Have you ever gone to a garage sale, and you found something interesting, and you bought it for no apparently reason? You would think it would look great in your house, then you hear some unexpectedly weird noise in your house. You think it was your spouse, or one of your friends pulling a prank on you, but you were alone in the house.
Have you ever thought it could be haunted, but you lived in a good apartment complex or a good neighbor where nothing ever happened? However, you still get creep out, in your house or an apartment. You have friends over and they seem to get creep out too by some cold spot in your home, and it is in the middle of winter.
However, one thing stands out, the object you brought was causing trouble in the house hold.
Premiering this week is a new series on the Syfy network called in Haunted Collector.
In “Haunted Collector,” cameras follow jack Zaffis as he investigates paranormal activity near and far. It’s different than the old show back in the mid-1980’s and 1990’s. Remember Friday the 13th the TV show. It’s like that but in reality with the paranormal.
The first episode includes a case in Deep River, where they look into unusual occurrences at the public library, built in 1881 as a home for a local ivory magnate.
“A lot of time people pick up old furniture,” Zaffis says, recalling a wardrobe that kids played in and around. “It reached a point they were going to move it, and all kinds of crazy activity broke out in house. It turned out they didn’t want this thing at all.
“I recently worked on a case in a house with 140 dolls. It was a completely bizarre situation, with this woman buying them off the Internet, and now claiming they were haunted. She started having a tremendous amount of activity.”
The object-related theme places him apart from other popular TV investigators such as the “Ghost Hunters,” whose work literally precedes him on the network (with a show at 8 p.m.).
“I’ve been friends with Jason Hawes for 20 years,” Zaffis says of the Rhode Island-based “Ghost Hunter.” “We’ve all worked together appearing on other shows. I’ve had guest appearances on ‘Ghost Hunters’ and ‘Ghost Adventures,’ as well.”
And now he joins the crowd. But are there more hauntings these days, or just more TV shows about them?
“Both,” he says. “Due to the TV shows and some radio shows, there’s more exposure, and people now are not afraid to talk about it the way they were years ago. In other countries, people accept the paranormal more. Here, they shun it. But I’ve seen boundaries come down with lot of people.”
Zaffis’ own interest in the paranormal came as teenager growing up in Stratford.
“It started at 16, seeing at the foot of my bed a ghost or apparition, or whatever you want to call it. I asked my mother and she said, ‘Did he shake his head back and forth?’ And I said yes. She said, ‘that was my father. He wouldn’t say too much. But he would shake his head back and forth.’
“I said that there’s got to be something to all this stuff.”
“When I stared, very few people were doing it,” he says of investigating the paranormal. And research in the pre-Internet days could be pretty difficult: “It wasn’t until TV shows doing it that exploded.”
People began contacting him though a website (www.johnsaffis.com) he established 11 years ago. Today he has a whole team, led by his own adult kids.
“My son, Chris, has been working with me the past couple of years, doing investigations with me, and has shown a little bit of interest in it now that he’s older. My daughter, Aimee, does research for me looking into land, locations and the history of places and items,” Zaffis says. “Two other members of the team are Beth Ezzo, who has been a lead investigator for 10 years now, and we also have Brian Cano, my tech guy.”
The technical items come in handy in identifying electromagnetic fields, pockets of heat and cold and recording devices that may capture the words or actions of the paranormal.
Zaffis was contacted by TV producers just this spring and work on the new show began only in March. Six episodes are being shot for the initial season.
Sometimes the filmed pieces end when he places the items in question into the paranormal “museum” in the barn behind his house, where things, he says, aren’t as full as mayhem as they might sound.
“The funny thing is, I haven’t experienced too much activity there,” Zaffis says. “When I do have people over, a lot of them tell me they do experience something, some kind of activity in the museum.”
But mostly he’s neutralized most of the objects using a set of rituals he’s developed himself, using salts, rites and holy water.
“Some of the things I do are things that have been used for years, other things are different parts of spiritual or religious rituals. The majority of the times, the energy in some of things are done in bindings, things bound into the items. Some of the rites we do break them of that energy.”
Meanwhile, Zaffis says, “I’m hoping people will enjoy [the show] and learn from it.”
One of the primary lessons, he says, is obvious:
“If you’re out antiquing or at garage sales and you see an item and get creeped out by it, don’t buy it, leave it.”
By watching tonight episode it was good and interesting. I would understand why they did not take the gun to authorities. If they have taken it, they would not understand and all hell will break loose. By placing in a special museum, the objects are protected for harming no human. Some people have to be educated to understand about the paranormal world. These guys are professional, and they know what they are doing.
I can wait to see the next episode of Haunted Collector on Wednesday night at 9pm on Syfy.
HAUNTED COLLECTOR premieres Wednesday at 9 pm. on Syfy.
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