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.