And by demons, I mean demons.

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Patel murdered her two daughters — four-year-old Piya and seven-year-old Jiya — with a hatchet. When her husband returned from work, he found his daughters hacked to death and his wife severely injured; she attempted to take her own life by repeatedly hitting herself in the head with the murder weapon. According to Patel, a “ghost” was responsible for the slayings.

Clearly, Mrs. Patel suffered from problems far more serious than a murderous spirit, if ever such a thing existed. Her situation doesn’t necessarily say much about the paranormal craze of recent years, but it might tell us something about the pharmaceutical treatment of mental illness. In Patel’s case, such treatment is likely justified. But what about those who aren’t as disturbed?

Let me state that I do not know Mrs. Patel, nor am I familiar with her condition prior to this grisly incident. However, I’m not just a paranormal nerd, I’m also a high school teacher, a job that gives me a certain insight into how medication affects people — I’ve seen the before and I’ve seen the during and I’ve seen the after. Often, one is no more or less scary than the other.

I’ve seen bright and intelligent students with some fairly obvious personality quirks walk into my classroom one day tense and easily agitated, then dull and near-unresponsive zombie within 24 hours. I’ve seen highly violent students quick to do harm to themselves and others be transformed into apathetic beings with emotionless eyes. I’ve see kids who dart around the classroom with the energy of a chihuahua but the grace of a dancer become immobile and stationary, a shadow of their former selves.

I’ve seen kids with intensified, but typical teenage problems become twisted entities of their former selves, and seen those same kids, when taken off the pills, self-medicate through drugs, self-induced violence, or worse.

I’ve also seen students personifying heartache — kids who can take these feelings and turn them into beautiful expressions — become cheerful and engaging people at some sacrifice to their creativity.

I don’t know what “normal” is. I don’t know how to feel it and I don’t know what it feels like. It does seem to me that our society has chosen to excise portions of personalities deemed irregular by capturing them in pill bottles with the hope that it produces this elusive state of being.

And like I said, I don’t know Mrs. Patel, or her situation. She is confused to a degree well beyond anything I can imagine. She may indeed require pharmacological intervention to deal with her inner demons. In the days of yore she would be considered possessed and put to the stake, today she remains medicated.  I simply have to wonder if this is the case for all of the kids I’ve encountered whose energies may not be so sinister, simply misdirected.

Yet big adjustments were on the way. One driver of change, often overlooked, was the vital role that the paranormal — specifically spiritualism — played in the Feminist Awakening and Women’s Suffrage.

Spiritualist practitioners traveled from place to place and, for a small fee, would use their “spirit guide” — an otherwordly advisor of all affairs — to deliver messages from Beyond. The spiritual medium could contact dead relatives, conjure spirits, cause rooms to fill with mysterious tapping sounds, or make the writings of a ghostly hand appear on chalkboards. Spiritualists of the Victorian Era were highly sought out for comfort, advice and to rekindle memories of long-lost friends and family members.

Primarily, most spiritualists were women. Their role as medium offered an escape from the persistent indignities of domestic life. Spiritualism gave women a platform, one that came with certain degrees of power, freedom and equality absent in contemporary society. The practice also cultivated an air of mystery around the medium, which in turn drew the attention of both men and other women in ways seemingly impossible in other professions. It conferred wealth and fame. In looking at the early years of the feminist movement, you could justifiably point to the séance table as a symbol of equality.

The names of female Victorian-era spiritualists remain synonymous with the profession: Emma Hardinge Britten, Victoria Woodhull (the first woman to run for President, with Fredrick Douglass on the ticket, no less!), Leah Fox Fish and Cora L. V. Richmond — a woman whose exquisite features personified the Victorian male definition of virginal beauty.

All of these women would test the boundaries of feminism before women’s suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Lucy Stone came along. In fact, many female spiritualists would ultimately abandon the profession to directly empower the feminist movement without the obfuscation of the paranormal.

The women of spiritualism used the field as a means to empower themselves and counter the hegemonic rule of men. At a time when divorce and adultery were considered in league with prostitution, women could explore aspects of their sexuality at the séance table through the aforementioned “spirit guide” — a connection to another party that transcended typical matrimonial relations. These spirit guides often “took over the body” of the female medium and the actions — often physical — were not deemed harlotry on the part of the female.

Still, the uptight and conservative society of the day was reluctant to change. Despite its popularity, spiritualism was regularly condemned as a danger to the family and the sanctity of marriage. Writer Henry James despised the burgeoning sexuality and power among women of his era. Inspired by the beautiful Cora Richmond, he created (and condemned) the character Verena Terrant in his novel The Bostonians. Regardless of its editorializing, the novel forever pegs spiritualism to the rising feminist movement of the 19th century.

Over time, the original spiritualists were mostly deemed frauds and con-artists, and today, séance tables are few and far between. Gone are the papier mache “ghosts” materializing out of curtained corners, ecto-plasm and mysterious tappings on tabletops. Yet the role of the spiritual psychic advisor, tarot reader, etc., is to this day often filled by a woman.

The world finally caught up with the those women who, nearly two hundred years ago, sought a better life of equality and justice through the world of the paranormal. Yet even now, many see the empowerment of the marginalized as a threat to a certain way of life and attempt to thwart progress and social change.

Maybe it’s time to fire up those séance tables.

Which of the MythBusters do you think would be the best lover? My boyfriend and I both immediately thought Jamie because he seems like intense endurance guy, but a few seconds later our thoughts turned to Tory. He just seems so… enthusiastic. What do you think?

• Serial Killer of the Week. This week I have for you the Vampire of Sacramento: Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980). Chase is one of those killers whose story made me feel like he was truly mentally ill. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic suffering from clinical vampirism (AKA Renfield syndrome). Not conscientiously evil like so many serial killers, I think Chase was an example of someone who was so genuinely turned around inside his own delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic world that he did not know right from wrong. The vast majority of serial killers appear (and self report) to understand consensus reality and the relative morality of their actions, but their defense lawyers would have you believe they were so mentally infirm that they didn’t understand what they were doing. Then there are those who really are living in a phantasmagorical, demonic world of delusion. I think Richard Chase was one of the latter.
• Fetish of the Week. Sex with ghosts! Spectrophilia. Dr. Barry Taff discusses it in a blog post here. But this is funnier.
• Religion of the Week. When I was in high school someone tried to get me to play Dungeons & Dragons. I never got into it, but I did fall in love with the whole “alignment” concept and found it hard not to consider the nine categories in later years when studying human evil in college. When choosing an alignment for myself I didn’t pause – chaotic neutral. I loved the idea of being an anarchic rascal, ricocheting around like an equal opportunity wrecking ball. I was in it for the LULZ before LULZ even existed. In reality I’m probably chaotic good (you can debate amongst yourselves) but chaotic neutral will always have a dark appeal to me. This brings me to my religion of the week: Discordianism. Discordianism is considered by many to be a joke religion like the Church of the Subgenius or Flying Spaghetti Monster, but as a religion which is devoted to the concept and deities of chaos, it only makes sense that nobody can or will ever know how “serious” its adherents might be.
• Links!

Mascot malfunction.

Fake crime scene, real stiff.

Use brain waves to control… wheelchairs for paralyzed people? Nope, kitty ears.

Why are some people who freeze to death found stark naked?

You know the old chestnut that says if you die in your dreams you die in real life? Well, apparently it really happens sometimes.

This could keep me entertained for hours: a list of unusual deaths!

No kissing the bigots!

Good for you, lady! I just hope you don’t get any bugs from his nasty tongue.

• Serial Killer of the Week: Many people think of serial killing as being a behavior exhibited only by the male gender. It would surprise these folks to learn that #5 on the list of history’s most prolific killers was a woman: Elizabeth Bathory (August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614). It should be noted, however, that her guilt is debated by historians to this day. Some believe she was the victim of malicious rumors and slurs. Unfortunately, we may never know the whole truth as her life story was quite complex and not objectively or meticulously documented. An impenetrably murky jumble of history stands between us and this notorious woman. Bathory was convicted of murdering 80 young women, but was thought to have killed 650 or more in elaborately bloody ways. The most commonly repeated story is that she bathed in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth. But was she actually the target of conspirators? She was rich, intelligent, extraordinarily well educated (even more so than most of her male aristocratic peers), and a Protestant at a time when it was quite dangerous to be anything but Roman Catholic. Her accusers stood to gain a great deal in the event of her downfall. Not only that, but those who prosecuted, imprisoned and killed her were also the ones writing the history books. There were no investigative journalists, sympathetic biographers or advocacy websites in 17th century Hungary.

Here is the Crime Library website, which details the typical (and some say mythical) account of her life and alleged crimes. But many Hungarian historians have devoted long hours of research to uncovering the whole story and come to the conclusion that Bathory was innocent of all charges. There is an article from the Hungarian Quarterly which touches upon this research, but more complete text is difficult to find because little of it has been translated to English. Sadly, I think people are too comfortable with the intriguing and titillating tale of the Blood Countess to be interested in learning that it may not be true.

• Fetish of the Week. This week I recruited my boyfriend to help with the S&M report. I handed him my old copy of The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices and told him to pick a fetish for you. He settled on the snake-centric zoophilia subset, ophidicism! From Wikipedia: “Ophidicism is a sexual act in which a woman inserts the tail of a snake or eel in her vagina, and receives pleasure as it wriggles to get free. It can be dangerous in that some reptiles carry salmonella. Ophidicism has been documented as being practiced (as well as many other sexual acts) in Ancient Greece. Variations include inserting the snake/eel headfirst. The snake is an ancient symbol of fertility, and sexuality.”

• Religion of the Week: The Brethren (AKA Garbage Eaters). From ReligiousTolerance.org, “This Christian faith group actually has no formal name. Members refer [to] it as a church, spiritual community, or assembly. It has been called “The Brotherhood,” “Brothers and Sisters,” “The Roberts Group,” and “The Brethren.” Counter-cult groups, disaffected parents of Brethren, and others frequently call them by the derogatory term “Garbage Eaters.” This name apparently is derived from their practice of searching through supermarket dumpsters for over-ripe produce and food that is beyond their recommended expiry date.”

Links!

• What did Corey Feldman have to do with Osama bin Laden’s death?
• I feel like “grisly” is a conservative choice of adjective in this case.
• 2005 Samurai sword decapitation case finally set to conclude.
• Speaking of decapitation, this is how you one-up flag burning.
• Freedom of religion does not extend to setting children on fire. I somehow doubt that is a widespread voodoo practice.

In a story that has electrified Christians worldwide, an image that appears to be the face of Jesus Christ has been discovered within another image of the face of Jesus Christ.

Believers and reporters alike have begun flocking to the Cathedral of St. Genesius in Colorado Springs, CO — specifically to the northeastern corner of the church, which features a small enclosed altar for private worship before an icon of Jesus. It is within the details of this icon’s face that another, smaller image of Jesus has been discovered.

“I’ve been coming here for years,” says Sabrina Thwaite, 78, who first recognized the image late Sunday afternoon. “After mass, I always go to brunch. Then after brunch, I come back to the church to say my rosary at the little altar.” Staring into the icon, she began to feel “possessed by the holy spirit” and started studying a detail she had never paid attention to in the shading just under the left eye. “And then it just sort of appeared to me, clear as day. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it for all these years!”

“It is certainly a blessing we are proud to have in our church,” says Fr. James Bellamy, who has led mass at St. Genesius for 23 years. “That being said, it has caused certain, er… logistical difficulties, so to speak.”

The difficulties that Fr. Bellamy so delicately refers to are the non-stop stream of visitors and worshipers who now crowd the the northeastern corner of the church at all hours, making regular church business all but impossible. As of last week, regular services at St. Genesius have been indefinitely postponed, and the congregation now meets in the basement of the much smaller St. Alban’s, three blocks away.

Back at St. Genesius, the church has made changes to accommodate the crowds. Portable toilets have been placed in the opposite corner of the cathedral to accommodate worshipers who wait up to four hours in a long line that snakes around pillars and pews. Within the tiny dark enclosure, which holds up to four people, a special new kneeling bench has been placed so that one visitor at a time can sit just inches from the painting, whose newly discovered detail is featured by a narrow spotlight.

“It was amazing,” says Linda Carter of Birmingham, England after emerging from the tiny enclosure. “I’ve been a Christian all my life, but I suppose in a way I’ve been waiting for a confirmation of my beliefs. And this is it, undoubtedly. They say you find things where you least expect them, but that’s not always true. It’s as though he’s just popped out and said ‘It’s me!’”

The show was called “Small Town Gothic,” and it paid tribute to the back story of hauntings — those peculiar and offbeat little tales that give towns their character — rather than the paranormal investigation itself. Within each story, one investigator would play the “believer” while another would act as a skeptical historian. The two would dig deep into community lore, gathering tales of ghosts, monsters and general weirdness that accumulate through a town’s unique history. Using local archives, the tall tales would be separated from facts via historical record and personal remembrances.

We pimped this thing like a ho at 2AM. We made phone calls, got some feedback, had a lot of doors slammed in our faces and received several “thanks-but-no-thanks.” The commercial television market is a tough nut to crack, much more so than the music world (where I lived for many years). Whereas record labels seem interested in hearing what bubbles up from actual scenes (at least superficially), TV is much more self-involved and nepotistic. Production companies would rather rely on insider consultants than consider outside ideas, regardless of how interesting — or marketable — those ideas might be.

While pitching the show to production companies, I was shocked at a clause they all required us to sign which basically stated that they could legally produce the exact show we were pitching because they had the same idea before they met us. Meaning, each time we pitched a show, they could say, “Yeah, we already thought of that. Thanks. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.” And then put it into production.

The best feedback we received was “you’ve got something here, but I don’t think that it’s fully developed. Come back to us when you have a polished concept and we can talk.” I took this to mean, “I conceive better television shows on the toilet.”

So we gave up. Why bother? A colossal effort with little to no reward. Yet despite all this, I’ve spent the last year mulling the show over in my head, removing certain parts and altering others. I’ve spent countless hours in the shower (where amazing songs, lyrics and television shows are formulated and ultimately dried off with your towel) re-conceptualizing the show, and I came to a simple conclusion regarding pitching paranormal TV programs:

Fuck it. Fuck it all to Hell.

So anyway, here I am. With a television show I’m all set to pitch, but with no inclination to run around town, call around the country, sign ridiculous documents and all the other crap. Instead, I’m pitching it here, and tagging production companies. This is my show. Starring me and my friends. Production companies: you want it? Email me. You don’t? Go make a show about auctioning storage spaces — there’s four of those on right now, and surely the world needs another.

My show is called “Ghost Skeptic,” and it stars a dashingly handsome, likable and cocky teacher by day who spends his nights investigating supposed haunted locations around the country (world?). It begins with the following monologue:

My name is Chris Parizo. I spent my life studying the tales of ghosts, specters, and haunts. For years, I investigated the paranormal, searching for the unknown and unexplained. I spent hours with the latest equipment in hundreds of haunted locations and have come to one conclusion: ghosts don’t exist. But I want to believe! That’s why I’m offering this challenge. Send me to the most terrifying locations in the world, places where people dare not tread, and let me enter alone. Armed with a “panic button” as my only protection, and with my associate Darrell Hazelrig guarding the perimeter, I will venture into the world’s most dangerous and frightening haunted locales. And I will do it alone. This is “Ghost Skeptic.”

The gist of it should be clear from the opening. Basically, it’s “Small Town Gothic,” but we’ve succumbed to the paranormal investigation stuff. Act I will establish the location’s backstory: its history and the people who nurture the legend. Act II will focus on the archives and records, separating fact from folktale. Act III will be me scared shitless in the dark, doing my best not to press the panic button and alerting Darrell to switch on emergency lights, thereby ending the investigation. All of this will conclude with a wrap-up where I channel my inner Anthony Bourdain with my self-reflective and self-righteous philosophies of the paranormal. There’s another element that I will answer for anyone interested, but right now I’m too busy making fart noises with my mouth to get into it.

You’re frothing already, aren’t you!?!? This is just the greatest television pitch in history, right!?!?! You’ve got a great big boner and it has “Ghost Skeptic” written all over it, don’t you!?!?!?

Meh.

So that’s about it. I think it’s a good idea and it’s definitely something that I would watch. Hell, I’d even buy a t-shirt. Consider this an open call to all production companies: I’m tired of calling and emailing you; now it’s your turn.

And if you’ve already come up with this idea, kiss my ass. Give me executive producer credit and $20,000 so Darrell can get some new editing equipment and we’ll call it even.

Santana spent the last 50 years of his life on the island, every so often wandering into nearby port cities for supplies and other goods. He never divorced, but rarely saw his children or invited friends out to visit. People respected the privacy of an aging man who renounced modern society.

Time passed, and mainland dwellers became unnerved by the odd acquisitions Santana made with each visit, namely, old unwanted dolls. He would gather them from local garbage dumps, trashcans or the side of the road. Sometimes he traded fresh fruit grown on his island for a frayed and forgotten artifact from some stranger’s childhood. Ironically, Santana appeared to be swapping his own memories for those discarded by others.

Eventually, someone asked Santana what he did with the dolls. His chilling response spread quickly through the area.

It seems that Santana’s island was haunted by a wicked little girl who drowned in the island’s canal. She stalked Santana and menacingly occupied every facet of his life — blaming him for her watery death. He took the dolls back to the island where he spread them out, tying them to trees, to his house and to other objects in an attempt to distract and appease the child’s spirit. In 2001, Don Julian Santana stopped coming into the town. Some time after, the locals summoned the courage to go to his island, where they discovered his body drowned in the same canal that had claimed his ghostly tormentor.

It seems fitting that Santana, a man who rejected the life that was given to him, was haunted by a manifestation that desired the life that was taken away from her.

Santana’s legacy has resulted in one of the creepiest locales in the world. The small island is creatively littered with plastic corpses representing discarded childhood memories. For reasons unknown, some dolls were left intact while others were dismembered or seemingly tortured by the Mexican recluse. Although Santana claimed he gathered the playthings to appease a menacing spirit, it is perhaps more likely that the Island of the Dolls was the physical manifestation of a deeply troubled mind. Or maybe, Santana established his own silent society to ward off those who would interrupt his idyll.

The Island of the Dolls exists today as one of the most peculiar man-made sites in our world, not for the supposed haunting, but because it offers a window into one individual’s unconventional relationship to place and memory. It is a reminder of our own desires to break free from unwritten societal rules and establish our own safe haven where we can live — and die — as we choose.

My head would hang over these books for hours, taking in fantastic tales of the macabre. I studied intently grainy black and white photos of odd buildings, castles and churches in far off lands, each marked by supernatural phenomenon that chilled my youthful bones.

For the most part, these tales were well scrubbed of actual terror, designed to spark interest in reading rather than drive 6-year old Chris to scream for his mother with every headlight that bounced into his nighttime bedroom.

But there is one story I remember that was truly scary. So much so that I wonder how it was ever deemed suitable for a kid’s book. Maybe it was the fault of some bitter editor who saw himself writing the Great American Novel instead of proofreading “The Ghostly Hand of Fartmiser Castle!” for a second-rate publishing company. Because “The Terror of 50 Berkeley Square, London” could soil the britches of children well past their diaper years. Just thinking about it still sends shivers down my spine to this day.

The house on Berkeley Square is a residence built in the Georgian style popular in the 1700s — a time when London was divided by class lines too broad to bridge. The building stood as a testament to the privileged, while only a few blocks away, London’s poor dwelt in filth, crime and starvation. Occupying one of the city’s chic districts, it has been home to Prime Ministers, socialites and high-ranking military officials. Yet for many decades, the house remained abandoned.

The Berkeley Square story transcends your typical ghost yarn — no white phantoms stalk the hallways, nothing goes bump in the night. Instead, the building houses a terrifying, Lovecraftian presence bent on corrupting all those who live there, dubbed “the Beast.” In the 1800s, a young man dared to spend the night in a bedroom the entity was said to occupy, a challenge he laughed off with blustery confidence. Late in the evening, his associates heard him screaming. Rushing into the bedroom, they found him standing upright, eyes bulging from his head and sweating in panic. The man went into a delirious shock and died shortly thereafter.

Following this incident the house went unoccupied for decades. Empty, maybe, but hardly quiet: some wandering passersby reported screams of lunacy emanating through the thick walls of the vacant estate.

There is a subsequent tale of two sailors taking advantage of England’s “squatter’s law, through which an unoccupied building can be temporarily used as housing by anyone who gained entrance. Shrugging off the paranormal “nonsense” of 50 Berkeley Square, the seamen broke in to spend a night on shore-leave.  That same night, one of them was found cowering in a nearby alleyway. He spoke, almost incoherently, of an “oozing” creature that entered the room through a closet door. His last recollection was of the entity “filling the room” as his colleague stood frozen in terror. When the sailor and a  local constable returned to the home, they found the other man forcibly impaled on the iron gates below a broken window.

Theories have emerged to debunk this supernatural history: tales of “afflicted” relatives, banished from status-conscious London, returning in confusion to the place of their original confinement. Shunned family members haunt Berkeley Square as much as ghosts: symbols of genetic imperfections in a high society that refused to tolerate any flaws, whether organic or social.

There are other stories of those whose sanity imploded when met with the Berkeley Square Beast — the formless monster that enters unseen and pulls you out of your world and into something much darker and more sinister. Perhaps these tales were invented to keep the vagabonds and Cockneys, and squatters out of Berkeley Square’s general vicinity. Perhaps the Beast of Berkeley Square is the manifestation of the fears of the upper echelon: that the undesirables living mere blocks away could invade their pampered lives and force them to contemplate a truly terrifying world of pain, disease and death.

Those who currently occupy the building (now as an office complex) still speak of strange occurrences: smells, screams and strange mists that fill rooms. Whatever haunts the halls, rooms and minds of 50 Berkeley Square remains a tale of madness and mystery for all ages.

The film is shot in the same style as The Blair Witch Project — a movie assembled from handheld footage supposedly captured by the characters themselves. In this case, it’s a camera purchased for the sole purpose of documenting a purported haunting.

The story follows a young couple, Katie and Micah, who have that “star-crossed lovers” aura of a newfound romance destined for trouble. Katie moves into Micah’s house and almost immediately her secret rears its ugly head. For her entire life, Katie has been followed by what she assumes is a ghost. This revelation sparks Micah’s curiosity, he buys the camera and smuggles in a Ouija Board to attempt communication. A psychic enters the story and tells the couple that this is not a typical ghost, but rather a horrific haunting in the form of a negative entity: a beast that never existed in human form upon the Earth (i.e.: a demon). He begs Micah to stop filming and not to use the Ouija Board.

As the film progresses, Katie begs Micah to stop taunting the entity with the camera and Ouija Board. Micah offers an empty promise and continues on with business as usual. The  “activity” in Paranormal Activity subsequently intensifies due to Micah’s negligence and inability to heed the psychic’s advice. He turns blame on Katie who didn’t tell him what he was getting into when he asked her to move in. She in turn blames Micah for making the situation worse through his stubborn male posturing.

The metaphor is obvious. “Paranormal Activity” is the story of a decaying romance — some unavoidable thing that cripples relationships, the unspoken or hidden aspects of our pasts that we carry with us. It’s the story that we have all lived in one way or another. Romance cannot last forever and sometimes forces beyond our control impact our relationships in ways we could never foresee or forestall.

To me that’s what it is anyway.

Although I found the film to be rather disappointing, it made me reflect on my years as a paranormal investigator. I learned a lot about people during those years, about how we think, the attention we crave, and how we deal with the realities of life.

During one event with the TAPS team, I met a woman from Upstate New York who felt that her home was haunted. She told me of things moving on their own, shadows seen around the home and footsteps. I asked her if she was scared and she replied no. The woman believed that it was her grandfather, who had recently passed, that was haunting her home. Throughout her tale, she began to cry hysterically — fearing that her grandfather was not “crossing over to the other side” and “couldn’t let go of his living world.”

This woman was clearly grieving. She feared the safety of her grandfather; her own spiritual/paranormal belief system caused her to think he would spend eternity in the secular world, looking over his family. She wanted him to cross over. But I questioned who in this situation was having a difficult time gaining closure.

I told her there was a simple solution: when she is comfortable, alone in the home and begins to feel the presence of her grandfather, to have a conversation with him as if he was alive. Sit down with him and inform him that she will be OK, that she appreciates all he has done for her and all that he continues to do for her, but it is time to move on to the next stage. I told her to tell him that her life would continue on, and similarly his would do the same. Tell him he needs to let go and that she will see him again. It was time for both of them to move on.

Three weeks later I called her and asked her how things were going. She replied that she took my advice, sat down and told her grandfather exactly what I said, and the activity has stopped.

Now, almost two years later, there has been no activity within the home.  It is quiet and secure.

Whenever someone talks to me of possible paranormal activity, I usually respond with “Who do you think is haunting your home?” The response is typically a family member. Some of us hang on to those who have left this realm for too long, and we create the paranormal as an expression of our loss — it is a need to keep those we love around just a little while longer. The human grieving process is in many ways as mysterious as the paranormal, and the power of the human brain to house or heal emotional pain cannot effectively be quantified.

And if my good friend and former client in New York sat down at the kitchen table and talked to nobody, does it really matter? Perhaps she needed to hear herself say those words more than the deceased.

What began as provocative television has been reduced to — as noted by Stan and the boys on “South Park” as  — “the most retarded show(s) on television.”

I could understand that.

These shows are all carbon-copies of each other, and contain the same stock elements: a jerky über-male leads, by near intimidation, a team of cowering investigators through various haunted locations. Over the course of the program, those involved experience something perceived as “paranormal” — or what a critically-thinking person might call “normal.”

But like an aging Mafia don, they keep… pulling.. me… back.. in! Through the magic that is Netflix Instant, I found myself giving the genre a second chance, via the Travel Channel’s oh-so-cleverly-named “Ghost Adventures.”

The show follows the… um… adventures… of host/leader Zac Bagans and his crew, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin. In each episode, the fellas lock themselves up in a haunted location overnight without a film crew — the three of them are alone. They don’t investigate typical haunted houses, nor are they “there to help” like on “Ghost Hunters.” Rather, they go to the scariest and most dangerous locations available: prisons, mental wards, “satanic” sites, etc.  The idea is to “antagonize” the ghosts into appearing, usually by Zac challenging ghosts to a fight.

Yes, you read that right.

Let’s just say that if Ed Hardy sponsored a paranormal television show it would be “Ghost Adventures.”  It’s pretty douche-y: a salute to hair-gel and ripped muscles with enough “bros” and “dudes” to give “Jersey Shore” a run for its money. At its worse, “Ghost Adventures” resembles a drunken frat party where ego and testosterone inspire ragingly hilarious dude-offs between the boys and whatever “evil prisoner spirit” with which they’re trying to make contact.

Typical line from the show: “What?!? What?!? You want to touch something?!? You touched a girl and scared a girl! Touch me now! C’mon! You’re so tough, touch me now! What’s the matter? To afraid to touch me? Coward! You’re a coward!”

This tactic has drawn considerable ire from investigators who claim that “it goes against good taste of paranormal investigation” or that it is “too dangerous.” These paragons of the paranormal claim such antics lower the credibility of legitimate investigation. That being said, I have heard from a mutual acquaintance that the “Ghost Adventures” guys are actually pleasant dudes to share a beer with.

Bottom line: if you’re turning to paranormal TV in search of “credibility” then you are on a fool’s errand, my friends.

I’m not complaining. This one-hour show is my new obsession and I actually look forward to watching it. Although the team jumps to mind-numbingly idiotic conclusions with their “findings” — and Zac now appears to get possessed every other episode — I’m drawn to one aspect. The show dedicates half of its airtime to giving viewers the backstory of each location. Through personal interviews with those who experienced disturbances as well as any folks present for the site’s original function (ex-prisoners, psych patients, doctors, orphan children, etc.), “Ghost Adventures” puts the spotlight where it should be on the history of the paranormal location. Frathouse hi-jinks aside, it’s is a nice to have some objective context.

But then it’s off to nutsville as the team locks themselves in for the night. And that’s exactly where I find myself tuning out.  I’ll start making some food, reading a book, surfing the internets, or anything else that divides my attention. I’ll look up when Zac bucks at a ghost, or when Nick asks it to “use his energy to make itself known” — whatever that means — or when timorous Aaron (the Bluto of the group) goes slack-jawed with fear as sounds start filing up the room. I’ll glance at the mysterious “orbs” that enter the back of their heads, and hang in for the typical ending where Aaron turns off the last camera with a “phew!” of exhaustion and relief.

I’m happy that the show honors the locales and pays tribute to the people who played vital roles beyond just the witnesses and investigators. “Ghost Adventures” amplifies the history of the haunting — something that is sadly skipped by most paranormal programs. The documentary portion totally trumps the subsequent fist-pumping man-fest. But for those first first thirty minutes, “Ghost Adventures” has credibility than any other show of its kind.

Next time you’re in Atlanta, gentlemen, the beers are on me. Pound em, bros.