A faithful WOG BLOG reader asked us what we thought of Ryan Buell and his Paranormal State TV show and after doing a little research I can safely say that there are plenty of good reasons why this particular show was awarded The Truly Terrible Television Award in 2008. Not only does it promote superstition and all kinds of pseudoscientific methods, but it has been accused of staging so-called paranormal activities and even ignoring a “ghost” who needed help.
Ryan Buell
First, for a little history, A&E’s Paranormal State is a television show based on the exploits of Ryan Buell, who founded of the Paranormal Research Society (PRS) in 2001 while he was studying at Penn State University. A native of Sumter, South Carolina, he was always interested in the paranormal and began investigating “hauntings” and other spooky happenings at the age of 15.
Shortly after launching the PRS, Buell began to achieve some notoriety and was invited to speak at colleges and high schools. He was eventually approached by television producer Betsy Schechter in 2005 to launch a series based on his work. Schechter landed a spot on A&E and the filming of Paranormal State began a year later.
The show consists of half-hour docu-dramas based on cases explored by the PRS. These involve all kinds of paranormal activities such as ghost sightings, poltergeist activity and other demonic disturbances. Often working with Buell are psychics, demonologists, psychologists and counselors.
First, let me say that I believe homes can be haunted and that spirits can toss around frying pans in the middle of the night. But I don’t believe that these events are due to the behavior of the deceased owner of the house who got lost somewhere between here and eternity and is roaming the halls looking for peace. This is pure theater. Disembodied souls don’t have voices that can be recorded on EVP meters, not only because their voiceboxes have long ago rotted in the grave, but because our God, who loves us beyond our comprehension, doesn’t let any of his beloved creatures “get lost” on the way to eternity.
The New Testament repeatedly affirms that “each will be rewarded immediately after death in accordance with his works and faith” (Catechism No. 1021). (Cf. Lk 16:22; 23:43; Mt 16:26; 2 Cor 5:8; Phil 1:23; Heb 9:27; 12:23.)
It also states that “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately — or immediate and everlasting damnation” (No. 1022).
In other words, souls don’t get lost on the way to eternity. Anyone who reads Scripture knows that our God loves each and every one of us so much that He knows the very number of hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). No one who loves us this much lets us wander around after death looking for somewhere to go.
Having said all that, Paranormal State is much like all the other “haunting” shows that are really fun to watch but, when analyzed more closely, probably deserve the criticism they get.
For instance, one criticism leveled against Buell and his team came from a psychic medium named Kelli Ryan who moved into her dream home with her husband where they encountered a friendly ghost named Bill in one of the downstairs hallways. Bill was the former owner of the house who died in a tragic accident. Also discovered in the house was a more sinister spirit who took up residence in the kitchen and started attacking the psychic and her husband and the ghost named Bill. After Kelli’s “spirit guide” warned her not to deal with the dark spirit on her own, they reached out to Buell. PRS was asked to not only help them in their battle against the dark spirit, but also to assist Bill who wanted to tell the world that no one was to blame for the accident that killed him.
Ryan claims Buell’s team was responsible for all sorts of distortions and deceptions in the show they produced, such as referring to both Bill and the evil spirit as one ghost named “the Shadow Man.” Buell even had a member of the crew dash passed windows and doors to make it look like the Shadow Man on camera. A member of Buell’s team, a so-called psychic named Chip Coffey, was actually a phony who was playing the part of a psychic on screen. During a so-called EVP session, the crew picked up transmissions from a local Ham radio operator and pretended that it was the voice of a ghost. Even worse, the message Bill so much wanted to get out to the public – that his death was an accident – was never told. That part of the show was left on the cutting room floor.
While reading this story, I couldn’t help but scratch my head. First of all, a psychic whose business is dabbling in the occult should not be surprised when her home is inhabited by more than just her husband and friendly neighborhood “spirit guide.” She’s inviting demons of all shapes and sizes into her life, which will only get worse over time unless she gets serious, stops pretending they’re her imaginary friends and repents.
As for Buell and Paranormal State, he left the show last year and there have been no new episodes since the conclusion of its sixth and final season in May, 2011.
Like I said – these shows make great spooky TV, but I wouldn’t read much more into them.
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I agree with you about your observations on Paranormal State. The paranormal investigation field is ripe with fraud. What I don’t agree with you about is EVP. EVP is a valid subject to study. I have been an investigator since 2004 and I have captured many unexplainable voices upon voice recorders that were not radio transmissions. In one home I have captured the voices of men, women, children, and even a meow from the owner’s deceased cat in 5 investigations at the location. I urge you to study more on the subject of EVP as it is one of the most mysterious subjects in paranormal . David Rountree has done pioneering work in the field for over 30 years.
I was skeptical too until I began capturing EVP. However, we capture EVP and test our files in a scientific manner in controlled EVP sessions and with the use of special equipment. The current theory of EVP is that it is not conventional sound at all because you never hear the voice that is captured on the recorder. It is imprinted upon only one recording device when there are several other devices in the same room by an unknown process.
That is the real mystery, and of course, where EVP originates from.
Thank you,
James Kelly
Arizona Paranormal Investigations
I have also noticed the great proclivity for drama to be a constant creation in shows such as these, as it is in most, if not all (sur)reallity tv. This is the first mistake of shows like this. The connection to human spirits who have passed over can be unsettling as those spirits can be truly unsettled and frustrated and in our midst, but the melodrama around it is not helpful to understanding out traditional responses to assisting those spirits, our Ancestors in their successful passage to the realm of the Ancestors. Thank you for pointing out one of the fundamental problems with these types of programs in general.
There are, though, problems with the above characterization of these spiritual dynamics:
“First, let me say that I believe homes can be haunted and that spirits can toss around frying pans in the middle of the night. But I don’t believe that these events are due to the behavior of the deceased owner of the house who got lost somewhere between here and eternity and is roaming the halls looking for peace. This is pure theater. Disembodied souls don’t have voices that can be recorded on EVP meters, not only because their voiceboxes have long ago rotted in the grave, but because our God, who loves us beyond our comprehension, doesn’t let any of his beloved creatures “get lost” on the way to eternity.”
If we take spiritual energy as purely that (and we know the implications are deep here), we know that energy is conserved, transformed, not deleted or destroyed. Why then is it impossible to conceive that that human energetic imprint or spirit can not then have a corporeal effect, still, on the potential energy in the movement of objects or emotions or human sensation? It only makes logical, rational sense that that would be entirely possible, in addition to the multiplicity of occurrences outside of televisual narratives that confirm these dynamics, especially in traditional and indigenous contexts (even modern ones where people have not shut down their full range of human energetic awareness) where many thousands of years of communal energetic learning, awareness and experience give grounding to such experiences in a functional and integrated way. This is why so many, many indigenous cultures have traditions, rituals and ceremonies for engaging and reconciling energies and spiritual dynamics in the Ancestral continuum. Malidoma Some’ asserts eloquently in “Healing Wisdom of Africa” that we are in such grave straits in the modern world precisely because we have forgotten and neglected (and been terrorized away from) our Ancestral relationships.
In addition, the multi-dimensionality of the universe must be taken into consideration when we speak of being able to hear spirits or Ancestors, those that have died. Of course they don’t have voice-boxes. That’s a simplistic argument, but it is wholly dismissive of energetic reality to suggest that we are limited to the creation of sound pressure only in the normal physiological sense. This is why we call it SUPERnatural or metaphysical! Nor should we assume that our human ability to hear is only limited to the ear. Again, that is simplistic in a world that largely agrees that we can see with the mind’s eye. The learned (and coerced) limitations that many of us acknowledge are exactly why we dismiss Ancestral energetic dynamics in the face of “rational”, “scientific” objectivism. It is pure folly and ignorance to relegate ourselves to “Avatar” science, thinking based upon the requirement to have energetic dynamics show up on meters or machines to be real or reliable. Clearly, though, study and experience shows that this can happen, but it is not the only way that these dynamics can be substantiated. I am sure there are countless Roman Catholics who can speak to the presence of their deceased loved ones in their midst with great assuredness and clarity.
The other issue that can and must be engaged here is that so many cultures do have the experience and awareness of souls being “lost” if the correct energetic work is not done or if our relationships to them are broken or out of balance. The cultural perspective from which the Roman Catholic viewpoint is derived is not the only valid one on the earth. To wholly dismiss the tens of thousands of years old (and beyond) cultural perspectives, wisdom, experience and knowledge of indigenous peoples would be clearly arrogant and ethnocentric at best. That primary human legacy cannot be undone with the writings of one particular culture, just as the rantings of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not necessarily make Jesus’s statements and perspectives wrong.
We are on the right track with critiquing television programs that misappropriate and distort spiritual phenomena, but we are gravely mistaken when we provide narrow and simplistically dismissive filtered reads to time-proven, functional and expansive human cultural narratives.