Paranormal investigator shares eerie encounters at Hunt Library

FALLS VILLAGE — Joe Franke of the Warren Society for Paranormal Research and Education visited the David M. Hunt Library Thursday, Oct. 15, to discuss his career investigating the paranormal. He also offered a warning to anyone considering experimenting with a Ouija board.

“Please don’t.”

Franke got his start in paranormal investigations as a teenager in 1986, when he met veteran researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren.

“When I first met the Warrens I felt an immediate connection. Lorraine told me ‘I can tell by your aura you were meant to do this work.’”

Forty years later, he’s still taking cases.

Franke said there is never a charge for his help. What money he makes from his work comes from lecture fees.

“All I want to do is help people.”

He asked the audience of 16 people if they believed in ghosts. Nobody said they didn’t.

Franke defined a ghost as “the spirit of a once living person who walked the earth.”

“I believe spirits are energy that can manifest in many forms.”

Franke showed several photographs taken with film cameras in cemeteries at night in the 1990s.

He said he was advised by the Warrens to take three or four shots in quick succession, in a controlled environment without ambient light, so the only illumination came from the camera’s flash.

One photo showed something that looked like wisps of fog coming from a gravestone.

Another had an image of what looked like a dog standing with ears up, also emanating from a gravestone.

A third, of a larger monument, had what looked like the face of a man gazing downward. One woman murmured, “It looks like Bogie,” referring to actor Humphrey Bogart.

Franke offered these images without much comment. “It would be irresponsible of me to tell you it’s a ghost because I just don’t know.”

However, when the photos were taken, “I felt a lot of energy.”

Franke had video footage as well.

He said doorbell cameras can be useful in investigations of the paranormal. A recent clip of about eight seconds, with a time stamp of 22:27 (10:27 p.m.), shows something appearing in the center of the frame and moving to the viewer’s right, where it seems to gather itself and disappear into the lower right-hand corner.

Franke said he showed the footage to people he described as experts, who he said could find no sign of fakery. He did not identify the reviewers or describe their expertise during the presentation.

Another short clip was taken by a woman who was dog-sitting for a friend. Sitting on the floor and using her phone camera, she calls the dog, who comes running. In the hallway in the background, what looks a lot like a human figure crosses the hall and disappears.

Franke said the dog sitter posted the video on Facebook, intending to share a cute moment with the dog.

“It blew up,” he said, with people asking in the comments who else was in the house.

According to Franke, the dog sitter said nobody else was in the house. He said the unnerved dogsitter called the police. Franke said after the officers saw the footage, they searched the house, weapons at the ready.

Franke said the figure appeared to vanish into a wall and that the homeowner later moved.

He also showed footage he identified as a 1985 exorcism of Maurice “Frenchy” Theriault in Warren, Massachusetts, conducted by Bishop Robert McKenna.

The footage shows Theriault sitting in a chair. McKenna is in and out of the foreground, reading the exorcism rite in Latin. Three or four men are standing behind Theriault, with only their torsos and arms visible. Occasionally one touches Theriault on the shoulder, or applies a towel to his face.

As the priest reads, what look like welts or cuts appear on Theriault’s forehead. He drools from his mouth, but what appears on his white t-shirt is dark, like blood. Eeriest of all, for several minutes Theriault doesn’t blink, and his eyes look like “snake eyes,” Franke said.

McKenna demands the demon identify itself. Franke said that if the exorcist can get the demon to give its name, that tips the balance of power in favor of the exorcist.

Theriault mutters repeatedly, “I am what I am.”

Franke said these cases usually move in stages.

Stage one is vexation, with scratching or growling sounds or other strange but not dangerous phenomena. It occurs two or three times and stops. Franke said vexation is designed to scare or annoy the victim.

Stage two, infestation, is when unexplained events occur on a regular basis.

The next stage, obsession, occurs when victims report a force putting thoughts in their minds.

“It’s not fleeting,” said Franke. “They hound you.”

Franke said stages four, oppression, and five, possession, are marked by events occurring more frequently and more vehemently. The fifth stage can “escalate into physical attacks.”

“I’ve been punched, bitten, burned and thrown across the room.”

How does someone protect themselves?

“Faith,” said Franke. “I’m no holy roller but I talk to God every day.”

Franke said he considers divination extremely dangerous.

“You’re seeking to foretell or obtain hidden knowledge by supernatural means” such as an Ouija board or tarot cards, Franke said.

“This is bad stuff. Lorraine used to say that demons have to be invited in, but if you’re playing with an Ouija board you’re opening the door.”