Marc E. Fitch - Paranormal nation : why America needs ghosts, UFOs, and bigfoot

Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot

MARC E. FITCH

Copyright 2013 by Marc E. Fitch

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fitch, Marc E.

Paranormal nation : why America needs ghosts, UFOs, and bigfoot / Marc E. Fitch.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780313382062 (hardback) ISBN 9780313382079 (ebook) 1. ParapsychologyUnited StatesHistory. 2. United StatesSocial life and customs. I. Title.

BF1028.5.U6F58 2013

130.973dc23 2012040011

ISBN: 9780313382062

EISBN: 9780313382079

17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5

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Dedicated to my wife, Erin. For all your love and support.

Special thanks to my mother, Paulette, for her time, encouragement, and editorial skills. Thanks to Praeger/ABC-CLIO for giving a new author a chance. Thank you to Tom and Rita McCullough for letting my family live in your home while I finished this manuscript and, of course, thank you to all those who helped and contributed their stories to this work.

(If you dont believe in miracles, I wrote this book while working two jobs and living in a one-bedroom apartment with our two children under 3 years old.)

A frightened family and a paranormal research group known as the Spirit Seekers out of Montgomery, Alabama, sit around a wooden table in a dark recess of the Shea familys new home. Ben and Jamie Shea and their three young children, Jackson (3 months), Bridger (5), and Tory (11) have been experiencing a living nightmare since purchasing and moving into the previously empty house. Demonic phantoms appear to them; ghosts of children and the elderly walk up and down their stairs at night; their young son cannot sleep because of the voices that keep sounding in his room and, worst of all, the Sheas oldest child is involved in a near-fatal car accident. After enduring these apparitions, frightening sounds, near misses, and paranoia, the Sheas finally called the Spirit Seekers. Alan Lowe and his wife, Angela, run the Spirit Seekers. Together they investigate paranormal phenomena such as hauntings. Joining them is their daughter Violet, a medium who can converse with the dead, and Karen Shillings, a historical researcher who tries to discover a historical source of the haunting. They have come to help the Sheas rid their home of its unwelcome guests.

The Spirit Seekers set up shop quickly. The focus of the terror appears to be a little boys room at the end of a hallway. It was in this room that the Sheas found evidence of a satanic ritual when they first bought the abandoned house. Not believing that there was anything to worry about, they purchased the home anyway and turned the bedroom into their sons room. The Spirit Seekers have placed a video camera in the hallway to monitor activity. In fact, they have placed several video cameras throughout the house with viewing monitors, recording devices, and infrared cameras to capture any negative heat signatures left by an entity. The house is rigged, and the investigators are ready to confront whatever evil lies in wait.

Violet, the medium, senses an evil presence in the housesomething inhuman. She believes that whoever performed the satanic ritual in the house may have opened a door to an evil world. After some discussion the investigators decide to try to communicate with the spirits through use of a Ouija board. The Spirit Seekers and the Sheas gather around a table in the living room and place all their hands lightly on the planchette. Victoria calls out to the spirit and asks its name. Slowly the planchette begins to move across the board to form the word S-E-T-H. Then Victoria asks when Seth was alive. Again the planchette moves and spells out N-E-V-E-R. The Sheas are now terrified, and the investigators realize that they may be dealing with a demonic entitysomething that is not the ghost of a former resident but something straight from hell. They all take their hands away from the planchette and begin to discuss what should be done to rid the house of a possible demon. Suddenly the group watches in horror as the planchette, now without anyones hand on it, begins to move wildly across the board forming words faster than the investigators can write them down. Alan asks if the presence will reveal itself. The planchette turns, points toward one of the video monitors and stops dead still. The lights in the house suddenly turn off, and on the screen they see a tall, black-robed figure ambling down the upstairs hallway and disappearing into the young boys bedroom.

The Spirit Seekers attempt to cleanse the house of its demons; however, two months later, the Sheas flee the house in terror as this same black entity descends upon them in the hallway. They leave all their possessions behind.

This was a scene from the Discovery Channels program A Haunting. The premise of the program, which as of this writing is in its fourth season, is to tell the true story of a haunting. Discovery reenacts haunted experiences using actors, scripts, and some fairly spooky special effects based on witnesses testimonies. The witnesses tell their story through interviews during the program, and the actors act it out with the help of a network studio. A Haunting has enjoyed favorable ratings since its release in 2004 and is slotted for another season.

It is just one of many new television shows that have appeared since 2000. Prompted by the success of the British program Most Haunted, networks such as Discovery, History, Syfy, A&E, Travel, Biography, and TruTV (formerly CourtTV) have hopped on the bandwagon of paranormal television and have been enjoying the rating benefits ever since. Indeed, some of these programs have even served to put these networks on the map. Television programs such as MonsterQuest and UFO Files featured on the History Channel, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International on Syfy, Paranormal State on A&E, and Ghostly Encounters on Biography have captured the imagination and rating share of the nation. These shows have garnered considerable ratings for otherwise small cable networks and reinvigorated some channels like Discovery, History, and Travel.

According to the Gallup News Service, approximately three in four Americans profess at least one paranormal belief, the most popular being extrasensory perception followed closely by a belief in haunted houses. Interestingly enough, this is nearly identical to the percentage of Americans that believe in God. Obviously, television network executives have tapped into a widespread and profitable consumer base. But what does this say about U.S. culture? Oftentimes we can tell more about the state of the United States through the study of pop culture than we can through polls and demographic studies. Popular culture can be viewed in historical context to reveal anxieties, concerns, and belief systems of a culture, particularly when dealing with the supernatural or paranormal. Is it just coincidence that belief in sightings of UFOs skyrocketed in the late forties and fifties after the development of nuclear arms and the Cold War? Is it coincidence that spiritualism and communication with spirits became a popular social movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s following Darwins release of