Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (22 page)

They had photos of the building from 1906, when it’d been a hotel, and they knew it hadn’t become a bar until the seventies. When Katrina asked about the name Charlie, Brad nodded and told her the story of Charlie Klein, who’d worked at the hotel during Prohibition. His wife passed away and soon afterward an IRS agent walked in, undercover, and asked for a drink. Apparently, when Charlie pulled out the booze, he was arrested. According to the story, between his grief over his wife, humiliation, and a likely jail sentence, he shot himself dead while in the hotel.

Smartly, Katrina asked if the story was common knowledge. If it was, Janet the psychic could already have heard the name. But Brad and George felt certain it wasn’t, and Cathy hadn’t heard the name or the story before that day.

While Heather and Katrina were at the library, our counselor, Jamie Hernandez, interviewed Brian in the basement of Katie’s in what turned out to be one of the most interesting and exciting sequences in the first season.

She asked, as a standard question, if Brian ever had violent thoughts.

“When my wife took off with a customer, I wanted to kill him,” he said.

If you watch the sequence, that response brings an almost palpable tension into the air. Not that we felt Brian was dangerous. He struck me as a guy who could handle himself in a fight, but who also had heart. During one of our PRS Field Trips (where we go back to some of our more famous locations with fans for an educational and entertaining weekend), he let me hop up on his motorcycle with a girl who propped her legs up around me and put her boots on the bike, scratching the finish a little. Brian had to take a little walk, I assume, to blow off steam. It was perfectly understandable, but an indication his emotions might have the sort of excess energy that often plays into a haunting.

Shortly after, Jamie asked what his worst fear was.

“Losing everything.”

At that moment, on the soundtrack, you can hear a wineglass break. It was an absolutely real moment. The breaking glass plays almost like the release of building emotional tension.

I didn’t think this at the time, but looking back I see some parallels between Brian and Charlie. Charlie lost his wife, his business, and his life. Brian lost his wife, his house, his motorcycle, and with the bar doing badly, was on the verge of losing that, too. It’s possible this was like “The Cemetery,” where the spirit may have been re-creating its own situation before death. Or, maybe, as in “Sixth Sense,” Charlie simply felt a kinship with Brian. But after the glass broke, the entire atmosphere changed.

Brian said, “Right now it feels a little creepy down here, so I hope you guys find something.”

He wasn’t alone. Jamie felt it too, big time. She couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t want to sound weird, but I don’t think I want to do this interview,” she said. Then she excused herself and quickly left the building. I’d never seen her react like that to anything.

This was more than interesting. Serg had already told me he’d experienced a heaviness. I soon learned that two production people, in the basement on separate occasions, felt something touching or squeezing them around their chest and back. That made four people from our group in one day.

I decided to do some investigating before Heather and Katrina got back from the library. Gas leaks can cause a variety of symptoms, but we ruled that out. Next, I took out the electromagnetic field detectors. We got some
very
high EMF readings. It may seem as if that’s an indication of a ghostly presence, but in fact, excess EMF can actually cause hallucinations, dizziness, tightness in the chest and feelings of paranoia.

It is true that once you’ve eliminated those possibilities, a high EMF
can
indicate the presence of paranormal activity. In the basement, though, there was a DJ booth and a small dance floor with a lot of exposed wiring. Here, the high EMF was, without a doubt, electrical.

But, between the breaking glasses, the heavy feelings, and the historical information, things were much more complicated than I originally thought. While the experience during Jamie’s interview with Brian seemed invoked by emotion, the others came and went without any pattern I could detect.

Deciding I didn’t want to risk missing an opportunity to capture some real activity, when Heather and Katrina returned I took the reins back—much to their relief, it seemed.

That night’s Dead Time was more of the same, only with the lights off. We heard creaks and rattles; a wineglass moved; the temperature dropped. As I investigated the stairs, another wineglass broke. Since the stairs seemed the center of the activity, we gathered there to try to flush Charlie out, calling to him, asking him to show his presence, but no luck.

As an investigator, I know I can’t look for closure with every case—reality doesn’t work that way. Here, on the final day, though I didn’t feel it would resolve the activity, per se, I invited a priest to the bar to perform a general blessing. Jamie, feeling better, returned and spoke to Brian again. She advised him to take all his energy and feelings for the bar and try to exude a positive attitude, to tell himself he’d succeed no mater what.

My final voice-over for “Beer, Wine & Spirits” says something to the effect that we may have loosened the spirit’s grip, but that wasn’t everything. The bar remained haunted, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “The Woman in the Window” was an instance where the clients were fine with the ghosts staying. Here, Brian turned his problem into a solution. Now people come to Katie’s
because
it’s haunted. His business is thriving. There are different ways things work out.

Unlike some of our other cases, there was no teary good-bye, no “Thank you for saving me!” Brian christened the bar and we toasted the place. It was a great time, a great adventure.

As for Heather and Katrina, having been with us for just two months, I think they were terrific. In the end, I was happy to promote them from candidates to senior trainees and give them our official PRS T-shirt.

Despite the fact that I felt uninterested in this case when I was first approached about it, by the time we left I felt that it was well worth our trip. It gave us a chance to investigate a location that was different from the family homes we were used to dealing with and allowed growth for Heather and Katrina. It also goes to show that even seasoned investigators such as myself can underestimate paranormal claims. I’ve been back to Katie’s Bar three times now, and I can safely say that something strange is definitely going on inside the bar at night.

As for the high EMF, we suggested Brian contact an electrician immediately. The readings we got were off the charts, and prolonged exposure could be harmful. Whether it acted as a battery for the spirits, or was simply causing some of the phenomena (like the tightness of the chest and inability to breathe), we’ll never know.

T
YPES OF
H
AUNTINGS

It’s believed that some places simply record old events, voices, apparitions, and play them back over and over, like a videotape. This is called a
residual haunting
. If true, in those cases where people report hearing their own voices, it’s possible the current residents have been “recorded” and are actually haunting themselves.

An
intelligent haunting
is the more recognizable type, where the spirit seems to have a free will and intent, sometimes responding to the presence of others, and even answering questions. They are conscious entities that the living can interact with. Hauntings can be location-based, or spirits can become attached to specific objects. In rare cases, spirits become attached to a particular person and remain with them from location to location.

Portal hauntings
are the most controversial, and to be honest, I’m not sure how much validity I give this phenomena. I believe it’s possible, but that people use the term too loosely. In this type, or so some believe, a door has been opened between this world and the next, possibly through repeated human efforts at contacting spirits via EVPs, the spirit board, or the 100 Candles game. Once the portal is opened, various spirits can enter through the rift until it is sealed.

T
YPES OF
G
HOSTS

Poltergeist
, though sometimes translated as “playful ghost,” is from the German for “rumbling” and “spirit.” They make their presence known by moving, even hurling, objects. Poltergeist activity often occurs in the presence of adolescent girls. It’s believed their excess emotional energy either causes the events or is borrowed by the spirits. The theory most widely accepted by paranormal researchers is that poltergeist phenomena is caused through psychokinesis. An individual, such as a teenage girl, acts as the conduit or agent, subconsciously causing the phenomena.

There have been several serious attempts to study poltergeists during the twentieth century, most concluding that unlike ghost phenomena, this activity is chaotic, meaningless. Furniture may be knocked over at random, as opposed to a ghost haunting, where a moving object usually has some connection to a spirit, like a photograph, or a rocking chair that used to belong to them in life. Those who suffer from poltergeist phenomena are also usually experiencing deep personal trauma, emotional duress, abuse and/or a psychological disorder. Once they receive proper care and treatment, and the trauma is taken care of, the phenomena stops.

Orbs
are usually small spheres that appear on video or still photography, but can very often be easily explained. Modern digital cameras tend to resolve blurry shapes into geometric objects, refining things like dust, rain or small passing insects into spheres or rods that many people mistake for evidence of the paranormal. I can’t begin to tell you how many times someone has run over to me with their orb photos, only to have me disappointingly say it’s a reflection, dust, or some other natural occurrence. The bottom line is, take enough photos with your digital camera and you will capture an orb. Does that mean it’s a spirit? No. There are some small, rare cases of true orb phenomena, glowing, spherical objects that float in midair and have no explainable source (such as a car passing by), but they are seen with the naked eye. If you capture a little gray orb in your photo, don’t get excited, and please don’t send us any more orb photos.

Shadow people
are popular as urban legends as well as in ghost hunting. These types of spirits, generally considered malevolent, appear as humanoid shadows, usually just in the periphery of vision, only to vanish when the person turns to face them. There have been instances of shadow people caught on video.

Demons
, which appear in various religions throughout history, are powerful, malevolent spirits who seek to do harm, sometimes possessing victims to do even more damage, or to drain their energy for their own purposes. Some Christians believe that since the human spirit winds up in heaven or hell after death, any earthbound spirit must be a demon acting on behalf of Satan (see additional sidebar on page 148).

H
EATHER
T
ADDY

What’s your favorite first season episode?

“Mothman,” which dealt with a legendary creature I’d read about as a child. Searching through the woods for a six-foot-tall bird-man was definitely my idea of adventure. I enjoyed trying to figure out why it was attached to that particular town. Was it the Cornstalk Curse or was Mothman some weird accidental creation? I also had a great time filming the townspeople and hearing their stories.

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

I laugh and am a total goofball. On the show I come across as being superserious and shy. I’d also like them to know I have other interests, such as music, film, and fashion.

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

I don’t think our personalities come across. We love to laugh and make jokes.

When you started working with PRS what interested you most about the paranormal? Has that perception changed since?