Faces of Long Island celebrates the uniqueness of everyday Long Islanders. In their own words, they tell us about their life experiences, challenges and triumphs. Newsday launched this social media journey into the human experience to shine a light on the diverse people of this wonderful place we call home.

‘When we do find evidence of the paranormal, people also tend to feel a sense of relief. People think, “Well, at least now I know I’m not crazy.”’

Ronkonkoma

“A lot of times when we do paranormal house investigations, you have a family who’s really scared, and they have nobody to turn to. If you suspect paranormal activity, you can’t call the cops or the fire department, you know? They contact us, and we come in and do our thing, and they’re thankful for it.

“Long Island Paranormal Investigators started when the co-founder and I decided to look up all the different urban legends on Long Island, like Sweet Hollow Road and Kings Park Psychiatric Center. Then we found out that they sell equipment that goes along with some of the paranormal theories. The whole goal was to go out and see if people were really experiencing things at these locations, or is it just all a hoax?

“My favorite house investigation turned out not to be paranormal, which is crazy because people are like, ‘Why is that your favorite case? You’re a paranormal investigator.’ There was this kid who was having nightmares and screaming every night. We came and we investigated with an electromagnetic-field sweep of the whole house.

“While we were investigating, the needle started spinning by the kid’s bed. When we looked underneath his bed, there was a Star Wars light saber, a toy that was just shooting off high electromagnetic waves between 100-199. The normal levels are below two. High levels of EMF can cause hallucinations, fatigue, depression and feelings of being watched. And this kid was being affected by it.

“We removed the toy and told the family we’ll come back in two weeks. Sure enough, we came back two weeks later; he had been able to sleep in his bed ever since.

“And when we do find evidence of the paranormal, people also tend to feel a sense of relief. People think, ‘Well, at least now I know I’m not crazy,’ and the next step usually is, ‘You caught something. Get rid of it.’ But it’s not like “Ghostbusters,” where we bring a trap and shoot the thing. We normally do a cleansing, which depends on the beliefs of the client.

“The goal now is trying to make this field kind of more known and accepted. There is a real science to the paranormal. That’s what the group means to me. I want what we’re doing to push this field it to the next level. I want the next generation to come could kind of look back on all the reporting we did and say ‘Hey, that’s the right way to do it.’”

Interviewed by Maggie Melito