Nothing’s happened to my family since, but that night I was truly scared. I made jokes, but I was freaked out. I wanted to call Chip to talk to him more about it. Eventually I just told myself there was nothing I could do.
Obviously you can respect the information, but other than being frightened, there’s not much you can do. I did call my family the next day and said, “Hey, just be careful.”
Originally, we planned to spend the night, but we decided against it. We didn’t feel safe in the building. It wasn’t just the prisoners. Everyone in town knew we were there. We could have our equipment locked up, but if we wanted to be locked up as well, we wouldn’t have been able to get out. So I was like, “I don’t know about this.” Instead, everyone went back home.
There’s a nice song over the closing credits, “In the Shadows,” by Sofi Bonde. It was written just for that episode, to give us a good send-off. At the time, the show’s future was uncertain, but this had been a two-and-a-half-year project, a two-and-a-half-year journey. Even if it wasn’t the series finale, obviously things were going to change. To cover the possibilities, the final episode text is phrased as if it might be the end of the series:
PRS now receives more cases than ever . . . They remain committed to their mission statement: To Trust, Honor, and Always Seek the Truth.
A SHORT HISTORY OF WILLARD ASYLUM
The area that was to become Willard Asylum first opened as an agricultural college in 1860. It closed a few years later when most of its staff went off to fight in the Civil War. In 1869, Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, after studying the poor treatment of the insane, wanted to convert it to an asylum. As he was addressing the state legislature, he had a heart attack and died, but the new institution was named after him.
Willard wasn’t the kind of asylum you hear about in horror movies. They weren’t doing experiments or treating people badly. In fact, it was a first step in treating the mentally disabled more humanely. On October 13, 1869, the first patient, Mary Rote, arrived—naked and in a cage. Prior to that, she’d been chained for ten years without a bed or clothing. At Willard, she was allowed to clothe and feed herself. While it wasn’t the same standard of care we expect today, it was an improvement.
It didn’t always work out that way though. As the asylum grew, by the late 1880s, people were running sightseeing tours. Tourists would take boats to the grounds where they’d eat picnic lunches while making fun of the patients. The situation became such a problem that Willard was surrounded with barbed wire, gates were installed, and additional security was hired. It wasn’t to protect people from the patients, but to protect the patients from the gawkers.
By the 1890s, Willard housed 2,000 patients at a time, covered two hundred acres, and had seventy buildings. At one point it was the largest asylum in the country. At its height in the 1960s it held 3,500 patients. Shortly after, the invention of antipsychotic medication combined with a lack of funding brought Willard into a slow decline, until finally there were only 135 patients left. Because it was keeping the town alive, though, it remained open until 1995, when it became a state prison and drug treatment facility.
FRANK’S BOX EXPLAINED BY JOSH LIGHT
The concept is relatively simple. If it sounds like a broken radio, that’s because it more or less is. The box generates a random voltage and the base acts as an antenna allowing it to tune in to A.M. frequencies. The signal is filtered for the audio, which is amplified and fed through a speaker, which, in turn, is received by a microphone connected to either another speaker or a line out for your listening pleasure.
As for how it “works,” my first thought is that the device, by changing stations quickly, acts as a biased noise generator. The theory is that entities can use the noise to form words and phrases. My second thought is that spirits may influence the random voltage generator to use existing voices on radio broadcasts.
Both theories have huge holes. In the first case, like EVPs, the “words” are very subjective. Unless a large group spontaneously picks out the same words, the data is meaningless. On the other hand, some claim successful results from this very method.
The second theory is even worse. For a spirit to be able to use a radio broadcast, it must first access all the possibilities and, second, hear them at least a few seconds into the future in order to determine what will be said. Third, it must be able to influence the voltage to select the station that’s about to have the phrase it wants to communicate.
There’s a third theory: It doesn’t work. Frank’s Box then becomes a tool a psychic can focus their conscious mind upon to allow their other talents to come through. That makes it much like rubbing a stone or crystal, or watching Plan 9 from Outer Space.
That final theory relies less on science and more on psychic phenomena, which is just as questionable as the existence of entities in the first place. You can’t hire the Jersey Devil to track down Bigfoot. Since the box conforms to what the inventor wanted it to do, in that sense, it does indeed “work.” But by now you see the degree of my skepticism. How was it different from employing a spirit board?
Though little that we heard was instantly recognizable, there were a few instances when something relatively distinct came through. The trouble was that Chris constantly interpreted the messages, making it nearly impossible to remove the element of suggestion.
Not everyone was present during each session, though, so we had some objectivity. We had at least three PRS members listening on headphones to the recorded audio, and then writing down what they heard (if anything). Each reviewer marked the appropriate time, folded the paper, and placed it in a secure location for later tallying.
The results cannot be shared due to the availability of some of these clips on the PRS forums. Once more it’s all about suggestibility. Despite my skepticism and reservations, it’s truly nice to see someone injecting new life into the paranormal field.
Chapter 23
The Beginning
All of a sudden, I’d be the one being asked the questions.
The majority of this book deals with the cases and the film crew, but a third factor in my journey as an investigator was coming into play in a big way. Despite a few interviews here and there, up through “Requiem” we were all unknown. Beginning with “Asylum,” though, the first rumblings of A&E’s impressive press tour could be heard. For instance, a local TV station covered our investigation, but I wasn’t allowed to speak with them because my first “official” interview had been promised to a major news show. Press tours were about to start; trailers were running in theaters; billboards went up. With the cases to focus on, I hadn’t been thinking much about the show coming out.
Even as we finished “Asylum,” it all seemed very far away. The end of season 1.5 was very calm, understated. No big party, just a thank you. Our producer said something like, “The show comes out in three and a half weeks. Let’s hope this was a great end.”
Then we packed up and started the six-hour drive to college. As the sun was about to set, suddenly it became scary. All at once I felt I was on my own, a feeling that was echoed physically, because production was no longer around.
After we got back to State College, we found a bar and drank a bit in silence. We’d finished shooting the day before Heather’s birthday. We shared some memories and laughed a bit, but I was beginning to feel a little nervous.
The show had given me a distraction. While I was focused on filming, the onslaught of the press sounded cool. Now I didn’t know if I could handle it. It was one thing to be documented, another to go out and do the PR game. I didn’t know if I could handle going out in front of ten million people to talk about the show. After years of interviewing clients, all of a sudden I’d be the one being asked the questions.
The real strangeness hit me in the days that followed, when I arrived to do a live interview at Fox News, for their late-night show, Red Eye. Exhausted from being awake nearly twenty-four hours, I was waiting, getting ready to do my five-minute promotion, talk
about the seriousness of the work, and maybe share a spooky ghost story.
When the interview started, I realized that wasn’t what they wanted me for, especially when the host asked if “a creepy uncle” was responsible for my childhood haunting. It took me all the way back to when I first started thinking about doing a show, and I realized how the media thought of the paranormal as a novelty. I wanted to do something better. I thought we had, but would anyone listen?
December 10, 2007, was the day of the premiere for Paranormal State. A&E had had me in NYC for five days after doing a steady round of press interviews all over the country. That night the rest of the team was with me in New York for a party hosted by A&E. We hadn’t been on an investigation in a while. Instead of skulking around in the shadows searching for the unknown, we were putting on suits and dresses for a bash full of executives.
My nerves were pumping. Throughout the day I was getting text messages and phone calls, all wishing me good luck for the launch. My parents called to tell me how proud they were.
As Serg and the others finished getting dressed, I took a moment to stand alone by the windows and stare out at the nighttime view of the city. Manhattan is beautiful. I tried to calm my nerves, but every time I thought I had it under control, all these questions flooded out: What if it’s a bomb? What if everyone hates it? What if the clients get upset at watching the episode?
I was more nervous about the show coming out than I’d ever been about the paranormal. Now our work would be something the entire world could see. The realization that I was about to lose a piece of my privacy, possibly forever, began to sink in.
A hand clapped on my shoulder. I looked up at a reflection of Serg and me standing in the window.
“You ready to do this, man?” he asked.
It was almost like being at the pier down south, before the tornado hit.
“Not really, but I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Not really,” he said.
We had Eilfie, Katrina, and Heather come up to the room. I broke open the minibar and we all took out a variety of liquors and beer (thanks, A&E!).
“A toast!” I declared, holding up my Corona. “Guys, we’ve come a long way. I don’t know where the hell we’ll be going after tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be a fun ride!”
We all cheered and drank. And, with that, we headed to the door.
We arrived at the party with less than an hour to go before 10:00 P.M. Chip Coffey, Jamie Hernandez, and Lorraine Warren were all there to help celebrate. They congratulated me, told us how excited they were.
“Think of all the millions of people who’ll be watching,” someone said.
In response, my stomach made a strange gurgling sound, not unlike some of the things I’d heard from Frank’s Box, only easier for me to understand.
Before I knew it, the words that would become so familiar to many finally came on the TV screen for the first time: “These are the real stories of Penn State’s Paranormal Research Society . . .”
Well, here we go, I said to myself. My worries about the inevitable future disappeared. Whatever was coming, I’d find out tomorrow. Why waste the night fearing the future?
Epilogue: Mothman’s Last Word
You want a sign?
In a way the story of the first season, or, technically, season one and “1.5,” completes a circle. After being thrown into the hectic pace of television production, things became exhausting. There were times I couldn’t even speak to the clients until I met them for the first time, times when I felt too drained to give my all. Thrilling as it was, and as much as I feel I stuck to my ideals, trying to get at the truth and help people, the day-to-day experience was very far from where I’d started as a paranormal investigator.
With the last six episodes, a lot of it came back, though. The new pacing of the shooting schedule helped. It felt good, more laid back, more like the sorts of investigations I did before the series began. I think it showed in the final product, too.
As I mentioned, Paranormal State’s first year isn’t aired in the order in which it was shot. The six episodes from “Pet Cemetery” to “Asylum” were jumbled throughout the season, but if you watch them as we shot them, I think you’ll see a huge difference as the series progressed. I’m very proud of many of our first thirteen, from “Sixth Sense” to “Mothman,” but the last six were sharper, better, leaner, and they get to the point faster. We had time to develop them and make them great. Is it perfect? No. In some ways, I’d love it if we were doing ninety-minute movies every three months instead of a weekly series, so there’d be time for everyone to get the cases and the episodes just right.
But nothing’s perfect.
It’s in the nature of the process that nothing in this book will convince people one way or another about the existence of ghosts. These are the things I experienced and what I felt and thought about them. What I hope to have done is to have given fans of the show some added depth about who I am, what PRS is, and what we’re about, and, for newcomers, to present a behind-the-scenes story about what it’s really like to be a paranormal investigator.
In trying to serve that purpose, this book is filled with stories: ghost stories, personal stories, stories about what it’s like to work on a show. I tried to cover my successes and failures, what was kept, what was left out, the evidence that was most exciting, the mysteries we never got to the heart of, the clients we managed to help, and the rare one or two who felt in some ways dissatisfied.
That’s the what and the how and the where and the when, but the big question always left over is the why. Why get involved in paranormal investigations, and maybe more important, why stick with it for so long? In part I remain motivated by that first strange encounter I had when I was nine, but it’s since become something more, something that can’t easily be put into words.
I have one more story, a story that I think gets close to it. It was left out of the episode since it was so personal. I’ve told it at a few conferences. Like a lot of what we’ve experienced, it’s open to interpretation.
As you may recall, while shooting “Mothman” we were inside one of those weird concrete igloos that supposedly once housed experimental explosives, trying to contact an ultraterrestrial being. I asked Chip Coffey if whatever he was in touch with could give me some kind of sign that it was really there, that it existed.
“You want a sign?” Chip asked.
John Frick, the Mothman expert who was guiding us, quickly said, “Well, I want a sign.”
“No,” Chip said. “They’ll only give Ryan a sign, and only if he wants one.”
He turned to me. “They will give you a sign, but you have to decide: yes or no.”
I was already pretty creeped out by the way Chip had been acting. I rarely believe in psychics, but here I had the sense he was in touch with something. To me, it felt like a legitimate offer for a Mothman prophecy. I had to think about it. Did it mean I’d get a weird phone call from a higher intelligence, the way John Keel described in his book?
I paused, gulped, and said, “Okay, I’ll take the sign.”
“Okay,” Chip said. “They’ll give you a sign.”
After that, I was like, fuck, what did I get myself into?
Serg, Josh, and I shared a hotel room, so after the shoot we headed back there. I was so on edge; I couldn’t get to sleep. After tossing and turning for hours, I felt a presence in the room.
Slowly, I turned over. By the doorway, I saw a silhouetted black shape . . .
I almost screamed until I realized it was my overcoat hanging on the closet door!
After that, I was like, “Okay, I’ve really got to get to sleep here. It’s all in my head, I’m not going to get a visit.”
Just in case, though, just in case, I put one of my audio recorders on the night table and set it to RECORD. The next day I woke up—no sign of Mothman, no sign of any ultraterrestrials. Nothing.
It was the last day, so we had to pack up and leave the h
otel before heading to the final shoot for the case. After that, we’d be going back to State College. I was just about done packing when I noticed something. My tape recorder wasn’t on the night table where I left it.
I thought it was gone, but I opened the drawer, and there it was. Somehow, it’d been moved. I asked Josh and Serg if they had moved it, but neither had any idea I had put a recorder out to begin with.
That was back in 2007. It’s nearly the end of 2010 and I haven’t listened to that recording yet. People think this is crazy. There could be some solid evidence on that recorder, a message from an ultraterrestrial. Why not listen to it? They think it’s like Mulder having a box with a piece of a UFO inside, but never opening it up to take a look. They ask if I’m afraid.
It’s not about fear, and I like to think I’m not crazy. The question for me is whether I really want that mystery unraveled right now. If there were a message from the ultraterrestrials, or whatever, what would they say? Maybe I won’t hear anything, or just a weird bird sound. Who knows?
Yes, the possibility that all I have to do is hit PLAY to maybe hear something from another realm excites me, but at the same time I don’t want to press that button. It’s like a present, a gift I don’t want to open yet, a door I’m not quite ready to go through. Part of me believes I’d never be able to shut it. It’d be another moment like seeing that creature at the foot of my bed, or those demonic cases before Paranormal State began, something else that would change my life forever.
I’m not naïve. I know that I haven’t fully gone through all the doors the unknown has to offer. I could keep going darker and deeper into the tunnel, but at what cost? When I do cases, I do cases, but if there’s a door that’s going to open for me, it’ll open for me on its own. I don’t plan on pulling the handle.
Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown Page 31