I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead

by Zak Bagans

  11

  HEART ATTACKS

  Can spirits cause them?

  I don’t think people understand paranormal attacks. Hell, even I don’t understand them, but I respect them, and that keeps me from getting harmed too badly. How spirits attack people is one of the things I’ve been researching a lot. Spirits have no mass, but they can bring a grown man to his knees. Early on, when I was a novice in this field, I would try to get attacked by calling out demons, and it happened—more often than I care to admit. And though it probably wasn’t smart, it helped me learn.

  Evil spirits, or the ones with bad intentions, can harm you both physically and mentally. They can scratch, burn, and bruise you or attack you with physical objects. I’ve seen it happen. But lately I’ve heard of several people having serious health issues after encounters with spirits, and even dying. Soon after completing an investigation (usually an investigation that turned nasty, where violent EVPs were documented), they fell victim to heart attacks and strokes.

  At the Black Swan Inn in San Antonio, Texas, an investigator named Viktor Salazar received vulgar EVP voices saying that the spirits there wanted to kill him. Within a few months, he had a massive stroke, and his gallbladder was twisted into knots. If a spirit has the ability to manipulate you emotionally—for example, you walk into a room and feel sad or agitated—then the spirit is inside you and letting you feel its emotions. So imagine what the spirit of a violent person who enjoyed hurting people could do to you. It’s definitely possible that a spirit’s presence can block blood flow to the heart or brain and cause a heart attack or stroke.

  In my research, I learn the most from people. I’ve done hundreds of interviews and investigations, and I remember every single one of them, even years later. When I hear a story from one person that’s similar to a story from another person, I can connect them and see patterns. So when I found out that Viktor had caught a voice at the Black Swan Inn saying it wanted to kill him and then had a stroke (which is downright chilling), I connected it to a man named Greg Myers who had a similar experience at the Exorcist House. We interviewed Greg in St. Louis, and he told us that while he was in the bedroom where the exorcism took place, he was attacked, which was documented by a credible paranormal group. He said that the left side of his face was burned and a white cross of blisters formed on the left side of his neck. A few months after he told us this story, he had a massive stroke that affected the left side of his body.

  What’s interesting is that Greg felt the attack the moment it happened and had a stroke later. We used Greg’s name over and over while doing our investigation at the Exorcist House, and the spirits responded. We took the Ouija board that he kept under his bed, put a spirit box on top of it, and caught voices saying, “trouble,” “Ouija board,” “devil,” “Diablo,” and “he needs help.” Could the spirits actually have caused his stroke?

  When he had his encounter, Greg Myers was using a Paranormal Puck designed by electrical engineer Bill Chappell. It’s basically a database of words that spirits can choose by using their energy. During Greg’s investigation, the Paranormal Puck said “burn” just before Greg started to feel the burning on his face. And then it said, “Paranormal investigator die.” This is truly scary, because a paranormal investigator did indeed die there later. Likewise, at the Black Swan Inn Viktor caught a voice through a digital recorder that said “die,” and he suffered a massive stroke afterward. It’s very odd that these people documented similar evidence telling them that they were going to die and then had strokes.

  In the summer of 2014, I was filming an episode of Aftershocks that highlighted the Mansfield Reformatory episode, and I was scheduled to interview DJ Fly, an outspoken ex-inmate of the prison. DJ Fly was haunted by the memory of another prisoner named Lockhart, who lived in the cell next to him and committed suicide by setting himself on fire. Fly nearly died in the fire as well, and the event has stuck with him his whole life (he’s now in his sixties).

  We were at the studio the day before DJ Fly was scheduled to fly to Vegas for the interview when we got a call from his family. On his way to the airport, DJ Fly had suffered a heart attack. His family said he had felt the pain coming on and started screaming “Lockhart,” as if the spirit of Lockhart was attacking him. DJ Fly survived, and later I sent a camera crew to interview him. He said he believed that Lockhart was trying to kill him, as if Lockhart was trying to prevent Fly from coming to speak with me.

  Recently, an exorcist, Father Andrew Calder, died from a stroke. He faced a lot of demons and fought them toe-to-toe over the years, and when I looked into his case it sounded similar to the other ones I’ve described. There seems to be a pattern to all of them. They all point to a connection between drained power sources, threats, attacks, strokes, heart attacks, and even death.

  Think about this: If demons and negative spirits have the power to drain batteries, make large electronic devices malfunction by short-circuiting electrical currents, and interfere with carefully engineered electronics, then imagine what they can do to the electrical impulses within your body. And yes, we all have electrical impulses within us. Disrupting those electrical messages can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

  Here’s a great explanation of the body’s electrical system:

  “Have you ever wondered what makes your heart beat? How does it do it automatically, every second of every minute of every hour of every day? The answer lies in a special group of cells that have the ability to generate electrical activity on their own. These cells separate charged particles. Then they spontaneously leak certain charged particles into the cells. This produces electrical impulses in the pacemaker cells which spread over the heart, causing it to contract.”*

  Most strokes are caused by some form of arterial blockage, but some (simple strokes or cerebral hypoperfusion) are caused by a lack or disruption of blood flow to the brain, usually due to cardiac arrest. So there’s a cause-and-effect at work here that we can call the Demon Stroke Theory:

  1. Demons interfere with the electrical impulses of the heart.

  2. The heart goes into cardiac arrest.

  3. The cardiac arrest causes a stroke.

  Sure, it’s a theory, but we have to start somewhere if we want to fight this evil, and to me that’s worth all the risks even if scientists and skeptics disagree. My most valuable research in this field doesn’t come from spending time with scientists or being in a lab; it comes from spending hour after hour after hour around spirits. Scientists don’t believe in the paranormal because they can’t explain it (and don’t want to). They have to observe everything or it doesn’t exist to them. Observation is a critical part of the scientific method, which is why evolution is and always will be a theory, because no one was there to observe it over millions of years (despite mountains of evidence virtually proving that it happened).

  Skeptics always say, “Science can’t explain it.” It’s their mantra. But science can’t explain a lot of things. Until a few years ago, it was believed that there were no Earth-like planets in our galaxy that could sustain life, but now we’re finding them by the dozens every week. There are things we just can’t control or even understand yet, and the spirit world is at the top of that list.

  I’ve done investigations where I was able to get paranormal activity on cue, but that doesn’t mean I can go to a lab and bring ghosts with me so that scientists can study them at their leisure in their own controlled environment. So even though I’ve experienced hundreds of paranormal events using the same equipment scientists use, paranormal investigators will always be second fiddle to them. I believe that I’m truly defying most skeptical scientists with my findings, such as the unusual evidence we collected at the Stanley Hotel with Bill Chappell.

  We have to understand that we’re dealing with the unexplained. We only know what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel; everything else is just a theory. Sometimes I feel that we humans have the mentality of a two-year-old. Why does it do that? Why is this the way
it is? Why, why, why, why? We’re curious beings who are programmed to ask questions, but if there isn’t an answer, then it must not exist, and we ridicule it or make fun of those who do believe in it. Anyone who has spent a day in the paranormal field has experienced this kind of skepticism. “Ghosts aren’t real, and you’re an idiot if you think they are,” people say.

  But when you’ve been through it and start to make these connections, you really start believing that you’re on to something. And sometimes I wonder if I’m getting myself into trouble by starting to figure it out—like the spirits know I’m beginning to understand their world and aren’t happy about it. I’ve had friends in this field who have literally gone crazy, and it makes me wonder if they were getting too close to the answers that powerful forces didn’t want them to know. But we’ll never know until we cross over. That’s how God made it, and I do believe in Him.

  IT’S ALL A DESIGN, AND IT ALL HAS MEANING...

  EVEN THE HEART ATTACKS.

  12

  ROMANIA

  A little salt goes a long way.

  I hate flying like a pirate hates a toothbrush. You could accurately describe me as having pteromerhanophobia, but that’s way too long a word to use casually. It’s easier to say that I have acrophobia, which is a fear of heights. This is true, but being at a high altitude and hurtling through space at the same time brings on a whole new kind of fear for me. It’s not so much that I don’t trust the engineers who designed the plane or the pilots flying it, but I hate not being in control. If I’m driving a car and things go badly, then at least I can take control and get myself out of the situation. If something goes wrong with a plane, all you can do is tuck your head between your legs and pray. So I’d rather chew on tin foil than fly to Romania, but I did it because my desire to investigate Vlad Dracula’s castle and birthplace was greater than my fear of going down like a lawn dart somewhere in the Atlantic. We all have to face our fears eventually.

  About three weeks before I flew, anxiety began to build up, and the second I got onto the plane, claustrophobia punched me in the gut. I was like Ed Norton in Fight Club: I could envision crash after crash, and every little thing had me second-guessing my reasons for being there. This is what flying does to me: When the cabin doors lock and I know I’m going to be trapped in that aluminum tube for eons, I hit a whole new level of panic. Most people would recommend psychotropic drugs or relaxants, but I can’t do that. I hate putting that stuff in my system. So I all I can really rely on is my iPod. It’s saved my sanity on several occasions.

  When I fly, I watch the flight attendants for clues. If they’re calm, I’m good. If they’re freaking out, then I will, too. Turbulence is the worst. Every little bump rattles me, and I really don’t like it when the captain comes on the intercom and tells everyone to have a seat and fasten their seat belts. Then I know we’re in for some shit that will take years off my life.

  I flew directly from Las Vegas to France and then boarded a new plane to Romania. Even though I had a sleeping seat, I couldn’t sleep. It’s just not me. When we landed in Bucharest, I felt like I’d stepped out of the phone booth in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Everything was new, exciting, and strange. I love moments like that, but it was such a relief to be on terra firma that I couldn’t enjoy it much. Being at a high level of anxiety for so long is a drain, and all I really wanted to do was get to my hotel room and decompress.

  Not Aaron. He always wants to go walk around, probably because he drinks eight cups of coffee a day and has a ton of energy. Aaron always wants to do something, which I admire even if I don’t want to go along. He’s a thrill-seeking adventurer, and unfortunately he’s good at convincing the rest of us to follow his lead. Aaron will spend no more than five minutes in his hotel room before he texts everyone to go out and look around. We call him The Walker. He’ll walk for miles just to see the sights, and he never takes a cab.

  Sure enough, he did exactly that in Bucharest. I should have seen it coming. After being on a plane for so long, there was no way he’d sit idle in his room, and I was too curious to fight him. After all, when would I ever be in Romania again?

  So we went walking around Bucharest and quickly met up with our fixers. Fixers are production managers on location. Their job is to help us out-of-towners with everything—logistics, security, navigation, communicating in the local language, you name it. We put our lives in the fixers’ hands. They could take us out into a field and kill us for all we know, but we trust them. So far we haven’t found a reason not to. I’ve had hundreds of fixers over the years, and in Bucharest we had two: Andre and Crazy Name. Andre was awesome. He was a cool-ass dude, and I really enjoyed his company.

  Andre and Crazy Name took us out, and I began to notice how many stray dogs there were. Later I learned that Romania has the highest population of stray dogs in the world. They’re like birds in America. There were hundreds of dogs everywhere we went, and as a dog lover and activist against animal cruelty, I couldn’t help but notice them. I fed them whenever I could, like sausages from gas stations. This was always risky because the second I broke out food, the packs would come running, and I never seemed to have enough to go around.

  The next day we drove to Sighisoara to film our show where Dracula was born. Billy Tolley, Andre, and I rode together. Every mile or so along these Romanian roads, we noticed a bunch of women. I’d never seen so many women just walking along the road, so I asked Andre what was up. He told me that they were gypsies. To us Americans, the word gypsy conjures up all kinds of magical images, and I was intrigued to see some in person. Maybe they have some sort of genetic connection to the spirit world and could help me understand it better?

  Unfortunately, in Romania, gypsies are a minority that’s treated very badly. They’re considered dirty, untrustworthy creatures and subhumans, which saddened me, especially when I found out why there were so many of them on the open roads. Andre told me that many of the women we saw were prostitutes selling their “goods” to passing drivers, but they also had a way of making a legitimate living. Every few miles there were tables manned by gypsy women where they sold homemade honey, sap, and CHEESE! I love cheese, so we stopped at one of these tables, and I bought five big hunks of cheese and a little bit of honey.

  But I didn’t really think it through. It was hot during the day, with temperatures reaching into the upper 80s, and I had no way of cutting into these cheese bricks while we were filming. So five giant blocks of cheese sat in Andre’s car, getting hotter and hotter. One of the bricks that I left under my seat basically cooked and saturated Andre’s car with its funk. It was like stinky, sweaty feet that had been wearing boots for a month and then marinated in rotten egg salad. I felt awful that I had jacked up Andre’s car so badly. By the end of the trip, it was rank. To this day, if Billy or I ever smell that type of cheese again, we’ll puke all over the place, like the kids in Stand by Me did.

  We filmed for a day in Sighisoara and had a great shoot. Afterward Billy and I got in Andre’s stinky cheese car to drive to a town called Cluj-Napoca—in a different part of the country away from everyone else—but I quickly developed a problem. My asthma was acting up, and I didn’t have a rescue inhaler with me. It wasn’t bad enough that I was in danger of dying from a completely closed airway, but it was uncomfortable to say the least, and the stench of my cheese didn’t help.

  Keep in mind that not all of Romania has modern roads. We were driving along kidney-jarring back roads for a long, painful time…with asthma and stinky cheese funk. It may have been the worst road trip of my life, and we had a long way to go to Cluj-Napoca to film in the Hoia-Baciu Forest. Another car went with us to carry the gear, and the driver of that car (who was also a dentist) also had asthma and saw that I was in agony. At a rest stop, he told us that to cure my ails we needed to stop at a salt mine that was on the way. I’ve never heard of smelling salts being used as a treatment for asthma and was immediately against it. I just couldn’t see how it was going to help.<
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  But the dentist was convincing. He said that people come to these salt mines from all over the world to cure their ailments, so I reluctantly agreed, and we set off for the middle of nowhere, Romania. Remember what I said about fixers being able to take us anywhere and leave us for dead? This could have been the intro to a horror film.

  We drove a long way through forests, past giant medieval castles, and through gypsy towns where huge cranes built nests under the protection of the locals. These magnificent birds looked to be five feet tall and were well cared for, because the gypsies believe that cranes who have babies bring good fortune. It’s funny how some animals are considered evil and hunted, while others are considered sacred and protected. Luck of the draw, I guess.

  We finally arrived at the salt mine, and let me tell you, it was a crazy place. First we boarded a shuttle bus full of people and drove into a cave in the side of a mountain. It was pitch black, and I felt like I was on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. The bus narrowly missed every wall. Even stranger than the drive were the people, who looked like they were going to the gym with towels, exercise clothes, headphones, and bags full of recreational equipment. I felt so out of place, which is saying a lot for a guy like me.

  The bus stopped, and everyone went through a door to come face-to-face with the staircase from hell. It was straight down and looked to be at least 500 steps. Wait, I thought. I have a respiratory problem. If we go down there, how am I going to get back up? I didn’t want to go, but those jackholes talked me into it. I would have felt like a quitter if we traveled all that way and I didn’t even try, so down we went. Instantly I tasted salt in the back of my throat and took some deep breaths. I wanted to scramble back up to the surface with every step, but I forced myself to tread on.

  When we reached the bottom, I was dumbstruck. Through a corridor was a huge cavern, and people were enjoying themselves like beachgoers in Jamaica. There were Ping-Pong tables, shuffleboard games, restaurants, taverns, and even tents for people with more severe respiratory problems who stayed for weeks at a time. It was very weird but also very cool, and it took only a glance for me to realize that this was probably a good thing. I felt bad for doubting the fixers. They are chosen to be fixers because they have an innate knowledge of the local community and can be relied on to take care of us foreigners.