Interviewed for "We The Experiencers"

Over on Twitter/X, Jamie Christoffersen sent me interview questions for "We the Experiencers". Here are the questions (in quote text) and my unedited answers to those questions (considering how extensive my experiences with the paranormal have been, many of my answers ended up rather lengthy):

 1.  Tell us about yourself—your background and interests before your extraordinary experience.

I grew up in a small town in central upstate New York. I moved to the Capital District of New York to go to college and then never left the region. Although I like to say my hometown is like some cursed town in a Stephen King novel, I must say most of my most dramatic experiences occurred after I relocated to the Capital District.

I’m college educated, having both an Associate Degree and a Bachelor Degree in Science (Biology). For a time, I worked in the science field, as a lab tech, first in the NYS Museum mycology lab, then in the NYS Museum aquatic biology lab, and finally in the NYS Department of Health’s newborn screening lab. During my second stint at the NYS Museum, I also worked in the NYS Museum publications warehouse in the NYS Education Building (more on that below). However, I decided to switch gears and left the health lab behind to pursue a career in art. Nowadays I function as an artist and illustrator selling print-on-demand items featuring my artworks and designs through my online shops.

As a polymath, I’ve an interest in a wide variety of topics, including: history, legends, and folklore (especially traditional fairy lore). I’m also a published poet and writer of short stories and nonfiction articles. I’ve written articles about folklore, the unexplained, history, and speculative poetry (poetry with fantastical, science fictional, mythic, and folkloric themes). 

2.  Before this event, did you have any interest in UFOs, paranormal, or extraterrestrial topics? How did this shape your interpretation?

As long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in both science and the unexplained. Along with books about animals, I’d read books about UFOs, cryptids, ghosts, folklore, and the paranormal. I think part of that interest arose out of hearing stories of the ghosts that allegedly haunted my grandmother’s old house in my hometown. Unfortunately, I can’t say with certainty that I ever experienced anything paranormal in that house, and I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid.

3.  Share the key details of your paranormal, UFO, or extraterrestrial experience—when, where, and what led up to it?

Over the years, I’ve had multiple encounters with the paranormal. I did have one notable experience while still residing in my hometown in central New York. I was riding my bicycle, a one-speed kid’s bike with coaster brakes, inside a neighbor’s old unused dairy barn. My feet slipped from the pedals as I was heading toward the gutter that encircled the center aisle. I suddenly felt a force push me from behind, which sped me up and over the gutter.

Later in life, many of my most notable encounters with the paranormal took place in a haunted house I lived in for eleven years. Occurrences included things such as: seeing a human-shaped shadow (grey, not black) in one corner of the dining room where no such shadow should have been, hearing a sound like marbles rolling across the dining room floor and down the dining room wall, feeling static-filled cold spots that would move about, being in the kitchen and hearing a voice other than my daughter’s call “mommy” or “daddy” from behind, seeing small brightly illuminated orbs of light dart and stream across the living room, hearing a woman’s happy laughter coming from an empty second floor room at the other end of the hall (one with no heat vent and in which the window was tightly closed, finding a perfect tiny (about two inches tall) human face imprinted in the shower curtain, seeing a face featuring an Elvis-type pompadour and wearing sunglasses appear on various background images on the computer, being downstairs in the living room and hearing sounds as if someone was walking around in the bedroom above, catching strange bangs and thumps on a tape recorder, and seeing a tattered black shape rush at me when I’d enter the darkened bedroom at night. The last triggered a fight-or-flight response (I stood tensed ready to fight). 

All of that being said, I have had experiences in other locales as well. I believe I saw what has since become something of a famous local ghost — “Jason”, the ghost who haunts “The Dungeon” (the basement filled with metal book shelves) of the New York State Education Building. I used to work on the third floor when the NYS Museum had publications stored there. One day, I thought I saw a roughly human-shaped green-and-brown figure down one of the aisles. It spooked me and I told the woman who worked on the floor above. She told me “oh, you’ve met Jason, then” and proceeded to share the story about the ghost in the “Dungeon”. That was the first I’d heard of it.

I had a weird experience at Fort Ticonderoga, another location with a haunted reputation. I can’t say for sure this experience was paranormal in nature, but I entered one of the ground floor corner rooms and immediately felt as if the entire building was coming down on me. I felt a heavy oppressiveness and my vision began to go as a blackness encroached from the edges. I felt faint and unsteady and almost blacked out. I felt I had to leave the room right away, and turned to do so. As soon as I crossed the threshold, the feeling left me like a “whoosh”.

After my family and I moved out of the haunted house, we had a few experiences in our next residence. One night as snow was falling outside, we heard a knock on the door. Even the dog we had at the time reacted. I looked out, but no one was there, and there were no footprints in the freshly fallen snow. Another day, I distinctly felt the back of my Henley shirt rise up and out, as if someone had used two fingers to pull it back.

My wife and I have had various experiences in our current residence, but most seem fleeting. The most dramatic was the day lightning hit a pole across the street and shortly afterwards we heard pounding on our inside backdoor, between the backroom and kitchen. I also found a child-sized footprint in the dust in the attic, and photographed it [see below].

I’ve had even more experiences than those I’ve described above, but I believe I’ve covered the highlights.

4.  What was the most vivid moment of your encounter? Describe what you saw, felt, or sensed.

I can describe what I consider one of the most vivid encounters in the haunted house my family and I lived in for eleven years. Out of all of the encounters, the one that’s really stuck in my head, the one that really made an impression, was when my wife and I distinctly heard a woman’s happy laughter coming from the empty room at the other end of the upstairs hall (what I believe had been a dressing room). At the time, we both looked at each other in amazement. I went down the hall to investigate, but saw nothing. 

A strange thing about that incident is the fact that our daughter, who was, at that moment, lounging on our bed reading a book, never reacted and apparently heard nothing. My wife and I both heard the laughter clearly, but it seems our daughter did not. 

The distinctness of the incident, the clarity of the laughter heard, amazed me. That’s what I felt at the time, a sense of amazement and wonderment. There wasn’t anything negative about the incident, it was just strange.

5.  How did the environment or others around you react? Were there witnesses, or did you feel alone?

As I mentioned above, my wife and I both heard the laughter. At the time, we corroborated our accounts regarding what we heard. It was definitely a shared experience. We had other such shared experiences, like both of us hearing “mommy” or “daddy” while in the kitchen.

6.  Did you experience any communication—verbal, telepathic, or symbolic? What message did you receive?

No.

7.  Were there physical effects or evidence, like marks, objects, or changes in your surroundings? Any documentation?

There is no evidence of the incident involving the woman’s laughter. However, I had obtained a recording (now long gone) of strange noises one time I left a tape recorder running in the upstairs hallway of the haunted house, but the quality of the recorder itself left something to be desired. I also have photos of the footprint I found in the attic of our current residence.

8.  How did you process the aftermath? Did you share it, and how did others respond?

Here’s where things get frustrating. I’ve made the mistake of sharing my anecdotes about experiences such as those I’ve described above online, which has led to self-avowed rational skeptics calling me “someone who believes in odd things” and claiming I do not understand how science works (I actually have a background in science - see above). Sharing the incident in which my wife and I heard the laughter coming from an empty room has led some such skeptics to accuse us of suffering from “folie à deux”, a shared delusion. Only one was open-minded enough to accept the possibility that my wife actually heard what we say we heard, but refused to accept a paranormal explanation for the incident. However, he did open my eyes to the fact that I can’t honestly call it a “disembodied voice” because I wasn’t in that empty room at the time that laughter sounded. Fair enough.

One thing I refuse to do is to discount and ignore my observations of experiences with the paranormal simply because they do not fit into a rational scientific world view. In my mind, doing such discounting and ignoring is bad science.

9.  Have you noticed lasting changes in your life, health, relationships, or abilities since the encounter?

Not that I was ever particularly closed-minded, but all of my experiences over the years have really opened my mind to the potential of experiencing strange things unexplained by current science. I like to believe it has broadened my view of the universe. I also think it might have formed a connection with the paranormal, perhaps in the manner of a quantum entanglement. 

10.  Has this experience changed your perception of reality? If so, how?

I think I’m more observant than the ordinary man-on-the-street, but then this may have always been true of me.I know I’m more accepting of the fact that strange things happen and strange entities exist.

11.  Did it shift your beliefs about extraterrestrial life or paranormal phenomena? Where do you stand now?

I’ve always been open to the idea of extraterrestrial life and paranormal phenomena. However, some of the experiences I had in the haunted house and in subsequent residences has opened my eyes to the possibility that the traditional tales of the Wee Folk aren’t just tales, that such entities actually exist. In other words, I now believe that there are a host of in-between entities that might interact with our material world. As a matter of fact, I suspect a certain group of such beings have attached themselves to me and my family, if they haven’t always been around and I just didn’t know it.

12.  How has this experience shaped your spiritual journey or beliefs?

I can’t say my experiences with the paranormal are responsible, but I’ve gone from being a barely-practicing Catholic to a barely-practicing Episcopalian and now an agnostic with spiritual beliefs.I feel no one religion covers all, that no one religion preaches the entire truth.

Additionally, having run into a Christian editor/publisher who stated spiritual entities consist ONLY of angels and demons and claimed that my dark art and poetry was conjuring demons because I called some of the more mischievous experiences with the paranormal as being “trickster-type” also helped sour my attitude toward organized religion. I refuse to see the Wee Folk as demonic. Nothing they’ve ever done hints of diabolic activity.

13.  Have you connected with communities, researchers, or other experiencers? What insights did you gain?

Only informally online. 

14.  How has this redefined your sense of purpose or connection to the universe?

Even when alone, I don’t feel lonely, because I figure someone is around me, even if unseen.

15.  What advice would you give to others hesitant to share or explore similar experiences?

Find others who’ve had similar experiences and share your stories with them. Don’t bother trying to persuade the so-called rational skeptics of the truth of your experiences because they’re quite closed-minded. They discount such experiences out-of-hand because such things do not fit into their world view.