LEOMINSTER -- Shannon Sylvia said the first sign of paranormal activity in her condo was when her bedroom door flew open on a calm night in 1998.
"It was around 11:30 at night, and I was lying in bed, and the bedroom door just went 'bang!'" she said Friday. "It ripped open so hard that the doorknob put a hole in the wall, and it scared me to death. The windows were closed, there was no breeze and there was absolutely no one there. That's when I started to realize that something was up here."
Sylvia, 32, bought the condo at 593 Main St. about a decade ago. She since learned that her open, two-story loft had been a fourth-grade classroom of the Pierce Street School until the mid-1980s.
And the Leominster-based Web designer has also been haunted by echoing voices and inanimate objects that move on their own, she said.
Her story and her house were compelling enough for the producers of "Paranormal U," a new series for the A&E television network, who will begin filming an episode there and around Leominster Jan. 11, co-executive producer Alan LaGarde said Friday.
"I think there was something just in her, and the way she told her story," he said. "We wanted to do something that has a little bit of history to it, so the old school house has a lot of appeal to us."
"Paranormal U" follows a group of students from the Paranormal Research Society (PRS) at Pennsylvania State University, who investigate claims of haunting and the paranormal, LaGarde said.
The episode featuring Sylvia will be the eighth of 13 for the first season, LaGarde said, adding that the show may air as early as June on the national network.
"Coming into this, I would say that I'm a person who neither believed nor didn't believe," said LaGarde, who has also produced the documentary show "30 Days" for the F/X network. "I'm a journalist at heart, and I want to see something, and I haven't seen a ghost yet, but I've met people who really believe what's going on, and there's no real explanation for it. Do I expect to see a ghost eventually? Probably."
Sylvia hopes the TV crew will witness something, or hear the same children's voices she's recorded with teams from New England Paranormal, where she's now a member.
"It's like panning for gold," she said. "You might get lucky ... It's not very scary. Sometimes we hear voices here. And I'm not scared, just confused."
The Pierce Street School was built in 1890, according to records in the city Building Department. Records also show that it became subdivided into 12 housing units in 1985.
Sylvia said some of her neighbors have also had strange experiences, and her husband of three years, Jeff Sylvia, 40, said he's become a believer.
He felt three taps on his shoulder in the kitchen and thought he'd bumped into an open cabinet, but he turned around and nothing was there, he said.
Jeff Sylvia said he also hears voices inside the loft, but added that he can never hear his neighbors because the walls between the units are brick.
"It's hard to describe because you can almost distinguish what they're saying," he said. "You can hear enough to tell whether it's male or female, young or old, you just can't make out the words. It's weird because it's faint, but it's right here. It's not like something that might be mistaken for something else."
He said he never imagined he'd believe in ghosts.
"I'm the biggest pessimist there is," he said. "She used to tell me this stuff, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, honey, that's cute.' When I got tapped on my shoulder, it sent chills through me, and I wasn't scared, but that doesn't compute."
PRS founder and director Ryan Buell, a Penn State student, said he and about four other researchers will stay at the Sylvias' condo for three days, recording film and audio with high-tech equipment for "Paranormal U."
"We're not psychics or mediums," he said. "We're investigators."
Through his work on the show and the society, Buell, 24, said he's met ordinary people who are troubled by things they cannot explain.
Buell and producers received hundreds of inquiries into the show, but narrowed their choices down by conducting thorough interviews of the people who claimed their houses were haunted, he said.
"We've actually developed a system, and although it's not foolproof, we do interviews and get a good sense of their personality, and whether there are any holes in their stories," he said. "We try to understand them, and we have the resources of scientists and counselors because we're associated with a big university. The bottom line is that these people, whether they're crazy or not beforehand, they're a little eccentric because of all the things they're dealing with."
http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/ci_4925273
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
