WHAT kid in college hasn’t played around with the paranormal – Ouija boards, dormséances, visits to psychics? Well, tonight’s debut of “Paranormal State,” the new A&E show, follows a bunch of kids – Penn State college students – who turned their interest in the paranormal into actual jobs as ghost and demon hunters.
Ryan Buell (who seems to have been at Penn State a paranormally long time) founded the Paranormal Research Society six years ago. The group now receives thousands of requests a year from folks who believe their houses are haunted, their kids are possessed or who just can’t get the damned demons out of the basement.
And some of the footage of what they capture is absolutely riveting. And some of it, like any stakeout in the non-paranormal world, is caffeine-dependent and involves hours of waiting. Of course, since this is a TV show, hours of waiting is reduced to minutes of screen time, called the good parts. To paraphrase that old pilot’s maxim, “Ghost hunting is 99 percent boredom and one percent pure terror.”
Each week, the group, which consists of Buell and a few others, accepts one request to ghost bust a house. Tonight’s case involves a little kid named Matthew, who looks like he’s seen “The Sixth Sense” a few times. Or maybe M. Night Shyamalan got his inspiration from Matthew. The kid does seem to see dead people and has since his family moved into their house. One of the dead people is named Timmy.
Well, it turns out that a man named Timothy took his own life years earlier in an area that is directly up the hill. Matthew’s parents swear they didn’t know before they bought the house, and they’re sure the poor 6-year-old kid has never heard the story.
Like the Dracula hunters of old, Buell & Co. come equipped to every haunting with holy water. I don’t know what happens if they go to a Jewish Muslim haunted house. Would sprinkling holy water work or just tick off the demon? Luckily Matthew must be Christian because what they uncover here with this kid is quite interesting and quite susceptible to holy water.
Now, you might say that it’s all manipulated, but I went to one of these ghost huntings with the crew last summer. I’d tell you what happened to me, but you’d think I had skipped my meds.
The Buell crew brings in psychics to help them root out the demons and ghosts, and priests (who are not shown on camera) to bless the houses. It’s a show that can bring on some old-fashioned ghostly goose bumps, sure, but they’re a little weak on the medium front. They need to call Kim Russo, the best medium this side of the other side. The show has terrific potential – but sometimes these students need a teacher – medium-level preferred.
“Paranormal State”
Tonight at10 on A&E