Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown (33 page)

I tend to have a respect for the woods at night. It’s not a fear, but rather a realization that I am a guest in the night realm. I want to respect the silence and order of things. These days I’ll take walks in the forest in the dark, but I used to be very worried about disturbing something. It may be the Native American in me coming out, from my father’s side. I have an innate sense that there are hidden things in the world that stay out of our way. The best place for them is where man hasn’t conquered the terrain, the wilderness. So shouting in the woods seems disrespectful. My feeling is that you’re on their turf; don’t make a mockery of yourself.

At times I’ve had the same feeling indoors, like in the “Asylum” episode, discussed in a later chapter. That was not a place to go in and play foosball. It had a bad history. You just have to respect certain places because of the dark energy. That’s how I felt here.

After a long walk, we came upon the igloos. The museum had a complete map of them, but scores had been demolished. According to John, this was supposedly where they stored the experimental explosives. If something went wrong, they didn’t want the whole base destroyed, so they built these igloos. The buildings were mostly underground.

In response to John’s explanation, Chip gave us a dramatic “I don’t believe that.”

The secret government base could have been working on much more than explosives. Some theorize the experiments there may have actually given birth to the Mothman. No one “officially” knows. I tried, but never got the government to say what they were used for.

Each igloo was kind of like a hobbit house, built into the sides of hills. Outside all I could see was the hill. Once I went in, there was a huge concrete space where a hundred people could fit comfortably. The ceiling was maybe thirty-five, forty feet up. In one igloo we saw a bunch of metal canisters, but they were all empty.

As we explored one, Katrina felt a stabbing pain. She became dizzy. Then the batteries on our EMF detectors started going out. Someone from town had told Chip the area tends to drain batteries. With some subjective experiences occurring, this seemed like a good spot to try to get in touch with any ultraterrestrials that might be present.

Chip opened himself and soon sensed a presence. He said it was very different from anything he’d encountered before.

“When I ask what it is, ‘intelligence’ is all I get as an answer, and that’s not a word I’ve ever heard. I’ve heard ‘spirit,’ I’ve heard ‘ghost,’ now I hear ‘intelligence,’ ” he said.

He also said it was communicating with us because we’d called to it. One of the big unanswered questions in the case is whether these intelligences had anything to do with the bridge collapse, so I asked.

“I can give you the answer to that, if you want to know,” Chip said dramatically.

“Okay, tell us.”

After a pause he said, “Absolutely not.”

When I asked why they hadn’t tried to stop the collapse, he said, “They can’t.” He felt they tried to get people’s attention, but couldn’t physically prevent the accident from happening.

I don’t know if he was really in touch with anything, but it was one of a very few times he actually creeped me out. It felt to me as if something was there.

At that time, a very important personal moment took place, something that played out over the next few days. It didn’t make it into the episode, but it so nicely sums up a lot of my feelings about being a paranormal investigator that I’ve saved it to discuss it in the book’s epilogue.

For now, realizing we had no real way to prove or disprove something that occurred so long ago, I went back to my
X Files
roots and said, “I want to believe there was something here at Point Pleasant.”

And that was the truth. I honestly have no opinion about exactly what went on. Some think Mothman may have been a big bird they had trouble with in the area at the time, a sandhill crane, which has a wingspan of about seven feet. After seeing pictures of the bird, it doesn’t seem to match the witness accounts.

Over forty years have passed since the bridge collapse and the original sightings. An older core group of townsfolk still embrace Mothman, partly because they either believe it or they were there at the time, and partly because it brings in the tourism that keeps the town alive. To the younger generation, though, Mothman’s something they’ve only heard about, a legend. And more think that it’s a joke.

For me, when I go to Point Pleasant—and I’ve been back since the filming of the investigation—it’s like being a kid again. I’ve gone into haunted houses where five people have had experiences. Here’s a place where people came from all over the world and had experiences.

There were things I wish we could have done. I would’ve loved to have had an interview with John Keel, but it wasn’t possible. I would’ve loved to have the military go on record about the igloos, but we didn’t have time to fully pursue that. One of my goals was to see if I could contribute something to the theories, but that was sort of the way some soccer players dream of being David Beckham.

I was in good company. Even John Keel, who wrote the most documented account people will ever see, didn’t have a final explanation. The last line of the book is terrific. He quotes Charles Fort, an early twentieth-century writer who invented the paranormal genre the same way Poe invented the detective genre. Fort said, “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”

It’s the author’s way of saying that not only does he not get it, but also maybe we’re not dealing with anything we
can
get. It blew me away.

F
AMOUS
C
RYPTIDS

Cryptozoology
is the search for and study of animals currently unknown to science, known as
cryptids
. Some may seem purely mythical, but it’s important to realize that the mountain gorilla, for instance, was believed to be a legend until its existence was confirmed in 1902. More recently, in 1976, the previously unknown megamouth shark was discovered near Hawaii. In 2003, fossils of miniature humans were discovered on the isle of Flores in Indonesia and are believed to be a previously unknown species of man. A short list of some of the more famous cryptids follows.

The
Loch Ness monster
, or Nessie, is a creature some believe may be a prehistoric plesiosaur. It’s been sighted in Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands for hundreds of years. Despite hundreds of sightings, blurry videos, photographs, and sonar readings, no definitive proof regarding the creature has been found. Nessie belongs to a category of cryptid known as lake monsters, which includes Champy (in Lake Champlain, Vermont) and Ogopogo (in Okanagan Lake in British Columbia).

Bigfoot
is a tall apelike creature that’s been repeatedly sighted in the Pacific Northwest. Similar stories can be found on every continent except Antarctica. In 1951, when Eric Shipton photographed what he felt was a footprint of a Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, in the Himalayas, the idea became popular again. Like Nessie, there are many photos and videos of such creatures, but no concrete proof.

Mokèlé-mbèmbé
is a large cryptid reported by the native tribes in the Congo River Basin. Descriptions of the creature go back to the eighteenth century. Based on the accounts, some believe it to be a living brontosaurus. Many expeditions have attempted to find the creature with little luck, the most recent occurring in 2009.

The
Jersey Devil
is a winged, hoofed creature that walked on two legs and has the head of a horse. It is said to live in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. Originally sighted in 1735, the most frequent sightings occurred in January of 1909 when it was seen by many people, and its tracks were found in the snow. Sightings continue to the present day and were the subject of a later episode of
Paranormal State
.

The
Thunderbird
is a large birdlike creature that some theorize may be a surviving species of pterosaur. In Arizona in 1890, two cowboys claimed to have killed such a creature, which was reported in a local paper at the time and believed to have been photographed. Sightings continue and in some cases attacks have been reported.

Chapter 16
Paranormal Wait

When are these actually going to air?

As we were working, shooting, draining ourselves, and struggling to get things right, naturally I was also itching to find out when the show would premiere. By now I’d had enough experience to know what the production process was like, but the goal was to get out there, take part in showing the world what paranormal investigations were actually like, and fight the stigma that added to so many of my clients’ problems.

Paranormal State
was first scheduled to premiere in March 2007, but here it was February and that wasn’t realistic anymore. I heard rumors about a May premiere, but the next date I heard, from Neil, an A&E executive, was January . . . of the next year.

It was like telling a kid Christmas was going to be delayed six months.

I managed to say, “Oh . . . why so late?”

He said it was just a scheduling issue. They really felt good about the show. Gary Auerbach, another executive producer added, “And they’re already talking about more episodes.”

Thirteen is considered the upper limit for any series that hasn’t aired yet, so they’d already given us a big vote of confidence, but to me this was confusing news. We weren’t going on until January, but we might shoot more episodes?”

In March, I was flown out to LA to do some voice-overs for my Director’s Logs. I’d already recorded most of them, but then they’d decided the show should be more about the cases and less about our college lives, which was fine with me. While I was there, they showed me the opening titles, which I thought were pretty cool.

After that, after all that work, everything just stopped.

I spent the next months trying to figure out what to do with myself. It wasn’t as if I could build anything new based on the show. It wasn’t even out yet. I tried to kick back and relax as best I could. Summer 2007 rolled around. Still nothing. I worked on the next conference. I traveled a little. I even did a couple of new cases. Nowadays we get thousands, but at the time we didn’t get many calls, so that didn’t take up a lot of time.

Spiderman 3
was out at the movies, and I always like to go to New York City to see a new
Spiderman
. I dropped by the A&E offices to say hello, and met some of the people who were going to be in charge of our show, like our publicist, Barry. They were still considering more episodes, but there wasn’t anything definite.

In August, I was back home in South Carolina when Elaine Frontain Bryant, an A&E executive, invited me in to go over their promotional plans. So I flew to New York.

From the beginning, things were different and impressive. It was a big meeting with twenty people. The digital department was there, as well as PR, the head of advertising.

“You know,” they told me, “we’re going to make this
the
event show in December.”

They were talking about a huge promotional plan.
Paranormal State
ads would be on city buses. They’d make
Paranormal State
drinks for all the NYC bars. Then they said something that really made my jaw drop:
The X Files
was coming out with a boxed set that fall, and they’d gotten approval from the show’s creator, Chris Carter, to advertise
Paranormal State
in the set with a promotional DVD.

Sadly, it didn’t end up happening. For whatever reason, negotiations with Fox didn’t pan out. There was plenty else to be excited about, though.

The decision had been made. Our first season would be
twenty
episodes, which meant we’d be back in production. They even gave me a new air date for the premiere: December 10, 2007. I also learned that the demo we’d shot, “Sixth Sense,” had come out so well they wanted to expand it into a full episode.