Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown by Stefan Petrucha, Ryan Buell Page A

she had trouble getting out of bed. Within two weeks of their wedding they started hearing noises, whispers, someone calling Chandra’s name. Soon Chandra was hearing the voices every other day.
    Matt, meanwhile, was having what he described as hallucinations. In the episode, he talks about lying in bed and seeing a woman climb out of a clothes basket, but he also described seeing the ceiling above him crack open. Tiny spiderlike creatures swarmed out and down the walls.
    This couple was obviously in distress. Instead of enjoying their lives as newlyweds, they were feeling upset and threatened. The thought of investigating an entire cemetery for the first time was also very exciting to us. For the producers it made for a nice visual location, so the choice was easy.
    We also decided to shoot a short sequence at a football game on campus. Originally the concept for Paranormal State was that it would include more details about our lives as students. Cameras followed us to parties, bars, Heather’s band playing, that sort of thing. A reporter even quoted one of our producers as saying they hoped some of us would start relationships with each other. This episode has a sequence where Heather and Katrina ask Serg if he’d consider dating someone from PRS.
    But with only twenty-two minutes and some great, detailed cases, that concept didn’t last. PRS pretty much was our lives, so it wasn’t as if we had time for socializing. The early shows, though, make the effort, hence the football game.
    We shot the game Saturday, which was fun, but complicated. It’s hard not to get noticed when you’re walking around with cameras pointed at you. The press passes the camera guys had also happened to be the same colors as the visiting team, Michigan State, so people razzed them.
    We tried to get a shot of me walking down the steps, but as I went, everyone cheered and high-fived me like I was a big time celebrity. It was awkward trying to watch the game, but even with all that, I was happy to get to one before being wrapped up in production.
    Next came the briefing. For the curious, the case file numbers I rattle off indicate the year, the month, the number of the case for that month, and a letter, p for parapsychological research and f for field investigation. All the cases on the show are field research, so this case number was 2006.11.26F, meaning we received the call and opened the file for a field case in November 2006.
    Our Saturday briefing took place the day after I’d gone up to meet Matt and Chandra. By then, they told me a number of things about the case, including that an urn with unidentified ashes had been buried on the property, that the Fransons were born-again Christians, and that certain members of Matt’s family apparently disapproved of their decision to contact us for social and religious reasons.
    The clients also expressed strong feelings about not wanting to work outside their own beliefs. So during the briefing, I jokingly ask Eilfie not to bring her cauldron and Serg not to mention his agnosticism. When the episode aired, viewers gave me flak: How dare you say that to Eilfie?
    I see how it might’ve come across, but Eilfie knew where I was coming from. We’re being invited into intimate, usually very sensitive emotional situations. When the clients clearly tell me that they’re not open to other beliefs, I don’t see any sense in adding to their tension. It could easily get in the way of finding out what’s going on and helping. Now that the show’s been on the air for several years, more people know who we are and what we believe, so it’s become less of an issue.
    Looking back, it’s also interesting that during the briefing I remind my team that spirits are human, and not all had happy-go-lucky deaths. In this case, there wound up being a different idea about the nature of the spirits involved between myself and the clients.
    From my first meeting with them, Matt and Chandra came across as very