Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page A

Shelly thought Timmy might be the spirit of a former resident. It sounded like a perfect opportunity to offer help, and a perfect case for our pilot. It even had a hook: With Matthew regularly seeing “dead people,” it sounded like the film, The Sixth Sense .
    While the case seemed perfect to me, for the first time, though, I had to consult people outside PRS. Our deal with Betsy and her company, Four Seasons Productions International and the production company, Go Go Luckey, was basically that while I had full control over what I knew best, the investigation, they had control over what they knew best, crafting the edited episodes. When we began, our investigatory process was new to them, while their concerns were new to us.
    This would also be our pilot. We wouldn’t get a second shot at impressing the network, so we all wanted the best possible case. Here there were concerns about Matthew’s believability. He was a child, so how would we know what was an overactive imagination or not?
    At the same time we’ve never gone into an investigation knowing there was true paranormal activity. Often we leave still not knowing. The only way to find out what’s true is to do the investigation.
    While I suspected something paranormal was going on, I knew deep down that this family needed the kind of help we could provide. Whether that meant uncovering an actual entity, finding ways to empower them emotionally so they could better deal with the situation, or empowering them just by providing explanations, would be something we’d have to find out along the way. At some point we had to roll the dice.
    The family dynamic also seemed complicated for a twenty-two minute show. As Shelly indicates in the episode, the Seighmans’ marriage was troubled. They also had an older child, Rachel, who was wheelchair-bound. She was suffering from a debilitating terminal illness that left her in an infant state. We agreed that since she didn’t seem central to the haunting, there was no need for Rachel to appear on-camera.
    In the end, we went ahead with the case.
    New as I was to the whole process of discussing a case in terms of what made a good show, I soon learned that what might be considered risky one day, like shooting with children, could become standard the next. Once we had the experience of working with Matthew, it was easier to consider working with children, resulting in some of our best cases.
    The only word to describe March 31, 2006—the first day of shooting—is surreal . One day life was relatively normal. The next, several vans full of technicians, camera people, directors, assistants, and equipment showed up at club headquarters.
    Since this was the pilot, all the producers involved also showed up. In addition to my team, there were twelve or thirteen production people. Usually on a case, there’d be five or so of us, and whatever equipment we carried. Now we were quite a crowd. It was energizing, exciting, but also completely strange.
    As everyone unpacked, I walked down the road with Eilfie. We were all excited about the show, but most of us had no long-standing desire to be on TV.
    “Can you believe this is actually happening?” I asked.
    “I just hope we don’t get caught up in it,” she said. “I hope they do a good job of documenting it.”
    Exploitation was certainly a fear I had. Television meant money and fame to a lot of people. Were we going to exploit the clients? Were they going to try to exploit us?
    The producers, I assume, had their own worries. They were spending a lot of time and money on an expensive pilot. I could easily see them wondering, what if these college kids ruined it? What if the clients were lying? What if we didn’t get any footage we could use?
    The fact that our producers and the crew were extremely professional, hands-on, and communicative helped tremendously. Before anything was shot, we had a circle powwow with everyone to talk about the day.
    I’d created an outline of how I