Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  “You keep me very much in the dark, Ryan,” he said.

  Here again, Chip’s pretty on the mark. He senses that Katie is “a or the target,” that the troubling spirit comes into the house from outside, and, disturbingly, that the entity is pleased by Katie’s fear. When we take him outside, Chip hits again, sensing something Native American involved. I asked him what it looked like.

  “Half animal, half human.”

  After the walk-through, we prepared for Dead Time. Chip and I remained in the house with Georgia and Katie, while Josh and Eilfie worked in the woods. Often, we get nothing, but this session was particularly interesting. Georgia heard a faint growl. Chip sensed the source and we followed it downstairs. There, he felt it’d ducked behind a door. At times I felt teasingly close to some kind of breakthrough. Whatever we were tracking inside moved around a lot.

  The most fascinating thing happened outside, though. After hearing a slight rustle, Josh asked any entities that might be listening to make another noise indicating their presence. A series of weird, plaintive cries erupted from the woods.

  Inside, we didn’t hear them at all. Outside, the sound came and went, but overall lasted a good twenty minutes. We hadn’t heard many other noises, maybe a dog barking once in a while, faintly, and this was clearly no dog. Josh and Eilfie wanted to try to get closer, but they didn’t know what direction to head in. It sounded far off, like a quarter or half mile.

  This time, the sound was captured.

  The next day I led an evidence review centered on that recording. One of the things that seldom makes it into the final episodes, for obvious time reasons, is our lengthy conversations about what evidence we do have, and what explanations there might be for it. But man, this sound was weird, like a whole pack of some sort of animal. It was nothing recognizable to any of us. Georgia and Katie had never heard anything like it either.

  We searched the Internet for coyote and other animal sounds to compare, but nothing came close. It sounded sort of like hyenas, but there aren’t any living naturally in North America, let alone Maine. With the nearest neighbor at least a mile away, there wasn’t anyone else to ask about the cries.

  Stumped by the recording, but more and more curious, I decided to take a look under those rocks in the yard. Some viewers felt I wasn’t respecting the beliefs of the Native Americans. This couldn’t be further from the truth. On a regular basis, however, religious tradition and the investigation process are at odds. For the sake of the clients, I needed answers. I explained my reasoning to Georgia. The Elders assumed there was a portal, but we wanted to be sure. If it was a significant source of paranormal energy, there could be markings or even a cursed object planted there. Knowing more would better help us understand how it was affecting the clients.

  In the end, someone simply saying, “the problem is coming from over there by those rocks. But don’t open it or investigate it” isn’t a strong enough argument to stop the investigation process, whether the person is Catholic, Native American or Buddhist. If someone says there’s a portal to hell under some rocks, you bet your ass I’m going to move them.

  Together with Eilfie, we removed the rocks to see if there were any occult or religious markings. Underneath, the only thing we found was a rotten tree trunk, a stump. At the time it felt like a dead end, certainly not the wound in the earth Brent described.

  Brent and the tribal elder would be arriving later that morning. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the elder. I pictured the stereotype—some wizened man in robes with a gnarled wooden cane. Not knowing the specific tribe’s culture, I was also concerned we might accidentally offend him and wanted to make sure we were respectful. Eilfie knew enough about Native American tradition to tell us that when an elder visits, you’re supposed to offer a gift. She felt the safest thing was tobacco, so we bought some and Eilfie took the time to make pouches for it. As we’re reviewing the animal cries, you can see her sewing the pouches in the background.

  The elder, Ron Strongheart, didn’t match my preconceived image at all. If anything, he looked a bit Italian. We gave him our gift and he accepted it. He didn’t seem surprised we’d offered it, so it felt like the right thing to do.

  At first, I was pleased not to have offended him, but that didn’t last. Maybe I should have expected it, but he and Brent were both upset that I’d disturbed the rocks.

  “I wish you didn’t move the rocks until I sealed it,” Brent said.

  The hole and the tree stump didn’t feel evil to me, but Brent and Ron were convinced they were. Looking back, I think our moving the rocks was a positive thing. Once we told Brent and Ron what we had discovered, they felt it was proof that it was indeed a portal. According to them, the tree root was a connection to the underworld. They said again that someone or something had wounded the land, perhaps cutting down a sacred tree without the proper atonement. Maybe the stump I saw was what was left of that sacred tree? In either case, they felt this caused a portal to open to the spirit world, allowing evil to pass over.

  “That hole in the ground is where the vortex is,” Brent said.

  As they explained further, I understood that they felt there were two issues, separate but related: the vortex and the creature. Brent believed that when he first cleansed the house, he’d trapped the evil spirit in the hole. The trap wasn’t strong enough, though, so at times it was able to get out. He originally figured if he and Ron closed the vortex, they’d be done. Now that I’d moved the rock, he was concerned that I may have opened it completely again.

  I wasn’t sure what I believed at that point. When I asked about the animal sounds, interestingly, they didn’t want to hear the recording, Brent saying that a spirit could take any shape or form, as if the specifics didn’t matter.

  As a result, they wound up not only cleansing the land but also going back into the house and doing a second cleansing.

  Importantly, what’s shown on the episode is not their complete ceremony. They felt that would take away from the tradition’s privacy. Many cultures share those feelings. Eilfie, for instance, was very reluctant to allow the pagan banishment ritual she performed in “Dark Man” filmed. And it’s next to impossible to find a Catholic priest willing to allow an exorcism to be filmed.

  They did explain the “smudging” process for us on-camera, showing us the eagle feather and abalone shell they’d be using, and reciting some of their prayers. The word “smudging,” by the way, has been adopted into English from these original Native American rituals. It involves binding certain herbs and grass into smudge sticks. The sticks are lit, and the smoke is used as part of the cleansing.

  “As the smoke rises, it will be sealed,” Ron explained.

  In some ways, Ron and Brent came across as psychics, but there was an important difference. They didn’t walk in and start saying things based on what they sensed at the moment, the way Chip would. They felt their insight came from meditation and prayer, through rituals they’d performed on the reservation before they arrived. While the role is embedded in a cultural hierarchy and process, they also believe everyone has an intuitive spiritual ability.

  Their understanding seemed to match a lot of what was going on here, and my take is that they were close to the truth. The Native American element seemed genuine, and it involved something that was, at best, unfriendly. But, having failed to remove the entity once, would they now succeed?

  After the ceremony, Chip walked through the house again to see if there was any difference. Unfortunately, he soon tensed up and shook his head. Whatever it was, he felt it wasn’t gone. He felt part of it had been taken care of, but not the whole thing.

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.

  NATIVE AMERICAN MYTHS

  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.

  EILFIE MUSIC ON “SHAPE SHIFTER”

  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 th
e 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?”