..Belanger has had an interest in the paranormal from childhood to this day. He is a professional journalist and published author, and has interviewed thousands of people who have had, or investigated, experiences of a phenonenon that to this day - no one has difinitive answers as to what we are all here talking, reading, and researching about - THE PARANORMAL. Jeff was more than forthcoming with our hour-long, recorded phone interview on a Saturday afternoon, and we here want to thank him personally for his Honesty and Candor. What follows is our {transcribed} interview off of the tape - this took about 3 weeks of off / on again work to get his words, and his personality via the words he used, as accurate as possible.

..When you interview people you start to get a sense of when people are full of it, when they are delirious, when they are delusional and when they have really been shaken to the core by some kind of experience. That is what struck me. I thought man… these people aren’t lying they absolutely believe what they encountered. That is what got me documenting these types of things. I started my own website in 1999. It kind of exploded from there.

..I thought the subject was simple… just ghosts and haunted places. The more I got into this, there are so many aspects to this, so many other parts of the paranormal, there is the human experience, psychology, philosophy, science, one person’s ghost is another person’s alien and another person’s coincidence is another person’s nothing. Who is to say who is right other than the fact that it is perceived as real by millions of people the world over and so I am still learning. I have a lot to learn about every part of this thing and I realize how many avenues and off shoots there are. I think its all so interesting. It is a part of our mainstream culture right now on television and everything else. One thing snowballed on another.

..J. Belanger: Well, you know, they are perceived as real. I have talked to government officials, folks at the Tower of London and those at the White House. When you go to the White House and start talking (not elected officials) to staff they can be insane and on drugs, crazy.

..J. Belanger: That’s right, but if you are going to work at the white house you are going to be drug screened, psychologically screened, criminally background screened and every other way screened. When these folks say they saw something I give it a lot of weight and credibility. You got people who work at the White House and say hey I am seeing these things. People at the Tower of London, military officers with distinguished records, long standing records of good conduct, thing like that, so I believe these people believe it. If I’m not there I can’t promise you its real, unless I saw it with them, I can’t promise you any of them are real.

..I can tell you this, the overwhelming majority of cases I believe that the witness believes, otherwise I wouldn’t do anything with it. If I think someone is just delusional I end the call as fast I can. I believe there are other issues there. But in 98 percent of the cases that I have ever put forth I believe that the witness believes, and that’s all I can go on at that point.

..J. Belanger: NO…..NO.NO..NO..NO.NO.. None of them! I have my {own team} and they are no one you have heard of.

..J. Belanger: I am and these folks are people that I call on depending on what's going on one is a psychologist and another is a mechanical engineer and they have very little interest in the paranormal, so we don’t go out much. I call them in when I want their expertise. When someone is getting in serious trouble first I bring in the psychologist and we determine if this person is cognizant and with us, is there clarity there and if there is we go to the next stop, what else is happening. All you can do in any type of research you mainly rule things out. Even in medicine, Doctors are mainly trying to rule things out and not jump to conclusions.

..It’s the same way. None of those folks I would call. No offense to any of them. I know of lot of those folks and they are nice people and they do some interesting work. If I had a close friend I would not want them exploited on television. (Jeff chuckles) I would want it taken care of quietly. Those are the cases that interest me, when people start calling and saying, I don’t want to go on Oprah or anything else.

..J. Belanger: YA, ABSOLUTELY! I think that’s different in a number of ways. Number one, books are more {credible than} televisions because we don’t have to shove the whole story into 21 minutes or 41 minutes or whatever.

..J. Belanger: For any television show... CNN, Fox news they have to sell commercials too, or they go out of business too. Anything on televisions exists to sell commercials, no doubt. The content is drawing in millions of people, so you can’t argue with numbers, it’s a powerful medium. People are watching and being entertained, and the shows continue to flourish and expand and get into future seasons and on one hand there is good to it because it gets paranormal a little more normal-that is the upside-you are aloud to talk about this. When I was doing this back in the 90s it was still pretty well out there. You have to remember the ghost show really didn’t start until 2004. There were ghost shows but...

..J. Belanger: sure and ya there was "SIGHTINGS" with Peter James. There have always been those show but there aren’t as many as there are now. The current flurry started in 2004 so back in the 1990s you couldn’t really talk about this stuff openly so on the one hand we have millions of people world over experiencing something they perceive as real I think its great that some of these shows are helping so you can talk about it at the office water cooler. The bad thing is that you have got people starting their own paranormal groups and that their only experience is that they have watched a half season of Ghost Hunters and they think they are ready to go out there and start working with people.

..J. Belanger: Ya, No I do. I think it’s a bad thing when someone just watched a little televisions and gets influenced and thinks they are ready go. It’s a touchy subject when you start taking on cases. Sometimes you need those PhD's and those people that understand psychology and you need caseworkers, you know.

..J. Belanger: The problem is that in some cases you are just not equipped to…. If you into a house and they claim things are haunted and all of a sudden you realize, oh man, there could be serious abuse going on here, could be drug abuse, physical abuse whatever you are not equipped to handle that. That is when you need real professionals like PhD's and people that are used to dealing with folks who might not be in their right mind cuz sometimes those are the ghosts and so if you get yourself in that situation it could be absolutely dangerous and so some of these folks so “oh you got a ghost, ok we are coming in we will see you Friday” and start going up to strangers houses and strangers start letting you in which is also scary.

..J. Belanger: That is also the danger of the paranormal to me. People think they are ready to jump in…. That is where the damage is done.

..J. Belanger: RIGHT. Some people that are amateurish might jump to the conclusion like, “yes we will find your ghost.” … well they may not be there. You don’t want to start filling people’s heads with notions before you know something for certain and God forbid you start talking about Demons. That’s the other really frightening thing. People start jumping to the demon conclusion.. and people go “well wait a minute it could be just a pipe in the wall.” That’s the down side, there's lots of people and no central ruling governing body on this thing.

..J. Belanger: Maybe not at all….. scientifically, but lets face it …….

..J. Belanger: I don’t know… I mean people go to jail based on human witness accounts. People get put to death over those kind of things. I think you can trust the human witness in many cases provided can rule out they are cognizant, they are with us, they are not on drugs.

..J. Belanger: Ya... but you also know that with eyewitness testimony people goes to jail. If six people saw the same thing that person goes to jail. If they can get it on camera that’s wonderful but that’s not always possible.

..J. Belanger: The thing about religion is, the eyewitness is going to reach into what I call luggage. We all have luggage and the luggage is our upbringing, the religion we were brought up in, or lack thereof, our level of education, the influences around us all shape who we are, its nature but its also nurture. That’s what shapes who we are. That’s how we react to any situation, be it romantic, confrontation, whatever. We can only deal with what we know and so one person has an experience and says “Oh my God there's a knock on the wall – that’s the devil - it’s a demon trying to get me.” It don’t mean it’s a demon, it means that person is reaching into all they know and reaching a conclusion that well I believe in the Bible and my religion tells me that if it comes from God its good and if its not good it must be from the devil. Even if its neutral it must be from the devil. Even it it’s a cold pipe in the wall just ticking.

..J. Belanger: You know….. It's going to affect how you interpret any kind of evidence you might experience.

..J. Belanger: But here’s the thing. People claim they are being scientific on an investigation. They are generally not. That is one of the problems. People are often fooling themselves that they are doing real science. Don’t get me wrong, its really interesting. If there are emf spikes that are really high around the building where some of this stuff is going on that is interesting because if there are high electromagnetic spikes really high around a building where some of this stuff is going on that is interesting because maybe its causing people to hallucinate. There are certainly some studies that show that some people are sensitive to electromagnetic activity and they cant live near high tension wires because they could hallucinate.

..J. Belanger: Sure, ya, sometimes that happens or sometime can explains what could be affecting some of the witnesses. In and of itself I don’t think we have come to the point where we know how to ask the right questions just yet. I think its interesting when people try to wire up a room, people are catching things on camera and audio recordings that are interesting. You can’t explain them and the fact that these things come up again and again.

..What interests me about the eyewitness testimony is that you have got a haunt where the accounts go back decades and the same story come up again and again…a little girl in a red dress seen on the second floor, people who don’t know each other, people who have visited the place, have worked there, no longer work there, lived there-those kind of things. When you hear the same story coming up again and again. To me it's just interesting... I don’t think it can be dismissed and a lot of things that go directly to our past maybe they are an impression left on our location, not intelligent, not interactive, but they are just a movie replaying and we somehow tune into that for some reason.

..So far I am working off of -10- different theories of what these things can be, depending on the situation and everything from an impression to grandma came back looking for her dentures, to time slips, cuz theres suggestions and quantum physics for example that time may not necessarily may not be linear, holy cow, wouldn’t that explain a lot of ghost experiences. You see a regiment of soldiers march by, maybe if for some reason there’s a slip in time at that moment. You perceive it as a bunch of ghosts and in reality you just saw was a glimpse of the past. Fraud certainly accounts for some of these cases where someone is just trying to fool you. There’s lots of stuff in between there. I have yet to find one catch all theory.

..J. Belanger: You know... I think it's interesting... I’m friends with a lot of psychics. I don’t personally use them. I’ve never gone to them but…..

..J. Belanger: NO, I DON’T! I don’t particularly believe in them. I believe we are all intuitive to some degree and I believe every time we meet another person or we go into a room or anywhere that we are picking up on things I mean think about and again I go back to a job interview. If you have ever interviewed anyone for a job I mean if you want to label that intuition “psychic” I am okay with that, you can use that term if it floats your boat, I just call it intuition, you know, you meet someone and you size them up and you say you know they seem nice enough but there’s something shady there.

..You go on a date with someone, she’s pretty, she’s nice enough and you go there’s something is just off there….you know what I mean…. You listen to your gut there. If you want to label that psychic, fine…. label it psychic. Otherwise I think its intuition that we all have. We pick up on things from other people. We size them up. You go like Rolex watch, manicured nailed, Ivy League College and you start inventing back story and you might just be right. Same when you walk into a location. Maybe some people are sensitive to things that took place there that might have left a mark. It’s interesting… but not all that interesting to me because I think on the one hand I can’t relate to the ability… and so because I don’t go in and I don’t pick up on all these things and I’m not calling them liars but I just can’t relate to it so I want to hear from eyewitnesses.

..Someone who says “look this is what I saw, this is what happened right here” and then you go back into history books and you learn that wow, certain things took place at a location that’s kind of interesting. I personally don’t put a lot of stock in psychics. I wouldn’t hang anything off of it. But, if they tend to confirm something that you’ve heard from eyewitnesses and something that took place in history that’s kind of interesting and all part of the discussion.

..J. Belanger: Sure, ya that’s fine… whatever works. Typically I do - do this alone when I work on my books and research I do it alone…if I’m working on a case, which I have never written about a case, an actual case I have worked on, I have never written about for a book or anything. I’m just saying if I’m working on a story for a book I’m typically doing it alone. I’m doing the research, I’m talking to witnesses and researching history…things like that. If I’m working on a case, an actual paranormal investigation, I bring in various people PhD's, psychologists, stuff like that. I have brought in psychics. It just occurred to me, cuz you asked earlier, are you going to put them in your books. I just occurred to me that I never did write up any private investigations in my books. "Hmmm…. I should…. exploit those bastards!”

..J. Belanger: HA HA... It just hit me though that I have never, ever put any of them in a book

..J. Belanger: Ya, we don’t use the K2. I have the EMF meter that I use. Honestly, I’m not communicating with it because I think that is something else called ITC- instrumental trans communication. Its just taking readings getting a sense of the room. Is it pretty much flat, are their strange spikes in various places . Its just getting a sense of the room.

..J. Belanger: No, I haven’t done that but I have done something this past summer. I will take the credit for having the idea but a guy named, two guys, both named Dave, from Massachusetts. What the two Dave’s did is they organized 3 investigative teams to go in to the same location and do exactly what you said which is what they did was broke up in 2 hour blocks, so for 2 hours you are on the 3rd floor and team one is on the team 2 is on the 2nd floor, team one is on the 1st floor and then you switch and no one talks until its all over and then they compare notes. I think its something great to do cuz I think being territorial is just stupid. If your doing the research, tell us what you find.

..One of the things that I always tell people, cuz I think folks get let down a lot by paranormal investigators that come in and say “I am on the case now, I am going to take care of this, I will fix things.” The reality is that the very least, the people that live there need to be part of the solution. What I tell people from day one is that I need you to start keeping a journal of stuff that is happening… everyone in the family, whoever it happens to, whoever witnesses it, just write it down in your journal. We need you to submit to some medical screenings, we might need you to talk to a psychologist, start getting therapy. If they go “Whoah whoah whoah… we have got ghosts, we are not crazy!”

..Here’s my thing... If you are truly scared in your house and you think you have a situation, and you are scared, don’t you want to work it from every angle? If it were me I would say get me a PhD, get me priest, get me a shrink, get me a doctor and lets start ruling stuff out. Am I sane… are my chemicals imbalanced? Fine… what’s next?

..J. Belanger: I think its lost today with a lot of groups… they want to get right to the ghosts. Cuz that's exciting and in reality it’s a long arduous process and it's so easily just from a psychological prospective when people start saying well “No - no – no, I don’t want to do that we got ghosts here we need help". You start saying okay wait a minute you do have ghosts and demons and some of those demons are from your own past and maybe there really are entities or something feeding off of that but you still have to deal with your own personal issues. Its part of this issue if nothing else. It may be the whole issue, we don’t know that yet but its part of it and as soon as people don’t want to do the work, then I don’t want to waste my time.

..J. Belanger: The intent of these cases is to take a look at the historic look at these spirit communication practices, devices and objects and learn how we got here and how people are using them and its something that I wish more paranormal investigators would check out. They are using emf meters, they are using their cameras and things like that. I don’t think they know why.

..Something I am working on right now is I think a lot of paranormal investigators don’t know why they are using emf meters. I don’t think they have a clue why they are using them. They are using them because they believe ghosts might be comprised of electromagnetic energy but why do they think that. I have gone to back to the 1860’s and it goes back to magnetism – and the idea of animal magnetism. Harry Price, “the original ghosthunter” back in the 1920’s who started using devices to measure any type of static electrical discharges, things like that. I think people just use them because everyone else does… and that’s always curious to me.

..J. Belanger: I am working on it. I am working on it. I’ve got a timeline I am trying to fill in where people make different comments. You’ve gotta remember the spiritualist movement is the reason for so much behind ghost investigations. So much stuff gets started there, psychical research all those kind of things. The spiritualist movement was 1848 and in the late 1850's was the Civil War which really gave the spiritualist movement a big push, and electricity later on in the century which starts to come around and electricity we take it for granted today… you flick a switch and the light goes on.

..There is a power and that power if generated. Back in the 1800’s it was a totally mysterious force which we were trying to understand and trying to control, it was absolutely paranormal and supernatural and that’s where people started to draw parallels between electricity and psychic energy and all that other stuff.

---

..I was privileged to be a part of a CALL IN INTERVIEW on the PARANORMAL WEBSITE {http://www.achieveradio.com} on 1-25-2008 that was 8 days -after- I had done my interview with Jeff for VISIONSMAGAZINEONLINE.com.

The -DIRECT LINK- to the actual interview with JEFF BELANGER -and- our VISIONS Asstiant Editor Joseph Robert Jobe - CLICK HERE!!

---

---

HOME PAGE

Print This Page