SOUTHINGTON — So what if all those ghost-hunting TV shows come up with little more than greenish, night-vision video of people shouting, “What was that?”
Believers might not have made a convincing case, but proving beyond a doubt that things don’t go bump in the night is even harder. And the recent movie release of “The Haunting in Connecticut,” based on events some say happened in Southington, has put the town on an unofficial map of strange places.
Southington is also the home of Connecticut Paranormal Encounters and Research, a group of part-time investigators armed with high-tech listening and watching devices. On April 2, C.P.E.A.R. gave a presentation to a full room of about 60 at the Southington Library. And to borrow a line from “Poltergeist II,” they’re baaack for another free Southington Library program Thursday at 7 p.m. This one is already filled, too, with a preregistered audience.
“There are so many people who are curious about the paranormal, and believe they may have seen something paranormal in their house or maybe at a cemetery,” said the library’s Jeanne Chmielewski, who booked C.P.E.A.R. for both presentations.
Carrie Kerns and Mike Mafera, an engaged couple who met online through their mutual interest in the paranormal, formed C.P.E.A.R. in early 2008. His father and her son are also on the team, which has 13 members.
C.P.E.A.R. (online at cpeargroup.com), will check out that strange noise in the attic, or that TV set that seems to go on and off by itself. And the group says it does the job for free, and with science, not superstition.
“Our group is a mixture of what I would say is skeptics and full believers,” Kerns said. “I’m a full believer, because I grew up in a house that had activity.”
In fact, that house is also in the Marion area of Southington, not far from where she lives now. Kerns said it was occupied not just by her family, but by the dark figure of a man with a hat, as well.
Mafera had his own experiences, as a kid growing up in Florida, with a strange and scary figure that he hid from under his bed covers.
“I’m a huge skeptic,” he said, “so it takes a lot for me to believe something. But I’ve seen enough to be pretty convinced that there is something else there.”
He considers the group’s work to be community service, backed by thousands of dollars in surveillance equipment and countless hours reviewing audio and video for the tiniest noise or movement.
“Our time is the biggest thing we give up,” said Chuck Feltman, another member of the team.
They’ve done about 28 investigations so far, Mafera said, and “probably 80 percent have gotten EVPs or evidence of some kind.”
EVPs are “electronic voice phenomena”— noises that were inaudible in person but revealed themselves later on digital recordings. C.P.E.A.R. also records video with night-vision cameras, and uses digital thermometers and EMF meters to document shifts in temperature and electromagnetic fields, which paranormal investigators say can signal the presence of something unusual.
Whether that thing is a ghost or a demon, whether it has consciousness, can be open to argument.
Kerns and Mafera have a strange photograph taken in a graveyard of a swirling pattern they say might have been a ghost. And Mafera said they’ve recorded video of unexplained moving shadows.
But so far like everyone else, they don’t have that irrefutable image the non-believing world is waiting for.
“That’s what everyone’s trying to catch,” Kerns said. “That’s the Holy Grail or what we’re looking for.”
Source: NewBritanHerald
