The night after Halloween, the team from the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society regaled a receptive crowd at the Scoville Memorial Library with their experiences investigating paranormal phenomena.
Paranormal society co-founder David Bray, with investigators Ursula Wiebusch and Trish Blanchette, described the methodology and results of their investigations in considerable detail.
Bray started off with the paranormal society’s simple mission statement: “To find the truth.”
The paranormal society does not charge for investigations, and Bray said the group has turned down television offers.
The paranormal society is “about educating and validating people, as opposed to sensationalism.”
They are a hard-headed bunch. Bray recalled one person who was convinced the house was haunted because of a recurring, eerie noise in the night.
This turned out to be a tree limb.
“We cut the branch, and no more paranormal activity,” Bray said.
Bray said the team is keenly aware of investigative pitfalls, such as confirmation bias. As an example, someone with deeply held beliefs might be inclined to interpret phenomena as “demonic.”
Bray said he considers himself to be a “clairsentient medium.”
He said he doesn’t see spirits, but he can pick up on “feelings, sensations, emotions — what spirits want.”
An example: When investigating a house in Waterbury, Bray was in the kitchen when he experienced a sudden, intense pain on the left side of his head. When he went into another room, the pain was gone.
In the course of the paranormal society’s routine background investigation, the team discovered that a deceased woman who lived in the house had suffered a fatal injury in the kitchen. The injury was to the left side of her head.
Wiebusch is the group’s photographer, and Blanchette, who freely admits to having “no psychic ability,” said she conducts the initial interviews and does the background research.
Standard procedure is to “keep David in the dark,” before conducting field work, to avoid planting any suggestions in Bray’s mind.
If the paranormal society agrees to take on a client, the routine is to first find the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts.
Thus fortified, the team meets with the owner of the property and takes a tour.
With the owner not present, the team walks through and gets a baseline, using photographs and video.
They set up the equipment, take a few moments for prayer and meditation, and then they turn the lights out and wait.
Why do they do this at night? “Because that’s when we are available,” said Bray.
With video, photographs and audio clips, Bray took the audience through some of the team’s more notable investigations.
The settings varied: Private homes, bars, churches, hotels.
Asked what percentage of the subjects turn out to be something other than paranormal, Bray said about 70%.
The remaining 30% involve “responses that match the history” of a site. “These are things we can’t explain scientifically.”
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