The Ghost Chronicles (2 page)

Jim and Marie Apitz, friends and family of my heart, thank you for being there in my tumultuous youth and believing in not only me, but also my blossoming, sometimes horrific, psychic abilities. It was through you both that I met my metaphysical mentor, Carol Waldie White, a woman who studied under Laurie Cabot, the official witch of Salem, Massachusetts, and who
played an important role in teaching me how to control and not fear my gifts.

To the past and present members of the New England Ghost Project, you have always accepted me for who I am—thank you! Ron Kolek, my partner in crime, thank you for your openmindedness, your strong faith, and for having my back when the going gets tough…and oh boy, can it get tough!

To my family and friends too numerous to mention, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting me in all I do. Yet there are a few I must mention: To my sisters Donna Fereira and Evon Tudisco, thank you listening to my spirited tales and loving me all the same. And to my friends Bety Comerford, Debbie D’Orazio, and Marky Gibson, thank you for your guidance, love, and encouragement, and for helping to solidify my vision.

Deidre Knight, our agent: you are amazing! Thank you for your keen insight and persistence. Shana Drehs, thank you for sharing our vision in our quest to bring our stories to print and for having the patience of a saint to see it through.

Most importantly, I want to thank my husband, Stephen, and my children, Sabrina and Joshua. Stephen, I thank you for your warmth of spirit, for your patience and understanding, for your support, and for your unending encouragement in all my endeavors. But most of all I thank you for being my balance, for catching the occasional glimpse of my paranormal life (as, Reader, you will later attest to) and, to my amazement and my unyielding gratitude, still welcoming me by your side. I love you.

Sabrina and Joshua, thank you for believing in me. You are the light that guides me through any storm. I love you both with all my heart.

When I founded the New England Ghost Project, I had no idea where it would take me. After all, my degree was in environmental science—who’d ever thought I’d be chasing ghosts? But it happened. Perhaps it is my scientific background that pushes me to find the truth. Whatever it is, it has become my mission. Like so many other people before me, I really don’t care what others say or see; I want to experience it for myself. I want proof! It is that goal to which I strive. But what constitutes proof?

It would be great to be able to walk up to one of these spirits, touch its substance, and converse with it without the aid of a medium or psychic, but chances are, it ain’t going to happen. So I strive for the next best thing: photographic, video, and audio evidence. It is these physical things that we are more apt to believe, and yet to the unbeliever, no amount of evidence will suffice. Therefore, it is my goal not to try to convince you, but rather to share my experiences as I walk along the thin line between the living and the dead.

I cannot say enough about the people who have helped me in my quest. From scientists to witches, from psychics to skeptics, they have all opened my eyes to the many paths I have traveled. I would especially like to thank Maureen Wood, my partner in this journey, who taught me the ways of the metaphysical; Janet, my faithful wife of thirty-six years, for putting up with me; Dr. Karen Da Silva, who saved my life and started me on this journey; the many members and former members of the New England Ghost Project, who have assisted me with this voyage; Brian the Monk and Jeff Belanger, my spiritual and literary mentors; Shana Drehs and Sourcebooks for giving me the opportunity to share my story; and most of all, my mother, Catherine Kolek, who never stopped praying for me.

So as you travel with me through the pages of this book, you will see what I have seen, hear what I have heard, and feel what I have felt. Is this proof of the existence of ghosts? You be the judge.

Come with us on a journey to the unknown, the unexplained, and the unbelievable. Enter a world in which science and religion clash…or do they? The episodes in
The Ghost Chronicles
will test your senses and challenge your thinking. You will meet real people and hear real stories. But what will you believe?

Let the New England Ghost Project take you on a new kind of paranormal adventure, with investigators Ron Kolek and Maureen Wood leading the way.

Before we dive into the ghostly case files, there are a few things you may want to know:

Q:
What is the New England Ghost Project?

RON:
It’s a select group of people who volunteer their time to investigate the paranormal. Our goals are to assist those in need and to educate the public.

Q:
How did the Ghost Project start?

RON:
It all started with me, New England’s own Van Helsing, as I like to call myself. Back in the late 1990s, I cut my fingers off in an industrial accident. The doctors at the hospital were able
to reattach them, but one of the doctors had a “feeling” that something was not quite right, so she sent me for a CAT scan. They discovered a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that had traveled to my lungs, which usually results in death. But they rushed me to the ICU and saved my life. While in the ICU, I had a strange experience: I saw the light, if you will. Everything was bright white. I felt warm, as if I had come home, and there were people all in white (not doctors) and angelic music. Then all of a sudden, it all disappeared, like the closing of an iris. The bright white light was replaced by the dim lights of the ICU, the “people in white” were gone, and the pleasant sounds were replaced by the beat of my heart on the monitor.

When I was released by the hospital, I was no longer able to work, so I took a course in TV production. One of the course projects was to produce a show, and I decided to do the show on ghosts. It aired on local cable television and was so successful that WNDS in Derry, New Hampshire, picked it up. The more I investigated the paranormal, the more addicted I became to it. I started a website (it is the number one result when you Google “New England Ghost”) on which I published my findings. As my notoriety grew, I began to meet various people who wished to join me in my quest for the unknown. Each person that I have accepted into the Ghost Project along the way brings a special skill or talent, making the Ghost Project a strong and resilient organization.

Q:
How does the Ghost Project differ from other ghost-hunting groups out there?

RON:
Some of the other ghost-hunting outfits focus primarily on debunking, using only scientific methods, whereas we capitalize on the unique pairing of a medium and a paranormal
scientist, using both spiritual and scientific methods to investigate the paranormal. The Ghost Project goes into an investigation open-minded, using all of our equipment and techniques to discover the truth. We provide the client with the evidence we uncover, and it is ultimately up to him or her to make a decision as to what to do next and what to believe.

Q:
Who’s on the team?

RON:
My partner is Maureen Wood, our psychic investigator and trance medium, and my co-host of the
Ghost Chronicles
radio show. My family is also involved—my son, Ron Jr., and my wife, Janet (also known as Saint Janet by most people, for putting up with my antics), help out as investigators. Various folks will float in and out of the episodes in this book: previous members of the team include Bob Corey and his wife, Gay, photographer Leo Monfet, and electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) specialist Karen Mossey. Current members include photographer Laura Wooster, EVP specialist Jim Stonier, tech manager Clay Rucker, thermal imaging specialist Dan Parsons, case manager Stacylynn Caira, and director of research Janet Rucker.

Q:
How did Maureen get involved with the Ghost Project?

MAUREEN:
Although I have been communicating with spirits all of my life, up until the day I joined the Ghost Project, I’d never worked with a paranormal investigative team. At a time in my life when the call to communicate with spirits could no longer be ignored, I happened across an article in a local New Hampshire newspaper. It featured a paranormal investigative team called the New England Ghost Project. After reading the article, and being a big believer that everything happens for
a reason, I quickly emailed Ron. Curious, he invited me to tag along on the first of a four-part series with WNDS television in Derry, New Hampshire. Episode Two depicts that first investigation with Ron’s team: my “audition,” if you will. I guess I did something right, because not long after I was invited to join. And as Ron frequently says, the rest is history.

RON:
I didn’t believe in psychics when I started the Ghost Project. In fact, I always thought they were charlatans. But once I started working with Maureen, I began to realize that there was more truth to psychics and mediums than I had first believed. With a degree in environmental science, I still consider myself a skeptic, but open-minded enough to investigate the possibilities.

In fact, that’s why I call myself New England’s own Van Helsing. The real Van Helsing comes from Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
—like me, he was a man of science, yet well versed in the arts and crafts. I didn’t believe in a lot of the metaphysical techniques that you’ll read about later in this book, but I have come to understand and accept and even use them.

Q:
What’s the deal with the typeface changing?

RON:
Throughout the book you’ll notice two different fonts: one for Maureen’s voice, and one for mine. Telling our stories in the first person makes for a much more visceral experience, but we wanted it to be clear who was doing the talking.

Q:
How did Maureen know she was a psychic? What is a trance medium, anyway?

MAUREEN:
I’ve been seeing and hearing spirits all my life, but it was difficult to realize what was going on. Think of how many little kids have imaginary friends. That’s not to say those imaginary
friends are all spirits, but I wouldn’t rule it out. When we’re young, our minds are completely open. It’s not until wellmeaning teachers, parents, media, etc., tell us that what we are experiencing is not real that we begin to think it’s nothing more than our imagination. That we need to show them proof, you know, they-will-believe-it-if-they-see-it syndrome.

I love
Ghost Whisperer
, but medium work is not as Hollywood as the show. Let me start by explaining the differences between a medium and a trance medium. Being a trance medium means having the ability to share the spirit’s energy. A trance medium can allow spirits to enter and speak through her, which is called “channeling” or “trance channeling.” On the other hand, a medium picks up information from the spirits and relays it—they are not actually using her voice to speak.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what happens when I trance channel, but when we are investigating, I open myself up. Sometimes the spirits are timid, not strong enough, or not cognizant of how to share energy, to allow me to trance channel. Other times, the spirit is all too eager to speak through me.

Most times, I have control of who I channel. But when I open myself up to spirits, it’s possible for another, not so nice spirit, to jump in.

I’m also empathic. Which means I can feel the spirit, their energy, and, sometimes, how they died. Ron calls me the Queen of Pain, because sometimes those experiences can be extremely painful.

Q:
How does the Ghost Project find new investigations?

RON:
We’re often contacted through referrals, our website, and the Ghost Line (as we refer to the phone number for the New
England Ghost Project). Ninety percent of our cases are those in which people are looking for verification that they aren’t crazy. They just want to know if they have ghosts or not. Sometimes we’re contacted by the media, who want to see what we do.

Q:
What tools do you use to conduct an investigation?

RON:
On one hand there’s the research arm of the Ghost Project. Janet Rucker, who holds a degree in library science, heads up that end of the investigating, which involves discovering the details of a particular location or person—the history of a property, genealogies, etc.

But that takes place back at the office. On location, we have two types of tools. The first is Maureen, who uses her abilities to discover any paranormal activity. One of her methods is dowsing, a centuries-old way to use your own sixth sense, an extension of yourself, to tap into various energies. When you read about her using a pendulum or L-rods, that’s what’s going on. Although she doesn’t need a device to speak to the spirits, she uses it as a visual tool for those present during communication with a spirit.

From the paranormal science perspective, we use a lot of equipment: a thermal imaging camera (which is used to view temperature differences), an electromagnetic field (EMF) meter (used to measure fluctuations in electromagnetic fields), and ultraviolet (UV) lamp (used to detect bodily fluids and dust particles in an environment). We also use infrared (IR) camcorders to see in low light, along with still cameras, both digital and 35mm, with infrared film (it’s believed that spirits dwell in the infrared range). Infrared film is expensive, however, and it has to be treated very carefully. Because it’s heat sensitive you need to load and unload the film in a black bag and the film
has to be refrigerated. We also use hand-held digital recorders to gather EVPs.

Q:
What exactly is an EVP?

RON:
EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon, also known as “voices of the dead.” We cannot hear EVPs as they happen; we can only hear them played back on a recorder. The spirits use the white noise in a recorder to manipulate energy to manifest their voices. Any digital or analog recorder will work. Ironically, the more inexpensive recorders are better, since they have more static/white noise. The recordings are then cleaned up and amplified through a software program like Cool Edit, allowing the listener to decipher the words more clearly.