The paranormal has always been one of Chad Calek’s interests.
“Instead of going to spring break, I was going to the Waverly Hills Sanatorium or the Villisca Axe Murder House. I was going to all these haunted places to investigate them,” he said.
More than 200 students, faculty and visitors gathered on Friday to hear Calek speak in the Frank G. Pogue Student Center’s Multipurpose Room. Calek spoke about his purported encouters with ghosts and showed footage he and his team recorded for the television show “Paranormal State.”
In “Good vs. Evil” – Calek’s first episode on the show – Chip Coffey, a psychic, and Ryan Buell, one of the directors, told Calek there was a demon in the basement and suggested he check it out.
While sitting on a chair in the middle of the basement, an ominous growl came out of the darkness.
Calek radioed upstairs and asked if anyone else had heard it. “Yeah, man, [we] heard it,” they replid.
The growl came again and Calek told the team upstairs, “There’s something down here, bro.”
“People ask me how I could just sit there and listen to the growling without moving.”
Calek laughed as he described the situation to the audience.
“Well, the truth is, the growling came from between me and the stairway out… If that thing had come from behind me, I would’ve been flying through that door like a pissed off Sasquatch!”
Calek has been investigating such phenomena since the age of 12, when his family was torn apart by paranormal attacks.
His parents and siblings had told him they had been experiencing things, but Calek had seen and felt nothing.
Calek said he would shout into the air to provoke the ghosts to show themselves when the family wasn’t there; he wanted to be a believer and not think that his family was crazy.
One night at 3 a.m., Calek woke up to his father reciting Scriptures.
According to Calek, when he looked into his parents’ room, he saw his mother’s hair was being pulled by something that wasn’t there.
She also had mild burn marks on her skin and was speaking in Latin, said Calek.
“It’s when you’re looking into the eyes of your mother, and it’s just not your mother and everything that’s going on is just shattering your entire belief system,” Calek said.
That was the moment that he decided to investigate the paranormal.
Throughout their time with “Paranormal State,” Calek and his team have encountered paranormal activity in Waverly Hills Sanatorium, Villisca Axe Murder House as well as churches.
“Our goal is to go out and challenge the biggest [and] most scary, horrifying places around, document that footage and show the people have the power,” said Calek.
This will be the last season on “Paranormal State” for the team. Calek and Buell have been working on a documentary film called “American Ghost Hunter,” which will be released June 2.
“It came out 10 times more intense than we had imagined,” said Calek. The film covers the paranormal activity his family experienced for more than two decades.
According to Calek, “the stuff we captured is the most compelling evidence we have for the paranormal.”
Calek and Buell realized people are going to have questions and will want answers once they see his film.
That’s when they decided to tour around the world with the film. They intend to give their audience a taste of their world.
Pittsburgh and Philadelphia will be two of their even locations this year.
The Student Philanthropy Council sponsored “Student Philanthropy Day: Trail of the Dead Tour 2011” and made it possible for Calek to come to campus.
Visit his website at: http://www.wolfmanproductions.com/chad_calek.html
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