Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  They ask too many questions.

  As explained in the cold reading sidebar, some psychics ask a ton of questions, such as “Is your grandmother well?” That opens the door for them to make comments without being completely wrong. If you say, “No, my grandmother isn’t doing so well,” the psychic can nod and say, “I thought so.” Whenever a psychic tries to read me, or if I’m using a psychic on a case, if they ask me a question, I usually throw it back at them without giving them any answer. If they ask, “Is your grandmother well?” instead of answering, ask, “Why do you ask?” If you’re paying $500, they should be doing all the talking and answering, not you. Please don’t fall in to that trap. They bait you to try to get you to pour open your heart so they can make comments about things they know you want to hear.

  The best psychics in the world . . . don’t charge!

  Psychics like Michelle Belanger and Lorraine Warren do not charge for their services, which is why I respect them so much. I believe psychic ability is a privilege that should be used to help mankind; 99.9% of the psychics out there are frauds, so beware!

  Chapter 12

  Demons Inside and Out

  You amuse it.

  After the draining, frustrating experience of “School House Haunting,” the biggest thing on my mind was that we were almost done. We had just five investigations left to complete our season. We were over the hump, or so I thought.

  As things turned out, the next two cases, which would become “The Name” and “The Devil in Syracuse,” would be the most complicated, frustrating, and dangerous investigations of the season. I’d soon be dealing with the fulfillment of a demonic promise, people I felt I couldn’t trust, the return of some deep personal issues, a surprising run-in with production that at first I worried would undermine the show’s integrity, and a situation grave enough for me to send our trainees away for safety’s sake.

  The threads of these stories are tough to unravel. Not only was my faith in myself as an investigator and a human challenged and changed, the cases overlap in subject and timing. For the first time, we had to leave before returning to complete each investigation. So it seems appropriate to set the stage here, discuss how my involvement began, and then talk about the relevant parts of my own background that came into play. In the next two chapters, I’ll discuss the details of each case as they unfolded.

  Things began in January 2007, while we were still in Massachusetts. A producer told me about a case that looked pretty good. Teena, a woman in Syracuse, New York, had sent a couple of e-mails talking about some dark activity she and her family had been experiencing. She lived in a trailer home with her husband, Raymond, and their two small children, Katie, four, and Charlie, who was a little over one year old.

  I remember giving her a call while we were filming “Schoolhouse Haunting.” I took a break to sit outside Shannon Sylvia’s apartment in the hallway so I could have some privacy while I spoke with her. Among other things, Teena described an incident where the phenomena had gotten so bad she and her children fled their home. Raymond stayed behind, though, later telling Teena that he’d tried communicating with whatever was plaguing them.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  In response, he claimed that a deep, scratchy voice announced a very unusual name. Though demon names no longer frighten me, out of respect for the damage I’ve seen these entities create, I still do not use the actual names while discussing demonic cases, and will refer to it here as B—.

  These cases are particularly complex, and while the editing is a valiant effort to convey the story, some things are collapsed by time constraints. In this case, for instance viewers might think B– is the same demon I’d encountered in 2005, before the show began. I’m eager to clear that up. That demon went under a different name. I’d never heard the name B— before I spoke with Teena. By the end of things, that wouldn’t be the most confusing thing going on.

  At the same time, as I’ve mentioned, in 2005 I had been told demonic forces were aware of me, and that I’d encounter them again.

  When I first spoke to Teena, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I was only aware of how compelling her story was. Something about it struck me in a way I can’t explain. I’ve had lots of these conversations, but it felt as if her telling of the story gave me the experience. Either it was a complete lie, or she might actually be dealing with a demonic entity.

  I didn’t expect a full-blown demonic case for the show. We’d had inklings; Matt, in “Cemetery,” felt he’d summoned a demon, but I disagreed, and there may have been a nascent demonic layer in “Paranormal Intervention.”

  Here, though, I felt I’d be dealing with the issue directly. Compelled as I was, this wasn’t something I was eager to do. The 2005 cases in Pittsburgh affected everyone involved. The clients claimed objects were levitating, and I saw the aftermath of some incredible events, including bent crucifixes and walls that seeped a brownish liquid. The liquid we recovered from the wall was analyzed and found to be blood containing fleshlike matter.

  As I said earlier, these cases also left me drained and deeply depressed, to the point where I’d considered dropping my investigations completely. I still didn’t know if I was strong enough to go through something like that again.

  In 2005, the activity centered on someone who seemed invaded. A malicious personality came through, one whose rage was targeted against religious symbols and beliefs. I believe I witnessed full possession of this individual, as well as a partial possession of another. I wasn’t eager to face that again.

  With part of me already convinced there was truth to what Teena was saying, I told my producer this was the case I wanted to work on, but I didn’t really say why. I had decided to keep this case confidential, hardly sharing any detail whatsoever. Whatever drew me in when I listened to her also made me decide I would do this case no matter what, even if it meant they didn’t cover it for the show. It didn’t come to that. They gave me the go-ahead.

  I do try to maintain an objective investigator’s viewpoint and I’m proud to work within the context of a variety of traditions and belief systems. Yet Paranormal State has been described as having a Catholic bias, and a lot of that sense comes from the episodes that deal with the demonic. Unable to come up with any other appropriate term to fully explain what I was witnessing, I go back to one with religious connotations—demon.

  There are other explanations, but they fall short. Some parapsychologists feel possession can be explained by mental illness, a delusional secondary personality, coupled with the sort of psychokinesis seen in poltergeist cases. But in the case of mental illnesses, the afflicted person doesn’t always believe that they’re a demon. They’re just as likely to believe themselves Jesus, Moses, or Napoleon.

  The distinction between schizophrenia and possession isn’t simple. But I have to ask what form of dementia specifically targets a person’s loved ones and religion? It doesn’t seem as if that would be part of nature.

  Well-known parapsychologist Ian Stevenson* has distinguished poltergeist phenomena from possession by theorizing that the source of a poltergeist resides entirely in the mind. That the activity is caused by internal anguish. Deal with the psychological problem and the activity stops. In possession, the activity doesn’t stop even after the psychological issue is addressed. It won’t stop until someone goes through the ritual of driving out the external force.

  Christianity isn’t the only religion with a belief in demons. Pagans, for instance, believe in negative natural forces, but my experiences have involved households with a Christian background. My view is always evolving. Importantly, though, when I’m involved in these cases—in the heat of the moment—I don’t really stop to think about all the theory, I just worry about what’s going on in front of me, and think in terms of my faith.

  Since I do fall back on that religious explanation, and my faith is a big part of who I am, I think it’s important to talk more specifically about my own beliefs. Though my relationship
with it has been anything but easy, Roman Catholicism runs in my family, not just as a religion, but also as a way of life.

  My parents divorced when I was four years old, my mother remarried, and we moved from Corey, Pennsylvania, to Sumter, South Carolina. There aren’t a lot of Catholics down South, but eventually, we found a church and joined. Every Sunday my mom would force us to go. My stepfather was a believer but not a churchgoing man. He eventually stopped and with my little brother too young, that left Mom and me.

  Like many kids, church was the last place I wanted to be and as I got older, I fought with her more. She insisted I go through confirmation, the process in which you’re recognized as an adult in the church and allowed to take the sacrament. To do so, you had to take classes, which I hated, but I went through with it.

  In part, I think my mother wanted the approval of her dad and his wife, who were Italian and very strictly Catholic. At the same time, though, my mother was actually great at exposing me to different cultures. I think she recognized early on that I had a deep fascination for films, so we had regular trips to the theater, where we’d see anything from family comedies to horror films like Hellraiser 3. My mom definitely didn’t shelter me; she let me go out there and explore the world. I think that played a large part in my development and appreciation for diversity, education, and adventure.

  When my maternal grandfather and his wife would come to visit, however, suddenly I wasn’t allowed to watch anything over PG. Even when I was seventeen, if I wanted to go out past 8:00 P.M. when they visited, my grandfather and step-grandmother would give my mother a look as if she were allowing me to run around doing drugs. Worse, whenever they’d come to visit, it usually meant I’d have to endure their criticism and passive ways of demeaning me. I used to be angry at my mom for wondering why all of a sudden we had to change our lifestyle once they came over. As I grew older, I understood the position she was in, wanting to impress her father and stepmother.

  When I was nearly grown, I heard things about my grandfather that, if true, were seriously at odds with the talks he’d given me. It’s not my place to go into detail about it here, out of respect to my family, but the bottom line is that it left me wondering: Who was this guy who was judging me and my family? What doctrine was he following?

  My paternal grandfather, also a devout Catholic, and part Native American, is a different case. As a child, I spent summers with my father. He worked days and went to a tech school at night, so my grandparents often babysat me. I definitely looked up to my paternal grandparents. They had always been in my life and I feel they played a large part in raising me.

  My grandfather can sometimes be a strong-headed man (probably where I get it from). At the same time, though, I know he had, and has, respect for me. I can respect his unwavering beliefs, until those beliefs hurt people. Sometimes I feel like he came down a little hard on the family for not sharing his viewpoint, but then again, through my life, there have definitely been times where I’ve been guilty of doing the same thing to others.

  At thirteen, I tried to share some of my beliefs with him. We got into a discussion about faith through the expression of music. He played some old Christian radio, and I thought I should play a song that I heard on my own radio stations. I played him Joan Osborne’s new song, “One of Us,” with the lyric, What if God were one of us? He’d probably have slammed anyone else for bringing up a song that almost tries to humanize God, but instead he respected my effort. He at least always had a discussion with me. He helped me get through college, too. He’s supported me and still brags about me.

  Overall, though, between the judgment and the hypocrisy of some of the members of my family, my relationship with religion was difficult. It became more difficult when I discovered that I was bisexual, attracted to both sexes, something the Church still considers a mortal sin. I’ve been open about my sexual orientation in confession, and with my close friends, but it hasn’t been general knowledge.

  The feeling was probably always there, but for the longest time I didn’t know what it was. I was attracted to females, but every so often I was also attracted to males. Growing up I didn’t think it was unusual. In South Carolina, I still felt like a kid at eleven or twelve. I was very innocent, and didn’t even know what a bisexual or homosexual was. We never talked about it, and so I never knew I was “different” or in the minority.

  That changed a bit when I was thirteen and lived with my dad for a year. In the small Pennsylvania town the kids threw around terms like “fag” or “homo” and it was clear that a fag was something you didn’t want to be. I knew it was derogatory, but it didn’t click with my own feelings.

  When my grandfather, the one I looked up to, found out a cousin of mine was gay, he refused to let him into their house. I remember my dad saying, “No son of mine will ever be gay. He’d be out the door and I’d never talk to him again.” He said it loudly and proudly to the rest of the family. I remember freezing, because in my teens I began to realize that my heart and hormones didn’t really discriminate a gender when it came to attraction. It was only then that I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me.

  I also asked myself what kind of world are we living in where your son could be a murderer, and that’s more acceptable?

  Even as I reached fourteen, I didn’t label myself. I just went with the flow. If I liked someone I liked someone. It was only when I started seeing things on the news that I really started to understand the social implications. I saw my fellow Christians waving “God hates fags” banners around. Then I saw the grotesque photos of Matthew Shepard, a gay teen who was beaten up and left for dead tied to a fence. I didn’t understand it, and I still don’t.

  I’m out to my parents now. Telling them was awkward, not so much because of my orientation, but more because I had to talk about my feelings at all. My social life, romances, were never something I discussed.

  As I write this, my paternal grandfather still doesn’t know. Part of me still wants his respect, perhaps in part because of the sense of isolation I felt after my childhood paranormal experiences. But so many people struggle against this kind of prejudice that I’ve decided life is too short to hide who I am for anybody.

  I’m tired of turning on the news and seeing another teenager commit suicide because they were afraid of the social implications. I’m tired of seeing third-world, backward countries like Uganda impose death penalty laws for gay people. I’m tired of American politicians turning down gay rights but then getting caught at a gay bathhouse, unbeknownst to their wives and children. Most important, I’m tired of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals being told that they’re going to hell and that God hates them for who they are.

  So many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people turn away from their faith because they have been told by bigots that God has already turned his back on them. I received an e-mail from a young man who told me that he was gay, and wondered if he was going to hell. “Since you deal with spirits, have you ever come across evidence that suggests that they do go to hell or they are in torment?” This broke my heart. We humans can be so cruel to one another, but the teachings of Jesus Christ are that of love and compassion. I’ve decided to share my sexuality and struggle over faith in hopes that others will no longer feel as though they are alone or that they can’t be religious.

  I don’t bring it up here as a political point, though. My bisexuality brings me back, in a roundabout way, to the demonic. I had a close friend and investigator I’d been open with. At first, he seemed accepting of me, but around the same time I was dealing with the aftermath of those cases in 2005, he started telling me that I was committing a mortal sin and that because of it I was detrimental to my clients.

  It’s my understanding that he also began warning several priests I’d looked up to about me. Apparently he told them not only about my orientation, but also that I was too accepting of other people’s beliefs in things like paganism, and that I was open to psychics. Whatever the case, several priests sudde
nly shut their doors and stopped talking to me. When I asked them about it, I was essentially told that although I was trying to help these families, I was really the problem. I was going to hell. I was doing the devil’s work just by being who I was, and I was in denial about it. One of these priests even suggested I go to a sort of straight boot camp to be purged of my sickness.

  At best, these priests felt I was flawed and that I had an illness that would allow the devil to attack me. Since I was refusing to accept that I was damned, since I wasn’t treating bisexuality as a spiritual disease, I was, in the eyes of God, perverting and desecrating his work. They didn’t seem able to tolerate any viewpoint other than their own and spent a long time trying to make me feel very guilty.

  That sense of betrayal lived in the back of my mind for a very long time. It was a big part of the fallout from those demonic cases, which brought me to the dark crossroads in my life that eventually put me on a path toward Paranormal State.

  Consciously, I never felt that I was serving the devil. I did worry that the drumbeat of guilt could be used against me, though. After hearing it so often, it was as if a lying voice in the back of my head said, “How can you expect God to answer your prayers for these people when you’re a sinner?”