It only keeps getting weirder, right? But hear me out on this one, because of all the things I’ve said in this book, I mean this one the most.
Do not, under any circumstances, take anything you’ve read in this book as indisputable fact.
When it comes to the supernatural, there is no absolute truth. There is no one, universal knowledge. (Well, there probably is, but we’re not going to understand it in this lifetime. See? Stop listening to me.)
All there is, at least on this plane, is one huge conversation. I’m one voice in it. Each person in this book is another single voice. Because of our experience and our public-facing jobs, our voices may be amplified, but that doesn’t mean that my ideas are any more “right” than your ideas. Maybe your experiences create insight that I don’t have. (In that case, @ me, because I would love to hear from you.)
“If anyone ever tells you that something is definitively a demon or ghosts, they’re leading you down a wrong path, because no one in this field knows what’s going on,” John Tenney said. “We just know that something is going on. I’ve done this for thirty years, and I’m continually put into experiences that radically shift how I think about the paranormal.”
There is magic—at least, an element of the unexplained—all around us every day. On that Strange Escapes at Sea through the Bermuda Triangle, there were garlic ropes strung around the bridge, where the captain controls the ship. “It’s to keep away evil spirits,” he explained to us on a tour. “When you’re on a ship like this, you take every precaution, no matter what it is. We just want to make sure everything is good up here.”
As I write this, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, the likes of which our generation has never seen. My state is still under a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, and though people are excitedly talking about opening some states, some feel it’s too soon to do so and could result in worsening the situation rather than improving it. It’s still far too early to tell what’s going to happen, or when this is going to end. None of us—barring those who can actually predict the future—know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.
But I do think I know one thing that will result from the coronavirus: Interest in the paranormal is going to become even stronger than it is now.
Historically, after massive events that change the world as we know it, interest in what’s beyond this life has skyrocketed. The American Civil War is directly tied to the rise of the Spiritualism movement, and the popularity of mediums, séances, and spirit photos. Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren, in the first wave of paranormal celebrities, became widely known during and just after the Vietnam War. After 9/11, the interest in the paranormal created an environment where Ghost Hunters, which started filming in 2003 and premiered in 2004, shot to instant fame as the first paranormal reality TV show. After a major, widespread trauma, people need closure, and they look for answers anywhere they might be able to find them.
Judging by what’s happened in the past, I think there’s going to be a surge in interest in the paranormal after all of this is over (which, I hope, is when you’re reading this book). But more than just read other people’s work and look for answers there, I hope you take all those ideas, mash them up in your head, and add your own thoughts. And then, go out and find your own answers, and develop your own theories, too. Every voice is as valid as the next in this conversation about the afterlife. It started long before us, and it will go on long after we’re gone.
I’ve already started seeing this, even during the pandemic, in the way that more and more people have started noticing and talking about potential paranormal activity in their homes. People are mentioning to me left and right that they’re having weird experiences, and for the first time, they think their house might be haunted.
There’s definitely something to be said for the increased amount of time we’re spending in our homes. We’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe quirks that we’ve been too busy or too noisy to notice before. But I also think it might be possible that we’re causing this activity to spike because of the pervasive fear and anxiety we are experiencing during the coronavirus crisis. To me, what’s happening right now is almost like one massive intention experiment. There are billions of people right now in a perpetual state of anxiety and stress, and all of that energy adds up. People have died alone. People have lost loved ones and not been able to gather with family to say goodbye. The elderly, isolated in nursing homes and care facilities, have not been able to see their families in what could be the last months of their lives. Others, working on the front lines, have gone into work every day knowing they are putting themselves and their families at risk, but they have no choice but to go.
People have lost their livelihoods, struggled to feed their families, lost businesses they sacrificed everything to build. People who suddenly find themselves deemed “essential workers” are still making minimum wage, and without proper protective equipment, so we can have groceries and gas. People are trapped at home in abusive situations, with no way to get out.
Even if you have been lucky enough to be safe, and to be able to stay home with steady employment, you have probably still been struggling with isolation and fear. Compared to many others, my own quarantine has been relatively easy. But explaining to my daughter why she can’t go to school or see her friends and that we don’t know when it will end—while trying to be strong for her every time I see her little heart break with another piece of bad news—has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through.
What we have been experiencing is not going to just disappear once we are allowed to freely leave our homes and society opens back up again. The vaccine, if and when we have one for the coronavirus, isn’t going to heal our hearts. We are all collectively adding to a worldwide amount of negative energy from all this suffering and struggling—not because we want to, but because we are in a very difficult situation and we are feeling how we have every right to feel. I think this might have something to do with the perceived increase of activity in people’s homes than there has been in the past. Maybe someone is just discerning it for the first time, or maybe someone else has noisy pipes they never noticed before—or maybe the energy in a home has changed because of how we feel about what we’re going through, and that’s triggering something to happen.
I don’t have any answers. Right now, I’m just trying to keep my family happy and do my part to raise our collective spirits (you know what I mean) when I can. When this is all over, though, I am so curious to see what’s going to happen. I think it will change the way we think about the paranormal, and it will definitely affect what happens with my show and my work in general.
But honestly, that’s what I love so much about my work. There is always another conversation to have.
“I think people have a hunger for mysterious things,” said Aaron Mahnke, creator of the massively popular Lore podcast that tells real stories of the unusual and unexplained. “They represent unfinished puzzles, or holes that need to be plugged, and our minds and souls want to fill in the gaps. Whether it’s true crime, a thrilling novel, or the world of ghosts and unusual creatures, people have always been drawn to the mystery.”
The very first time I saw a ghost, I wanted to know what it was. Decades, and thousands upon thousands of ghost encounters later, my reaction is exactly the same. Delving into the unknown is a passion I will always have—not just because it’s interesting to me, not just because I want to solve the case, but because there is always more to know, always a continued conversation to have, always another piece of the mystery to uncover.