Tag Archive for: #paranormal

TownTalk: Boo! Ghost Hunting With Michael LaChiana

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It’s the spooky stuff Halloween’s made for  – ghosts and spirits, wreaking havoc from the Great Beyond on unwitting humans. But for Michael LaChiana, spirits – whether benevolent or otherwise – are part of the paranormal that he enjoys investigating. And he’s serious about it.

LaChiana, founder of the Heritage Hunters Society, said his investigations aren’t like the TV shows that crowd the guides this time of year. Those shows may have an entertainment value, but he doesn’t put much stock in them.

“I just don’t feel that the paranormal should be entertainment,” he said.

He prefers to research places with a history, a past, where he can fire up his devices to try to discover those from the spirit world who may have something to tell him.

“There are spirits everywhere, as far as I’m concerned,” he told WIZS’s Bill Harris on Monday’s TownTalk. “I like to connect with the spirits that might possibly” be in a historic home or other type of property.

He recently visited again Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. “I did some recordings on the property, in some of the outbuildings,” LaChiana said. The next step is to listen to those recordings to see what may have been captured.

He’s had good success recording spirits in homes across Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties over the years, he said. Those recorded sounds are called “EVPs” – electronic voice phenomena.

“We don’t hear it with our ears, but we capture it with our recorder,” Elliott explained.

He prefers to work in quieter, historic settings, and “go to places that have never been investigated.”

Besides Mount Vernon, he’s visited Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, and Ford Theater, where President Lincoln was assassinated. He’s knocked off a few of his “bucket list” spots in the U.S. and in Europe, with no sign of slowing down.

“I love the quiet places – you can really get some good responses,” he said. “Nobody talks to them all these years,” he said of the spirits who may be inhabiting any historical spot. “A lot of them want to share.”

LaChiana doesn’t have time for many individual investigations of people’s homes these days. He’s busy with his own research and with his TV show on Amazon Prime called “Heritage Hunters: Journey Through The Past.” The second episode is due out in about a month. It’s about Tom Dooley and who killed Laura Foster. LaChiana said he’s gotten some “amazing evidence” – from a spirit, of course – about who really murdered Foster back in 1866 in the mountains of North Carolina.

 

 

 

TownTalk: Ghost Hunting With Michael La Chiana

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About this time each year, TVs in living rooms everywhere are filled with scary movies and TV shows about spooky things to entertain viewers. But there’s a big difference in the shows that are designed for entertainment and the shows that Michael La Chiana is producing.

La Chiana, a paranormal investigator and researcher, is dedicated documenting the “real” stuff.

His first show, “The Heritage Hunters: Journey Through the Past” was released last year and he told WIZS’s Bill Harris on Wednesday’s TownTalk that it’s already gotten 900,000 views.

His second show is due out next month, he said. The show can be found on Prime Video he said.

There’s nothing wrong with those scary movies and shows about ghosts, but La Chiana said he reminds folks that there IS a difference: “what you see on TV – unless it’s a true documentary,  is not real.”

When he investigates paranormal phenomena, he said he looks at every angle to prove – or disprove – what’s going on.

“I love to debunk everything that I can so I can find real evidence that’s there,” he said. That unexplained creak or pop could be a loose floorboard or clanging water pipe inside a wall.

He is pretty much a one-man production company – he investigates, films, writes, edits, produces – so his second episode has taken a couple of years to complete.

“I’m very thorough and I dig deep,” he said.

The second episode delves into the history of Tom Dooley, who was a real person hanged for a murder in North Carolina back in the 1860’s.

Yes, that Tom Dooley, that the Kingston Trio sang about in their hit song of the same name. La Chiana found Laura Reed, a Nashville recording artist who covered a rock version of the song, and she said he could include it in his show.

“To have original music is great,” he added.

The upcoming episode investigates the jail where Dooley was held for a long time, and La Chiana said he’s “captured so many things over the years.” He uses sophisticated recording equipment during his research and investigation, and said he especially enjoys hearing what he can capture on the audio recordings.

“What we’ve captured is insane,” he said of the upcoming episode featuring the legend of Tom Dooley. “We’ve asked several times ‘Who killed Laura Foster?'” La Chiana said. “We got a male voice telling us the name,” he added.

There’s VP – voice phenomena – that you can hear with your ear – and then there’s EVP – electronic voice phenomena – those sounds that are best heard on audio recordings.

La Chiana said he prefers to investigate alone or with as few people as possible, to be able to stay focused on the presence or disturbances in a particular place.

Future episodes of the show will feature real places, La Chiana said. “Places you can actually go…and check out yourself,” he said.

When he went to investigation the mysterious Brown Mountain Lights in the western part of the state, he said he was intrigued.

Could those lights be a natural phenomenon – an energy that comes up out of the ground?

“It’s very fascinating,” La Chiana said, adding that such phenomena are “not so ghosty and more of a mystery – I like those types of things, too.”