An icy breeze pierces your body when no doors or windows are opened. A dark shadow passes by in an inconceivable fashion. There is a faint voice calling your name. You can hardly breath until it is all over. Is this just your average horror movie about ghosts returning from the grave to haunt you? Or, is the phenomenon real? 

These questions are what paranormal investigators want to find out.

Jack Kenna is a veteran paranormal investigator with appearances on the television shows “Paranormal Survivor” and “Haunted Case Files.” Jack is also the Technical Specialist with S.P.I.R.I.T.S. of New England, a paranormal investigation team. 

“As a paranormal investigator, I do believe in both ghosts, which I prefer to call ‘spirits,’ and the paranormal,” Kenna stated. He clarified the differences by saying that “Many people outside of this field believe that the spirits and the paranormal are one in the same, but that is not true. Spirits are souls of the deceased that can sometimes be the cause of a haunting, while the paranormal is a much broader term which encompasses spirits, hauntings, cryptids, UFOs, and anything that is beyond the ability of our current scientific abilities to explain.”

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Burnell started investigating the paranormal because he was ‘curious about life after death’.

— Justin Maskell

The simple meaning of the word paranormal is above the normal. Paranormal investigators are not just people who want to “hunt ghosts.” They are people trying to dive deeper into events that are unexplainable, or as Kenna said, “above the normal.”

Bob Burnell, a local up and coming paranormal investigator, has a unique story. Burnell started investigating the paranormal because he was ”curious about life after death”. Burnell said his curiosity began “since I had a heart attack back in 2012 and had died for 18 minutes.”

Burnell thinks that “when we all get close to the dying age or have a close scrape with death it is natural to wonder what is going to happen to us when we die.”  He said that a “scary topic for most is the idea of dying.” But Burnell’s dance with death drove him onto a path of curiosity and the search for the truth. He does not remember anything from dying and hopes investigating can help him put the pieces back together.

While some investigators such as Burnell look to gain knowledge about the afterlife and mysteries that seem unexplainable, other investigators like Kenna seek “to help others who believe they are experiencing a haunting. I want to help them understand what is really going on, whether it’s a true haunting or not.” He also wants to be “investigating the haunting” to determine if there is one.

A short survey was given to an AHS Math class and the results were somewhat surprising. Out of the small class of 12, including the teacher, nine individuals said they in fact did believe in the existence of spirits and the paranormal, while only three students did not.

Have you experienced any paranormal activity?

• Yes (63%, 5 Votes)
• No (38%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 8

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Also, five of the nine indicated they have had a firsthand paranormal encounter. These encounters ranged from hearing disembodied voices of spirits, seeing full bodied apparitions, and/or talking to the spirits of relatives when at a young age. One individual even had an encounter with a demonic force through contact of a Ouija Board, which is a good example of why people should not tamper with the spiritual world, even if they don’t believe in it. They could very easily open a door to letting unwanted evil into their life. 

So, if ever you hear haunting voices coming from the dark or see something not of this earth flying through the night sky, be forewarned that you may be having a scrape with the paranormal world.