Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (7 page)

What’s your favorite first season episode and why?

“Vegas”! Why? Because we got to go to Vegas. The best part was that due to the weather conditions we had to spend an extra night. That was the best excuse I’ve ever given my teachers on why I missed class. Plus I made a few hundred bucks from craps. To this day, I have no idea how to play.

Has PRS been an influence on your photography?

Most definitely. Not only have I been fortunate enough to receive free camera gear, but we’ve gone to some really amazing locations. Production has a director of photography, so I not only study how they set up lighting; I use their lighting for my shots.

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

I have a strong passion towards photography. Each season, not only do I improve, I also take more pictures. With all the other hectic things in my life, photography does a great job at keeping me grounded.

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

Hmm . . . I think the show already depicts us as being pretty f-ing awesome.

How do you think you’re different now than when the show began?

I believe if you work hard and are proud of what you do, you get wiser. I don’t only mean in the paranormal arena. I feel as if I’ve learned and grown from all sorts of experiences: dealing with people, building business relationships, becoming more self-aware.

For me all this leads into my spirituality, which has definitely blossomed since the beginning of the show. I’m particularly fascinated by all the beliefs I’m confronted with, how those systems evolved and how they continue to change.

Which piece of equipment do you think has produced the best, most reliable results?

Bah! A tech question . . . It’s hard to answer without overthinking. Who am I trying to produce the results for? Most of the time, I prefer paranormal phenomena that is meant for me. I’m not here to make skeptics into believers, or to prove to believers that they’re not crazy.

But looking back, video surveillance allowed us to catch a chair that moved by itself. Then again our audio recording caught some pretty intense growls. Ahhhh . . . can’t decide.

What’s the biggest technical challenge in trying to record a spirit?

The fact that we don’t know anything about the “other world.” What if there aren’t spirits? What if it’s multiple dimensions crossing over? Honestly, I am glad that this area is still unknown. I feel like a Columbus or a Magellan of the spiritual realm. I love it.

Without considering it a “final word,” what do you think a ghost is?

Part of my personal quest for discovery.

Chapter 3
The Storm Before the Storm

Why don’t you want to do PRS anymore?

After we shot the pilot, months passed without word from A&E about whether or not there would be a series. There was a lot for them to consider, I was told, beyond just a good pilot. Our show was very different from any other paranormal show out there, and they had to figure out if they could market it to advertisers and viewers.

After the first month, I decided to let it go and worry about the rest of my future. I’d just graduated with a degree in journalism. I’d also completed some credits for a second degree in forensic anthropology, a subject that always fascinated me. My mom had only been willing to pay for one degree, but now I hoped to complete a second. I planned to stay enrolled in the fall, but I needed money. It was time to look for a job. I applied to a few places, with no luck whatsoever.

With no job in sight, I headed down to South Carolina to get away for a couple of months and think. The biggest thing on my mind wasn’t the show or even a job. It was the same question I’d asked myself since those extreme demonic cases: Should I quit being a paranormal investigator and start finally living a normal life?

Serg came with me that summer. He’d never been away from the Northeast, and found my family, as he called it, “interesting.” Growing up as an only-child immigrant from Ukraine, I guess he’d never seen many family feuds or sibling rivalries.

We spent the majority of the time at my family’s lake house, which was fine by me. Being near water, especially down South, always calms me. I tried to hide my struggle over my life quest, but one evening after a few games of cards, Monopoly, and Apples to Apples with my siblings, I couldn’t shake the pressure. My insides were tired of being in limbo. They were begging me to choose. I had to take a walk.

I headed to the dock and watched the sun slowly fall into the water. People around the lake community were heading indoors. It was quiet everywhere but inside my skull.

I’d seen plenty of things that should’ve made me feel vindicated, that I was right all along. There
are
unexplained forces. Others
are
being affected. I wasn’t alone! It wasn’t just all in my head. Why didn’t I want to go on?

“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” a familiar voice said. Down the dock, Serg was smiling as he walked toward me in his swim trunks and an open, button-down shirt.

Apparently, I wasn’t as good at hiding things as I had hoped. I looked back out at the lake. Storm clouds swept over the sinking sun.

I asked him, “What if we just stopped PRS or gave it to a new team of college students? We can move on and do something great. Something we really want to do.”

Leaning over the dock beside me, he responded without hesitating. “But I want to do PRS. Why don’t you want to do PRS anymore? You’re just starting to see the organization grow. We have so much we can accomplish.”

“Maybe” was all I said. I knew it looked like we were on the verge of expanding, that a lot of what we’d set out to do was finally happening. “I guess I’m just wondering if these are things I really want to do anymore.”

“Look man,” Serg said, “why don’t you just tell me what’s up?”

I tried to gather my thoughts. Why was I conflicted? When it came down to it, I was still thinking about the two demonic cases from 2005. I’d been warned I’d face something like that again. I knew if I kept investigating, sooner or later I’d have to. Could I? Did I want to?

Then there were the missed opportunities. I was the one who didn’t show at parties, or had to leave suddenly because “something came up.” I regularly lost close friends. We drifted apart because I wasn’t there.

And where was I? Sitting in a dark room challenging a spirit (or the empty air) to come forward and face me, to leave a tormented family alone.

I looked at Serg. “I guess I can’t make up my mind if I want to do something normal or something extraordinary.”

He knew I was the one who had to make the decision, so we left the conversation at that. We stood on the dock, watching the waves rise and crash against the stone and cement that held the wooden structure together.

One thing I love about summers in the South are the sudden and unrelenting storms that roll through with no notice. That evening, we had one of the most extraordinary I’d seen in a while. A tornado, a weak one, touched down on the lake and traveled to the land, throwing chairs and other small structures all over. As it ripped through, I tried to get as close as I could, to watch the chaos.

I saw a streak of lightning and heard the thunder boom almost immediately. That meant it was only a few hundred feet from where I stood. Remembering how in high school I’d sneak away with my parents’ car and go storm chasing, I laughed. I also remembered the looks on my peers’ faces when I said I was going to hunt tornadoes. They thought I was utterly insane.

The thrill of being there, though, even if you don’t get to see one, is extraordinary. Just the thought I might actually witness something, just the chance—however small—kept me going back again and again. And yes, to me, investigating the paranormal was a lot like that.

I spent the rest of the summer constructing a tree house for Roman, my youngest brother. It was a great distraction, a perfect way to not think about investigations or the looming possibility of a documentary show. The finished project was two stories, with a tire swing on the roof, and a rope pulley that let you swing off the tree house, all the way across the backyard to another tree. A week after I was done, it was nearly time to head back to Pennsylvania, get ready for school, hopefully find a job, or another passion, and continue to build PRS.

The day before we left, I received a phone call from Betsy. The decision had been made. A&E had given the series the green light for thirteen episodes. She congratulated me, but warned we’d have to start work very soon. They planned to start filming in October, which only gave us about five weeks to get everything in order.

The news should have been stunning, but I was sort of numb. Instead of any intense emotion, I had a million questions. When did she think we’d start? When was the show coming out? Did they have a name?

I broke the news to Serg and my family. There was no big celebration, partly because even I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant. I’d talked to producers for years. I’d had interest from the Syfy Channel and MTV, but nothing had panned out. Was this different? Emotionally, I wasn’t sure. I was in a kind of wait-and-see mode. But it did seem I had my life mission set, at least for the next year.

September consisted mostly of dialogue with production and the team. We usually recruited new members for PRS in early October. Each semester, I’d put up some flyers, attract interested people, and then accept new trainees. PRS held regular weekly meetings. At its most successful, we averaged about twenty members. We had the same meeting space for years—218 Thomas, a classroom that fit us all comfortably.

This year, production paid for newspaper ads, and that wasn’t the only thing that would be different. The announcement that we’d be doing a TV series created a boom in attendance. We had to rent out a different room to hold the fifty-plus people that were showing up.

Most were just curious. Who were these students who were getting a TV show? A lot of film and theater majors showed up, too, to ask if we were hiring. I had to explain it was a documentary show that would follow what we normally do within the club, so, no performances.

Because I wanted PRS to be as professional as possible, I’d established a club hierarchy long ago. Anyone could be a member, if you paid your dues, but to be an investigator, you had to take a semester-long training class that met once a week, take five exams (one each for vocabulary, psychology, applied theory, investigation rules and regulations, and a general overview of the history of paranormal investigation), write a ten-page research paper, and then go on three extensive paranormal investigations. You also had to go through a background check and take a psychological exam. If you were a student, you also had to let us see your grade point average in order to watch over your academic performance.

An investigator began as a candidate, and then moved up to trainee, assistant investigator, field investigator, field marshal, admiral marshal, and, last, director.

When I explained, the producers loved the idea of having trainees as part of the show. Audience members could get to know the paranormal world along with our newcomers, and see their progression to investigators. I agreed. A trainee could represent the casual viewer, someone who didn’t know what an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) or EMF (Electromagnetic Field) detector was. It would be a way to teach the audience, explain things.

On the flip side of that, while our producers expressed their confidence in our experience, with Adam gone, another more adult figure would lend an air of authority. I’d spoken to clients on the phone who assumed I was a forty-year-old professor, only to be surprised when a baby-faced twenty-two-year-old showed up on their doorstep.

Trainee recruiting wound up like a casting call. We met with hundreds of students of every type (jocks, frat boys, sorority sisters, athletes, etc.). It was terribly important we find people who had a genuine interest in the paranormal and weren’t just interested in being on television. There weren’t very many.

One of my favorite interviews was with an aspiring film student who said he really wanted to see a demon. When I asked what he’d do if that happened, he said he’d use the tools and camera equipment to defend himself.

“So,” I said, “what you’re saying is if you see a demon, one of the most powerful forces in the supernatural realm, you’d throw your camera at it?”

He didn’t make the cut. Another interviewee, who looked a lot like Seth from the movie
Superbad
, said if he ever actually saw a ghost, he’d run screaming like a little girl. Another pass. I usually left the session feeling like I’d wasted my time.

While I’d been busy looking for trainees, the producers did the heavy lifting on finding an adviser. They knocked on every Penn State department door and for a long time, all we received—from people claiming to be educators and researchers—were insults. I found it hypocritical and disappointing. We weren’t asking them to be believers, just to be what he or she were—a psychologist, a scientist, a researcher. If they felt that there was a natural explanation for something they witnessed, they’d be welcome to express that.