be.

  With the list Eilfie put together, we were able to make calls to several previous owners. Two got back to us. The first was Gail Kass, who lived there from 1984 to1986 with her husband, Ryan. They’d also had experiences. At night, they heard choral music in the woods, people singing, but no songs they recognized. Gail felt that the strangest thing that happened was that her dog died while they were away on vacation. Apparently, she received a call from her house sitter, who didn’t know how it happened. She said that suddenly the dog went crazy. The dog just ran out and bam! Gail said she felt it was the weirdest thing, confirming what we’d seen for ourselves, that people rarely drove on the road.

  Next I spoke to Erik and Rhonda, who lived there from 1986 to 1988. They said they’d never heard any rumors or experienced anything strange on the property, at least nothing they considered strange, except for the fact that their dog had an aversion to the second floor, just like Lucy.

  “She would sit at the base of the stairs while we were up there, and whine the whole time,” Rhonda said.

  That was already a wild coincidence, if it was just a coincidence. Not knowing the history of the house, they didn’t mention it until I asked, but that dog had also been hit by a car and died. By the end of the day, I learned there’d been a total of four dogs living at the property that had been hit by cars on that normally desolate road.

  And things were about to get even stranger.

  Chip Coffey, who was with us regularly now, was there for our psychic walk-through. Now that we’d had a chance to review our procedures, we were even more cautious about making sure our psychics didn’t know anything about the case beforehand. When he wasn’t shooting, the producers kept Chip locked in a van. And this is one episode
where Chip really proves himself.

  Though she hadn’t fully unpacked, Sybil had already decorated with a lot of small porcelain knickknacks in the house—angels, clowns, and so on. They were all different types, and all over the place. Chip walked into the house and headed to the cupboard area. There, not in the open and not a huge piece, was a small porcelain necklace with a two-inch picture of Lucy.

  Chip grabbed it. “There’s something about this dog . . .”

  That shocked me. It was a huge leap.

  He also felt drawn upstairs, where he asked about a female with an “M” name, Margaret. It struck him so powerfully that he made sure I wrote it down. Margaret. He picked up on more, a live dog and a dead dog, and then wondered if there was anything ritualistic going on.

  “There’s something buried on the property,” he said, and started pointing outside.

  He was hitting so well that I decided to see if he could pinpoint the area. We went outside and I followed him through the woods near the property. Chip didn’t find anything, but on our way back, he stopped short.

  “Margaret! Margaret!” he yelled.

  He pointed to a gravestone with the name “Margaret” carved on it. It was right off the backyard, barely into the woods. There was no cemetery, nothing else, just one tombstone. I’d seen the stone itself before and hadn’t thought anything of it. It looked like a rock. You’d have to be within a few feet to notice the writing. There was no last name, just Margaret.

  With no Margaret listed among the owners, Eilfie went back to the library for more research. Meanwhile Chip met with Sybil and Lucy to ask about the ritualistic aspect he’d sensed. Apparently neighbors had told Sybil that in the sixties an older woman lived in the house. She was supposedly a very mean person, and hung out with a strange man who used to kill dogs.

  That provided the rudiments of a theory. If the area had been the site of ritual killings, because of her friend’s dabbling in the occult, it’s possible Sybil’s presence escalated the activity.

  Sybil had already been in touch with Lorraine, so the case provided a nice opportunity to work with her again. Like Chip, Lorraine was dead-on in what she sensed in the house. She felt the presence of an older woman, then headed straight up to the second floor, and sensed something she described as horrible.

  “I feel like I’m being choked. I feel that hurt in my throat. Who would want to live in this house? I couldn’t live in here. I wouldn’t even want one of my animals in here,” she said. Under the circumstances, it was quite surprising to hear her mention animals.

  As I mentioned, Sybil had originally spoken with another psychic who’d sensed similar things. According to Sybil, as they stood next to the house, the psychic pointed up at the window to the tiny room where most of our experiences took place and felt something there. She also saw a man who seemed malevolent. So here we had three psychics who had no contact with each other that I knew of getting basically the same information. It was incredibly unusual.

  Meanwhile, for the second time, Eilfie’s research paid off. She’d managed to track down a neighbor, Fern, who’d grown up in the area. Fern was able to confirm some of the rumors about the property. When she was ten years old, an older woman had lived there.

  “She had a male friend who used to ride on a bicycle, and he killed our dog,” Fern said.

  That was the fifth dead dog we’d heard about connected with the property. Apparently he had a stick with a nail on the end that he’d use for killing dogs. Fern also knew the first name of the woman, Margaret. At this point, I have to admit, I was pretty damn impressed with Chip and Lorraine.

  We never did get Margaret’s last name. She may have rented the house, or it could have been in her husband’s name, and she inherited it when he died. This was a very, very small town, and try as we might, we couldn’t find more information about these people—no family, no descendants, nothing.

  We were able to determine that the stone wasn’t a grave site. I’m not clear on the details, but someone close to Sybil had a wife, who, by a surprisingly eerie coincidence, was also named Margaret. When she died, they had the tombstone made, ended up not using it, and left it there.

  With all this data feeding the already heavy atmosphere, we went into Dead Time. Half of the team stayed by the tombstone while Chip and I were stationed on the second floor of the house. Early on, Chip sensed a spirit at the bottom of the steps, but couldn’t confirm who it might be. When he asked whatever might be present to communicate, we heard a tap and a barking dog. I did hear dogs in the neighborhood once in a while, so that was likely yet another coincidence, but then a motion detector went off on the second floor. We had a camera synced with it this time, but the photos didn’t catch anything.

  We knew something was going on, but coulnd’t figure out what. To try to get more information, Chip offered to try channeling. Unlike a possession, where the host is unwilling, when channeling, a psychic invites the spirit to use their body to communicate. We hadn’t done anything like that previously on the show, and I’m always dubious about claims of mystic abilities. It seems possible, but especially with channeling, you have to trust the medium. I did trust Chip, so I opted to give it a shot.

  After about ten minutes of attempting to channel, Chip’s demeanor changed. He looked very frightened and actually started weeping. It seemed to me as if he was genuinely coming under the influence of another personality. Whether that personality was imaginary or not, I don’t know.

  When I asked if it was human or a demon, Chip couldn’t speak. He was only able to shake his head, “No.”

  Aside from apparently being mute, while in the trance Chip didn’t know how to use his hands. He kept them balled up like paws. He later said that sometimes when human spirits enter a medium, they don’t quite remember how to use a human body. It’s possible, though, that he was channeling the spirit of one of the dead dogs. In the end, it was extremely interesting, but didn’t provide any additional information.

  In all our cases, I try to put together a complete picture of what’s going on. Here, again and again, it felt as if we were on the edge of something, but we couldn’t quite get to what we needed to know.

  Frustrated, while Chip was in the trance, I asked the spirit to pull all its energy together and give us some definite sign or clue about what was going on. As if in response, there was a loud bang to my right.

  It wasn’t a rustling, a scratching, or a thump. It was a banging, so loud it made us all jump.

  I was sure the recorders had captured it, but in a big disappointment, on playback, the sound was barely audible. Whatever it was, it was loud enough to take Chip out of his trance.

  What the episode also didn’t show was that I investigated the sound. It was so loud, so intense, that I ran over to the right side of the room with a flashlight to see what had moved. Even though I was in the room with Chip and a camera guy, I suddenly felt a prickling feeling up my spine. I felt like something was eyeing me, like a predator watching its prey.

  In the episode, the time crunching makes it seems as if right after leaving his trance Chip led us to a small pile of rocks, but the full story is much more interesting.

  When we walked through the woods earlier, I’d spotted not one, but several piles of rocks. They were in various places, and each pile looked as if it were marking something. Eilfie thought they might be trail markers or fire pits that had been filled in, but they didn’t look like either. Most were stacked about four feet high.

  One dog had been buried on the property, but we knew the location, and the stone piles didn’t match. Two of the other dogs died at the vet and weren’t buried on or near the property. I didn’t know what to make of the stone piles, but it looked like something was going on. Early on I had Josh and Serg start digging. By this time, they’d dug up two pits, but found nothing. The third they started on was different from the others. It was smaller, but more distinctly piled.

  After they’d been at it awhile, they called and said, �
��Ryan, I think we might have found something.”

  “You found something? Are you sure?”

  I was floored. That was big news. We dug for things at least four times each in our second and third seasons and never found a thing. I’ve had people with sophisticated ground-scanning equipment tell us we’d find something in a certain spot, but we came up with nothing. Here, we go to Maine in the woods with a couple of shovels and find something.

  I went over to them immediately and looked into the bottom of the hole. In it lay a blue plastic tarp, half covered in dirt, bundled up, and tied with rope. Some thick tree roots had grown over it, and to get to it, Josh and Serg had to cut them away.

  I decided to pull it out and have a closer look. We had masks on as a precaution, and as we started moving it, the tarp shifted and an awful smell came out. Even with our masks on we had to back away. At that point we knew we had a dead body.

  We were really freaked. What on earth was it? Another dead dog? A dead baby?

  My heart was racing as we dragged the tarp up and out of the hole.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  “Oh God, doesn’t sound like a good thing,” Chip said.

  Once we opened it up and saw the corpse inisde, it was obvious it was a dog. It looked like a medium-sized breed, black or dark brown. As far as I could tell it didn’t have a head; it was decapitated. The body was also very moist, fresh. It’s possible the plastic tarp kept it preserved, but the thick roots growing over it meant it’d been buried a long time. Of the dead dogs we knew about, three were accounted for, and the others had died nearly twenty years ago. That’s a long time for a body to still look fresh. I wanted to get a vet to examine it, but we couldn’t find anybody available.

  After regrouping back at the house, Lorraine told me that the “freshness” of the body, the lack of decomposition, was characteristic of ritual slayings. She and her late husband, Ed Warren, having done many occult cases, theorized that in these sacrifices the supernatural component slows down the decomposition, as if to defy, or mock, the natural order.