Ryan Buell
Ryan Buell founded the Paranormal Research Society as a student.
Vampires may be getting all the glory these days, but when it comes to day-in, day-out spooky family entertainment, it’s hard to beat ghosts.
The popularity of ghost and paranormal stories are nothing new — from the King’s ghost in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” to Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” to the phenomenal box office last fall for “Paranormal Activity.”
But it’s on the small screen that ghosts are most alive — a staple of the medium, so to speak. The first two hours of CBS’ Friday night lineup are devoted to “Ghost Whisperer,” now in its fifth season, and “Medium,” which joined the network last fall after five seasons on NBC. Both dramatic series revolve around women who can see dead people.
Several of the cable networks have built their lineups around ghost/paranormal reality shows. These series follow investigators going to residential homes, historical locations, abandoned hospitals, prisons and even aircraft carriers that are supposedly haunted. They claim to use scientific methods and equipment, such as digital tape recorders to capture EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), which are believed to capture the voices of spirits.
Thanks in part to the success of these shows, ghost hunting has become a big business. Several Internet sites including Amazon offer equipment for sale for the budding paranormal investigator.
The leader of PRS, Ryan Buell is on the cutting edge of paranormal research.
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Ryan Buell and Sergey Poberezhny
Ryan Buell formed a paranormal investigation club as a student at Penn State and today he’s touring the country, gathering tales of the unknown for his own TV show.
Buell, director of the Paranormal Research Society and star of the A&E TV series “Paranormal State,” visited the Locust Walk area of the University of Pennsylvania Thursday as a part of the Paranormal State Tour.
The tour began on Nov. 30 in San Francisco, and hit 10 cities before the last stop on Friday in New York City.
“We’ve heard a few good stories,” Buell said. “The tour has been great so far. It’s a lot more personal. Instead of just an ad campaign, we’re getting out there and meeting people.”
He started the team when he was just 19 years old.
“PRS has been together since 2001, so when the show came along, we told them ‘this is what we do, but you can come along for the ride,’” he said. “The show kind of built up around us.”
PRS Managing Director Sergey Poberezhny said he has heard many interesting stories along the way.
“We referred a few to investigative teams who are closer to where they live, and have gotten some information from some people to possibly revisit them,” he said.
Tour Director Mark Anderson said about 50 fans — eager to tell their stories — approach the team at each stop.
“They’ve gotten some amazing stories,” Anderson said.
A&E’s hit series “Paranormal State” will kick-off a search for America’s most compelling paranormal experiences with a 10 city nationwide tour beginning in San Francisco on Monday, November 30 and ending in New York City on Friday, December 11. The series star, and founder of the renowned Paranormal Research Society (PRS), Ryan Buell is issuing a call-to-action and traveling across the country to invite America to share their own paranormal experiences with him personally. The most compelling stories will have a chance to be featured on future episodes of “Paranormal State”.
“Paranormal research has always been a passion of mine,” said Buell. “Since the launch of our A&E series, we’ve been getting thousands of calls from people wanting us to investigate their homes. Although we’d love to, we can’t possibly visit everyone. This is our effort to cover more territory, talk to more people and ultimately find answers to the unexplainable.”
Buell, and his right-hand tech specialist and PRS team member Sergey Poberezhny, will travel coast-to-coast in a branded “Paranormal State” tour bus, taking the show on the road and visiting fans in popular U.S. destinations to gather first-hand accounts of the supernatural. The best stories will be profiled on the tour’s interactive website www.paranormalstatetour.com, which aims to provide fans and enthusiasts further topics of debate concerning the paranormal.
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Ryan Buell
If you haven’t heard of or seen A&E television’s Paranormal State and its star Ryan Buell, you’ve either been living under a rock in the woods, are a Mennonite (or an effete TV eschewer; there’s not much difference), or can’t afford cable. In any case, you’re in the vast minority, because Buell, founder of the Penn State Paranormal Research Society, is a national celebrity thanks to his popular ghost-hunting show launched in 2007 in which his team of college-age students (they’ve since graduated) investigate claims of paranormal activity across the country.
What you might not know about Buell, however — even if you’re one of the millions of fans of the show — is that Buell grew up just up the road in Sumter, where he had his first encounters with the paranormal and graduated from Sumter High in 2000; considers South Carolina his home (his parents still reside there); and seriously considered attending the University of South Carolina before fatefully deciding on Penn State.
With Halloween upon us, Free Times reporter Ron Aiken took the opportunity to speak with Buell about life in the Palmetto State, the massive success of Paranormal State and the ensuing ghost-hunting phenomenon and why neither he, A&E producers nor the rest of America can understand anything coming out of team member Eilfie Music’s mouth.
FT: First off, you began PRS as a college club, but obviously everyone on the show has graduated since the TV show began and has taken off. Do you intend to keep living in State College, Pa., do you have plans to move on?
Ryan Buell: That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I don’t think we’ll move PRS, but for myself, I’m probably going to move somewhere else to do some work and coming back and forth. I’m looking at L.A. right now and coming back and forth whenever I have some down time.