Yes, I'm ashamed to admit I've continued to watch Paranormal State, although as I suspected there really hasn't been anything worth writing about until now. This week however, one of the PRS team's investigations was noteworthy. The current homeowner reported to them that she had heard footsteps and felt threatened in the home. She said she refused to live in the place (or even enter it without good reason) and also mentioned that her dog (who she had brought with her) also shared a keen dislike for the building and for the second floor in particular.

After this initial interview the team from Penn State really came through with some solid research (and results). They determined that the property had changed hands an unusually large number of times over the past fifty years or so and decided to interview former owners. The first couple they spoke to mentioned that they really hadn't noticed anything odd about the house, except that their dog didn't like the second floor. This same dog was apparently later hit by a car and killed.

An odd point was that the property was fairly rural and not many cars came down the road. The dog also had apparently never shown any interest in chasing cars or going near the road in the past so they thought it was a bit odd that the dog should have run down to the road and struck by a passing car. Of course, this wasn't really something the couple dwelled on but later they got another dog and it was killed the same way.

Several interviews later it was confirmed that at least four dogs under three different owners had been struck and killed by automobiles on the largely untraveled road near the property and several dogs had a pronounced aversion to the second floor. An interview with a neighbor who had lived nearby her entire life revealed that thirty or forty years ago the property had been owned by a woman who was not well thought of in the community and the lady's male friend had killed the neighbor's dog. Elsewhere they had heard rumors of the same woman and man and that the man supposedly killed more than one dog in the neighborhood.

Chip Coffey, who appears to regularly consult for PRS on "psychic" matters, came in and Ryan claimed that per their usual arrangement he gave Chip no facts about the case to work with. Chip did see a photo of a dog in the house (on a refrigerator magnet, I believe) so that might have clued him in but I admit his results were seemingly fantastical. He knew that there were multiple dogs involved, pegged the name "Margaret" which turned out to be the name of the woman who had owned the property forty years ago (when at least one neighborhood dog was first killed), found a headstone with Margaret's name in the woods nearby and later found a pile of stones which, after some digging and a gory unveiling, was confirmed to be the final resting place of a (fairly) recently killed dog.

Now, if Chip had wandered the property before giving Ryan his impressions he might have stumbled across the headstone and got the name (and the location of the stone) from that, but much of the rest of his "impressions" would have taken a fair amount of research, or else for someone to brief him on the matter. I'm almost more hesitant to certify a "psychic" occurance than even a ghostly one, but if trickery was involved then either Chip is remarkably well prepared or he's got people helping him.

Lorraine Warren was then brought in — something took this investigation even further in a direction I'm not very fond of — and suggested a way to cleanse the property, which was then undertaken. Everyone claimed the house felt lighter, happier, etc. Yada-yada. What did impress me is that the current owner's dog — which previously would not go in the house, was reported to dislike the second floor and actually started barking when Ryan began to climb the stairs — was shown during the credits running around happily in what appeared to be the second story of the house.

As usual, the facts do not support paranormal conclusions, but there also does not appear to be any ready scientific explanation for many of them. Perhaps I'm biased, being a dog lover, but I found the story to be very compelling and thought it was well worth investigating. The PRS team's historical research was surprisingly good but in the end they resorted to psychic (read: indefinable) "solutions" that I personally felt stitched a very inadequate conclusion onto the end of an otherwise very intriguing investigation.