Into The Unknown

It all began that one memorable day in the early 1970s.

John Zaffis was 16 years old and still living at home. Just as he did every other night, the young man was in his room getting ready for bed.

This time was different, however. This time, he saw it.

“I had a sighting. I looked up and there it was, right at the foot of the bed,
just shaking its head back and forth,” Zaffis says, “back and forth.
I went and got my mom and when I told her what it was doing, the way
it was shaking its head, that’s when she told me:
‘That was your grandfather.”

Before he died, Zaffis’ grandfa¬ther had a distinctive way of moving his head and it was from the young man’s description that his mother recognized the spirit visitation.
As Zaffis would soon learn, there was a reason for the visit.

“It was a few days later that my grandmother passed away. He had come to
help her cross over,” recalls Zaffis about his first brush with the
paranormal.
“So that’s what got me started in all this, 32 years ago, trying to understand.”

He has spent much of his life since that day investigating the paranormal.
He has studied ghosts and felt the chilly presence of poltergeists,
experienced pleasant spirits and been confronted by demons.

“Basically, we’re all very curious about this one thing —
Is there life after death?
That’s what most people want to know, to understand.
But the answers are not so cut and dry,” says Zaffis, considered one of the
foremost authorities in the field of paranormal investigations in the
country.

Although he has learned many things, there are still big unanswered questions. He believes spirits enter the earthly plane when they are invited in
by those in the human realm, often unintentionally.

Once that door is open, Zaffis cautions, it is impossible to know whether
the entity will arrive with friendly aspirations or diabolical intentions.
It is imperative to realize, he says, that just as good and bad co-exist
in the world, the balance is similar in the realm of the paranormal —
where there is an angelic presence, there is also the demonic,
where miracles occur, there is also the flipside, rare as it is,
of human possession.

The one thing he is positive about, is that these things do exist.

“After being involved with investigations for 32 years, I can tell you that people do have com¬munication with the paranormal,” Zaffis says.

“There have been too many people that have had experiences to not believe in the realm of the paranormal,” although Zaffis concedes that his personal approach when first being called in to investigate a particular situation,
is skepticism.

“When you get involved with individuals you want to first find out whether
it is real, or is it their imagination. We go in and try to figure if there’s any activity, if there are things going on that we can get documented,” says Zaffis.

Once called in, he heads to work with his investigator’s toolbox, its contents fitted with a variety of cameras and tape recorders, flashlights, thermometers and religious items. With toolbox in hand, he sets out to document any happenings scientifically.

After so many years, he has come back with volumes of images, still pictures and videotapes depicting fog-like psychic mists engulfing homes
and trapezoid-shaped globules rising in a dark sky over graveyards.

In addition to his investigation work, Zaffis maintains a super-human
schedule of events.

He heads the Paranormal Research Institute of New England and runs the Paranormal Museum in Stratford, Conn. He recently co-authored the book “Shadows of the Dark,” and spends a considerable time on the road,
crossing the country to investigate happenings and conducting presentations
of his documented hauntings on the college lecture circuit.

Last week, he was in Schenectady talking to the New Growth Fellowship.

Zaffis is also a popular resource for the unexplained phenomenon-type TV shows. This weekend, he appeared on an American Movie Channel documentary exploring human possessions that was slotted in between full-length screenings of the second and third “Exorcist” films. And one of his most harrowing experiences — the Carmen Snedeker case in 1988 — will be airing this fall on the Discovery Channel as the documentary “A Haunting in Connecticut.”
The story has been will soon be a full-length film by Universal Studios.

Although the Snedeker case happened nearly two decades ago, it is one
that continues to resonate with Zaffis.

Snedeker had relocated from upstate New York to a new home in Connecticut that was, unbeknown to her at the time, a former funeral home. After experiencing some unusual occurrences, Zaffis was called in to investigate.

He immediately realized, he says, a high level of activity. He recalls
how one of the rooms in the home had rapidly turned frigid and became aware
of the horrid smell of rotting meat. As he followed the pungent scent up a staircase inside the home, Zaffis watched as the face of a demon
began forming from thin air.
Slowly, it began descending the staircase and coming toward him.

He left the house for a few days and three members of the clergy were
called in. Zaffis watched as they performed a ritual to cleanse the
home. He still calls it one of the most frightening experiences of his
life, remembering picture frames that shook on the walls, and the sound
of rattling plates clattering inside kitchen cabinets during the ritual.

The case had a peaceable outcome.

Today, Snedeker joins Zaffis on someof his cross-country lecture tours
to tell the story.
The presence of clergy at rituals like exorcisms may not be publicly acknowledged by the church, but Zaffis knows otherwise.

“I have been intermingling with a lot of people and with a lot of
different clergy of many faiths,” Zaffis says.
“They are Roman Catholic priests and rabbis, Buddhist monks and ministers.
You name it,” he says. “They believe in it, even though they might not speak of it.”

There are different levels of haunting activity, Zaffis offers.
They range from the mildest forms — like hearing footsteps and seeing the
lights going on and off — to more oppressive happenings that cause
disruption among family members, some of whom hear voices telling them
to do bad things. The most severe cases Zaffis says he has witnessed are
outright possessions.

“Getting involved with possession is rare, but when I come against
these things, I do not do the exorcisms myself,” he says. “I do assist
in them and I document them and, later, when the clergy is done, I work
on how to keep those ‘doors’ closed.”

Just before heading out on the lecture circuit a few weeks ago, Zaffis was asked to investigate a situation that required immediate attention.
It proved to be his most harrowing case in more than decade.

“My life is a very interesting life, and you just never know what to
expect,” he explains.

“Just before going out on the road in September, I got a call about one
young lady that just couldn’t be put off until I got back,” he says.
“I had a feeling that it would be extremely active.”

He would not identify the woman by name, nor the home, only that an exorcism was performed somewhere in Connecticut.
During the ritual, as Zaffis stood alongside members of the clergy at the woman’s bedside, he observed the woman’s possession and witnessed the demon as it came forth.
Then, shockingly, the woman began to levitate.

“It was bizarre standing behind her when she began to levitate. It took
all of us pushing her, to eventually get her back down. In my 32 years
of doing this, that was the first time I have witnessed something like that.”

The episode was filmed but, to ensure confidentially of the family
and clergy involved, Zaffis says, it will stay in his archives.

More than 30 years as a para¬normal researcher and investigator have
taught him that most people, whether willingly or unwillingly, are the
ones who grant permission for a spirit to enter their lives.

Only human beings can become possessed, Zaffis offers, not inanimate
objects. Although things like personal items and home properties can
hold energy, which are usually sent to the object by an individual.

The most common places for these energies and hauntings to occur are places
where tragic events have happened, like battlefields, or places where a
lot of people have passed through with highly charged emotions, like
churches, old theaters and hotels, according to Zaffis.

The best advice he can offer is that people use caution when getting involved with things dealing with the paranormal. As innocent as things like
a Ouija board may appear, he estimates 90 percent of the worst cases
he has experienced begin with the use of the “game.”

“I always tell people to be extremely careful with things like Ouija boards,
tarot cards and having séances. It can be extremely dangerous dealing in anything to do with the supernatural realm.” Zaffis says
Certain objects are capable of opening a door to the unknown.

“It could be a good spirit, or it could be an invitation to something demonic,” Zaffis says.
“The thing is — You just never know.”

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian

(photograph: psychic mist in a connecticut graveyard, courtesy: john zaffis)