“Paranormal activity is part of the real world. Just like any theory that is yet unproved, we are trying to legitimize [the science],” Brian Cano, paranormal investigator, said Friday, Oct. 25, when he and his partner Chris Mancuso came to speak and investigate Elizabethtown College.
Born in Staten Island, N.Y., the pair started their investigations there and have since traveled up and down much of the East Coast. Both men started their careers as documentarians, stumbling into observing the paranormal by mistake in 2002. Long before ghost-hunting shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures were popular, the men worked with a subject that was taboo to much of the country. Cano, who was raised Catholic, said his curiosity stemmed from an interest in the occult growing up. Mancuso’s interest also started during childhood, with movies like “The Exorcist,” “Poltergeist” and “Ghostbusters,” all of which were ahead of their time concerning the paranormal.
Cano and Mancuso started their presentation by testing students’ skepticism. They showed pictures of alleged ghosts and asked what everyone saw in order to judge who fell into the trap they try hard to avoid: seeing what one wants to or expects to see. A healthy dose of disbelief is one part of their three-part system. That is Mancuso’s job as the skeptic on the team; he steps back and rules out all other possibilities, before submitting something the team sees or hears as paranormal activity. Cano considers himself the scientist of the team and many people have filled the third role, the psychic.
While the team says they never expect a place to be haunted, they go into each site with plans of investigating to prove or disprove a haunting. They advise using the terms “prove” and “disprove” loosely, because these investigations are never guaranteed and can’t be repeated. Cano explained that even if a spirit were in the place one investigates, it is assumed that these beings can and do travel freely. Finding it once does not mean it will be found again.
“I know [the paranormal] exists, but I don’t think it is as common as people believe that it is,” Mancuso said.
A slideshow of some of their more famous experiences accompanied their presentation. The presentation covered the tools of the trade, the process that the men follow at an investigation and the history of the team. Mancuso told the story of his first experience with the paranormal at the Grand Midway Hotel, when he started believing that the paranormal could be real. Some of their investigations have taken them to the Lizzie Borden House, the Portsmouth Lighthouse, the Shanley Hotel, and, in Pennsylvania, to the Eastern State Penitentiary, the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry and the Phoenixville Library.
After the presentation, Cano and Mancuso took 40 students on an investigation of the Fairview Apartments, which was Wenger’s name when it housed students. The ghost stories surrounding Wenger formed from the rumors of student suicides in the dormitory building. Students and faculty reported they have heard voices, objects moving and doors being opened and shut.
The students and investigators congregated in a second floor classroom, dealt out tools such as spirit boxes, electromagnetic field detectors, thermometers and REM pods (for detecting unseen disturbances in the field around the device). Cano and Mancuso allowed students to take part in an investigation. Students asked questions and the team played back their tape to listen for responses. Questions such as: “what is your favorite color” seemed to get the response “red.” The words “tie-dye” and “farmer” were repeated multiple times throughout the session. Listening for repeated words, phrases and the use of code words that were dictated by the investigators was one of the methods the pair taught students who participated in the hunt.
“You bring seven senses to any site with you,” Mancuso said. “The five regular ones, a sixth sense [like being psychic] and the seventh, common sense.”
He told students if one remembered to bring all of them along to an investigation site, they would be the most advanced tools the students could employ. All of the technology that the students experimented with has limits, they explained, but with an open mind, your body is the best tool. Students continued to search for spirits of deceased students and faculty well into the night, and many said they will observe more carefully, listening and watching for signs of paranormal activity on campus.