Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown

by Stefan Petrucha

  All these moving stories were the tip of an iceberg. The visit to the Psychiatric Center’s cemetery had the most profound effect on me. It was an enormous, wide field by a lake, where over five thousand people had been buried over the years. Only two areas showed some sort of recognition, a small Jewish memorial and two dozen or so marked graves for soldiers, who’d died in battle. The vast number of graves, belonging to the patients, were all unmarked. I understand that there used to be little iron markers listing the patient number, but even these had been pulled out and thrown away, to make mowing the field easier.

  “These were unwanted people,” Mr. Williams explained. “They were sent someplace where their families didn’t have to see or deal with them anymore.”

  I was overwhelmed. Haunting or no, I felt a need to try to do something for all these unrecognized dead. We all did. I had the idea of putting together a memorial service. The producers agreed to try, but with such short notice we knew it would be difficult to arrange.

  That night, Chip arrived for a psychic walk-through. He’d seen the barbed wire surrounding the grounds on his way in, so he had some idea of what was going on, but he quickly zeroed in and asked, “Did this place used to be a mental facility?”

  Like me, he felt an omnipresent sadness, but also an anger, which seemed to peak for him in the rec room. “I’m getting yelled at. Stop!” he said.

  I asked what they were saying. “Let me out,” Chip responded.

  Down in the tunnels, he picked up on a female spirit. “She’s a nurse. It’s almost as though she’s a guardian in this building, or someone who’s come back to try to help some of the people here physically leave. This is their prison.”

  This nurse didn’t seem to be the same as the screaming woman our witnesses saw, but the overall sense that the spirits felt trapped made sense. Much in the same way the ghost from “Requiem” may have felt he still had Alzheimer’s, patients who’d spent their entire lives not only suffering mental illness, but also incarcerated, might easily assume that even in death, their situation was the same.

  “They’re ready to go,” Chip said. “You going to help them?”

  Of course I was. The question remained: How?

  The next day, Chris Moon arrived. We’d previously contacted him and asked him to demonstrate Frank’s Box at the site. This was a new piece of equipment at the time, and everyone in the paranormal community was excited about it. It’s not as though the paranormal field is so big that every new invention gets covered on CNN. Aside from our new focus on evidence gathering, I felt a responsibility to introduce and examine these things. Given the huge number of potential spirits present, it seemed a perfect opportunity to test a device that supposedly allowed them to speak.

  You couldn’t go into the store and buy one, either. The box was only seen if you built one yourself, or when being demonstrated by Chris. It was invented by Frank Sumption, a paranormal enthusiast with an electronics background. He’d never intended for it to be used for commercial or media purposes. He basically gave it away, despite seeing others, such as Chris, making money from promoting it.

  Apparently Frank knew Chris as a fellow enthusiast, and gave him one to try. Chris told me he’d left it on the shelf for a while. Then one day, bored, he remembered it, turned it on, and was blown away.

  Chris sometimes called it a “telephone to the dead” saying, “It runs on a random voltage generator. Basically it pulls white noise, pink noise, and radio fragments all through the same unit. It takes the raw signal and runs it through an echo box that’s in the unit and that’s where the voices will actually come back out, essentially. It randomly picks a radio frequency, and when the words come out it’s supposed to be a response from a spirit.”

  After flipping it on that night, Chris explained it would take a minute to warm up. Soon, static and bits of voices came through the speaker.

  “How many sprits do we have here with us?” Chris asked.

  Surprisingly, the box responded, clearly, “There are seven here.”

  That was an impressive display, but not proof the box worked. I asked, “What are the spirits’ names?”

  This time, the response wasn’t completely clear, but to many of us it sounded like, “Lucy.”

  “Is there anything else here?” I asked.

  To the rest of us, the next answer was indecipherable, but Chris nodded and said, “Demon. There’s a demon. A strong demon.”

  “Is the demon what’s holding them here?” I asked.

  Again, the answer was garbled to my ear, but Chris said, “Yes, yes. Lucy’s speaking for all of them.”

  According to Chris, Lucy was begging us all to come down to the basement. In demonic cases, the entity often tries to separate the group or bring you to a place where they were stronger. I was concerned it might be a trap, but of course, we went down to the tunnels.

  The place was pretty drafty and I often felt a breeze as we moved along. “There’s something bad, bad down here,” Chris said. He claimed to see a moving shadow. “It shot across the wall, came back, and went straight through.”

  Chip suddenly announced, “I know where it’s at.” And he was off and running.

  I caught up with him at a door that had been boarded up.

  “I would love to see what’s on the other side of that,” he said.

  We’d heard rumors, off the record, that some patients had been abused. I was never sure if the door Chip had singled out led to a room or a way out, but he felt that the area behind it might have been the site of some of that abuse. With the space so large and secluded, it made sense.

  Meanwhile, we weren’t getting much more from Frank’s Box. Chris tried to contact Lucy again in a bathrom. He moved near a window to try to pull in some radio signal, which apparently the spirits needed to speak, but claimed the demon was blocking it. Amid the static, I did hear a low guttural sound, which Chris felt was the demon.

  Chip began spraying holy water. Chris, translating for the box, said, “It says to stop that fucking spraying.”

  It made sense that a demon would enjoy the company of the damned spirits stuck there. Their pain would be its food, so it certainly wouldn’t want us to interfere.

  With no other signals coming through, Chip said, “We need to get out of here.” Chris agreed and turned off the box, ending the session.

  By then it was a little after 1:00 A.M. I regrouped with the team to discuss our opinions of the box. At times its response had been so uncanny; it was very impressive.

  “Why isn’t it saying different, random things?” Serg asked. “Why does it give you a number when you ask for a number?”

  Josh was the most skeptical, but even he felt there were a few clips that were undeniably clear and responsive. At the same time, there were many others that were not, answers Chris heard that none of the rest of us could make out.

  While we were all fascinated with Frank’s Box, it’s important to mention that some of Chris’s beliefs about the box were not shared by the inventor, Frank.

  Basically, Chris has said he believes there were only twenty or thirty people in the world who’ve been chosen to operate the box. They are the only ones who can accurately interpret what’s being said. If you get a little gurgle from the box, Chris claimed to understand what that gurgle meant. He likened it to hearing a language spoken in a bad accent.

  Chris, of course, believes he is one of the chosen. He said that Chip was another, and that while I was a candidate, I wasn’t ready yet. Throughout the test, Chip did confirm the sort of information Chris got from the box.

  But there was more. Chris also claimed that while we try to communicate with the other side, technicians on the other side work to communicate with us. He was teamed with a specific spirit technician, or operator, whose name, I think, was Larry. Larry was the one supposedly communicating through the box.

  Admittedly, that’s a lot to swallow. On the other hand, I heard the box say some things that were hard to deny. Yes, if y
ou get a bunch of random frequencies coming through, you can misinterpret them as responses, but when you specifically ask how many spirits are there, and a voice says “seven” that’s very compelling. Do you discount that or say it’s just coincidence?

  In an incident that doesn’t appear in the episode, for instance, I asked, “What do I have on me?”

  “Crucifix,” it answered. I didn’t have a crucifix per se, but I did have a cross.

  It’s impossible to test whether or not Chris is one of the “chosen” and he’s undergone a lot of criticism on that front. At UNIV-CON the following year, Dr. Michael Shermer, a skeptic, brought up those arguments with him. In any case, having worked with Frank’s Box several times now, in the end I don’t feel it’s a reliable piece of technology.

  To get back to the investigation, we now had a name to verify, “Lucy.” Doing any historical research proved to be the most difficult thing about the case. Even though the asylum was closed and most of the people involved were dead, the state wouldn’t release any patient information due to confidentiality. At the same time, many records were misplaced. Others were stored in a town a few hours away. We had a hard time finding anything.

  There were some patient records that were just lying around, so we reviewed them, hoping to find a Lucy who’d worked as a nurse. After hours of poring through them with the whole team, nothing came up. We did find a tape recording of a doctor discussing a patient. We also visited the morgue, where patients were autopsied.

  On our third day, I asked Mr. Williams about Lucy. By this time we’d already heard her name from Frank’s Box. So I was curious to know if he’d ever heard anything similiar. To my surprise, he said that several employees and inmates have talked about her.

  “What do they say?” I asked.

  “That she’s a ghost,” Mr. Williams responded rather quickly.

  I asked if he could provide any other details, but all he said he knew was that she sometimes appeared in a red dress. Mr. Williams didn’t know anything further, so I went back to Chris Carroll. While she was sure there must have been someone named Lucy there at some point, she couldn’t recall anyone specific.

  At that point, an interesting development led to an entire secondary investigation. Once people in town knew we were there, we received a number of local calls involving hauntings. It was a tiny town, but we had half a dozen or so people claiming activity. They felt that whatever was happening in the asylum was happening across the town, too.

  Mr. Williams explained that once the asylum was shut down, a lot of patients who didn’t have anyplace else to go began wandering the area. The homeless population exploded, and some died in the town.

  We didn’t have the manpower to investigate all these claims, but I did look at a house right across the road. A woman there was hearing knocking, banging, and, sometimes, screaming. It was a very sad case. Her two-year-old son had a birth defect and had passed away. The anniversary of the child’s death was coming up, and she wanted to know if his spirit was there, too. The family also had an interesting photo they felt showed a face in the window.

  The owner told me they’d not gone to the attic since they bought the place. There was a little hole in the ceiling, through which they’d put things to store, but they had never gone up themselves. Naturally I decided to go up and take a look.

  At the far end, I found a number of personal items belonging to an old woman who died at the house. We later found a photo of her in an old school journal. She was born and raised in the town and we believe she worked for the asylum. We can’t be sure. Again, the lack of records dead-ended our research. This was already a very full investigation, so we weren’t able to include any of this in the episode.

  As for the main case, we couldn’t track down Lucy or the screaming woman, but given the possibility of demonic activity, I called in Lorraine. As I walked her through the tunnels, she, like Chip, felt a number of voices crying out for help. She sensed something demonlike, and felt the human spirits couldn’t escape because of it.

  This wasn’t a possession, so an exorcism or deliverance wouldn’t be appropriate. Our challenge, then, would be to free the spirits there from whatever held them back.

  As you might imagine, Dead Time was difficult given the sheer size of the place. Katrina, Eilfie, and Josh were in the basement, tech HQ was set up in a former classroom with Serg, while Chip, Lorraine, and I were stationed in a patient room. I told everyone beforehand to explicitly challenge the dark spirits, to try to push them away, so the living spirits would have a chance to move on.

  Chip’s psychic reading had a powerful effect on me in this case, and now he tried to get Lucy to come to him, but had no luck. He sensed her approach, but she refused to commit. Meanwhile, in the basement, as they asked for a sign a thud came from upstairs. Katrina and Josh heard some talking, a higher-pitched voice, like a woman.

  We tried to pick the best locations for our camera, but nothing showed up on video. We did get some unusual sounds, footsteps, and a howling of some sort, but couldn’t determine if it was wind. It was definitely windy. We had a thunderstorm at one point.

  We also heard some strong, clear footsteps from the first floor. Those came out clearly on the tape. We knew no one was there, but the floor was locked because prisoner records were being held there, so we couldn’t track it down.

  I heard really loud, bizarre sounds coming from a locked room. I was able to have someone from the staff unlock the door. Once they did, I kicked it in.

  All at once, all these birds came flying out. It was a really intense, creepy scene.

  During his walk-through, Chip had sensed a very negative, nasty presence, a male he felt had hurt a lot of people during his time there. It was possible this was one of the abusers. One of the goals for this Dead Time was to try to contact him.

  Chip believes he did, but it was very intense. He grabbed his throat and seemed to be in pain. “He’s choking her,” he said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You know.”

  “What’s the name of the person near Chip now?” I asked.

  “Fuck you!” came the response. The energy became too intense. He called for Lorraine. I asked if he wanted out. “Yes.”

  Chip concluded that Lucy died trying to protect the people there.

  Whether this other spirit was an abuser or the demon, it seemed to me that this was the time to rally the trapped spirits. I told them that if they wanted help, they had to ask for it. “You need to be determined. You need to be strong. You can get out of this place.” Basically I said the same sorts of things I say to human clients when I’m trying to empower them. Here I wanted to empower the spirits.

  Chip suggested we all focus on making a circle of energy, then draw the spirits into that circle, and send them up. Eilfie, with the group in the basement, asked the spirits to move upstairs to us.

  As part of the effort, we chanted the St. Michael prayer:

  Saint Michael the archangel,

  Defend us in battle,

  Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,

  And do Thou, oh prince of the heavenly host,

  By the divine power of God,

  Cast into Hell Satan and all evil spirits

  Who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

  I told any spirits that if they wanted to leave, they could. “There’s a door here now. You’re all free to go.”

  I have no way of measuring, but I genuinely felt we’d managed to open a path for them. Afterward, there were fewer reports of activity. With so many spirits, so many forgotten people, you can’t be sure, but I felt we did something at least for some of them. When it comes to the spirit world, it’s hard to measure what’s actually effective. Maybe just the thought and act of bringing people together to honor their memory and to acknowledge their suffering was enough? Maybe it’s truly is that simple, though it’s something we livi
ng rarely do. Maybe that’s all it takes to give them closure.

  As for the memorial, we had contacted the local newspapers and tried very hard to get the word out, but essentially it was announced the final day, the day we did it. Despite the short notice, we managed to bring a good number of people from the town for this final ceremony. There were many who’d worked there, or knew someone who’d died there. Four faiths were represented: Catholic, Muslim, Presbyterian, and Jewish. I hope we helped the people there move on with dignity. By acknowledging them I hope in some small way we corrected some of the mistakes of the past. I found it very moving, the best ending we could’ve had, not only for the episode, but also for the season.

  Others have done good work on behalf of Willard’s unknown patients. When patients arrived, their belongings were checked in and put in an attic. When they were renovating the place for the prison, some staff members and a museum curator wanted to preserve some of the artifacts. They went up to the attic and found scores of suitcases from a span of a hundred years. They were all literally forgotten, until the staff found them. They helped put together a traveling museum exhibit, and there’s an online version at www.suitcaseexhibit.org/indexhasflash.html.

  As for the first season of Paranormal State, there was a small “that’s a wrap” ceremony I actually missed. Eilfie and I had gone back down to the basement, to place blessed medallions in the four corners. Sometimes the job is more important than the fanfare.

  One other thing happened, which I mentioned earlier, providing a darker coda for the season. Through Chris, Frank’s Box gave me a warning from the demons. It said, “Watch out, I’m going to come after your family.” I thought the worst of the attacks were over, but apparently the box said, “No, we’ve got a lot more planned for you.” The way Chris delivered it, the demon said it would get my soul when I least expected it, that there were other cases I’d be called to, that they wanted me to go to, and that they’d be waiting.