Petrucha Stefan - Paranormal state : my journey into the unknown

MY JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN

PARANORMAL
STATE

RYAN BUELL

AND STEFAN PETRUCHA

Contents

Some journeys change you as you walk them. After taking the first several steps, you can never return to the person you once were. Ryan Buells journey started when he was a child. He was the victim of a persistent and malevolent haunting, but when he reached out for help, no one believed him. He felt abandoned, alone, and ignored. Some people would use such an experience as an excuse to become bitter and angry as they grow into adulthood. Others would use it as a reason to resent their parents as well as the society that taught those parents that things such as ghosts could not exist.

But Ryan Buell is not like most people.

He endured his experience, and as he grew older, he transformed his fear into inspiration. He sought answers and he sought allies. More than that, he worked to establish a way to reach out to people in similar situations, to offer them help and support. That work ultimately led him to found the Paranormal Research Society at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. You probably know PRS best as the team of young investigators featured on A&Es hit, Paranormal State.

I first met members of the Paranormal Research Society in 2006 at their annual event, UNIV-CON. UNIV-CON is one of the largest paranormal conventions in the country, and it attracts high-profile people from every aspect of the community. It was one of Ryans ongoing projects, bringing people from the paranormal community together to dialogue, share ideas, and learn from one another.

Back then, I wasnt what youd call high profile, at least not as far as paranormal circles were concerned. In the nineties, Id done work as a paranormal investigator off and on, but my real focus was psychic development and energy work. I had several books out, and was best known for my work on psychic vampires. As it turned out, PRSs resident occult expert, Eilfie Music, and tech specialist, Josh Light, were both fans of my writing. Im not sure which of them was responsible for convincing Ryan that I should give a presentation at UNIV-CON. Im just glad that they did. It allowed me to meet Ryan and his amazing team.

During that first year of our association, my interactions with Ryan were minimal. To be honest, I was a little ambivalent about meeting him. Id heard that he was a devout Catholic, and I really wasnt sure how hed react to someone like me. Aside from my involvement with psychic vampirism, Im also a practicing pagan. Neither were widely accepted topics within the paranormal community, so I decided it would be safer to lie low than run afoul of someone elses sincerely held beliefs. I shouldnt have worried. Ryans approach to religion and the paranormal is one of open-minded tolerance. Of course, the fact that Ryan had two openly pagan members on his team, Eilfie and Josh, should have been a tip-off.

In fact, promoting tolerance was one of the points of UNIV-CON. Ryan had a vision about the future of paranormal research. In order to gain acceptance and understanding for the paranormal, he felt it was necessary for those interested in studying it to accept and understand one another first.

The year 2006 was especially huge for the Paranormal Research Society, not simply because of UNIV-CONs massive success but also because it was the year that A&E came to the convention to lay the groundwork for Paranormal State. I had no idea about that when I showed up, and Im not even sure it sunk into my head by the end of the convention. Because we had been working in parallel communities that rarely converged, I hadnt even heard of the Paranormal Research Society. Heck, I was just tickled that this huge paranormal convention was being heldand acceptedat a major college.

That was the first thing that stood out. I could hardly believe that the organization contacting me to speak was a university-recognized student group. Maybe thats not so hard to accept now, but when I was in college, we had trouble trying to get the university to sanction a gaming group, let alone something devoted to the investigation of ghosts, demons, and the occult. Yet somehow Ryan Buell had managed to do it, at a major university in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. It was a fight at first, and not everyone welcomed the idea of the Paranormal Research Society with open arms. To this day, it has its detractors, but Ryan never let this stop him. He wanted to make changes in the field of paranormal research, and he knew that those changes would happen only through dedication and perseverance.

When I learned that Ryan Buell was the founding force behind the Paranormal Research Society, I wasnt sure what to think. From what I saw of him during my first UNIV-CON, he seemed quiet, earnest, and even a little shy. I could not imagine what had inspired this clean-cut Catholic boy to develop such a passion for the paranormal. I was curious to learn more, but at first our very different faiths kept us from connecting well. I spent a lot more time getting to know Josh, Eilfie, and even tech specialist and photographer Serg Poberezhny. Ryan was the quiet guy who politely acknowledged my existence just as he went dashing off to handle some administrative business.

I was still very much on the fringe of things when the first season of Paranormal State began. I interacted with Ryan only rarely. Most of my communication with PRS involved answering questions behind the scenes for a couple of their early episodes (mostly when Eilfie felt that I might have more resources in my occult library on a certain topic than she had on hand). Obviously, as the years went by, my involvement grew, until now when Im pretty much an honorary team member. But that initial outsider perspective allowed me to watch the people of the Paranormal Research Society change and grow as Paranormal State really took off. Ryans journey through this process was perhaps the most fascinating of all.

Judging by the content of some reality television shows, there are those whod literally sell their own mothers for a shot at those proverbial fifteen minutes of fame. A lot of people who see Ryan Buell on Paranormal State assume he started out wanting to be a star, pursuing the show for nothing more than attention, money, and celebrity. But this projected image stands in stark contrast to the reality of the person Ive come to know.