By Tine Roycroft

The fascination with the world of the paranormal began when he was young. John Brightman would ride his bike across his family’s 100-acre property, often passing a small shack that lay nestled deep in the woods.

“Whenever I was near the shack, I got this very creepy feeling,” Brightman remembered. “Like someone was watching me. Like someone was right behind me.”

His grandparents protected him from the truth for a time, but Brightman remained persistent, and when he was older, they told him the truth: The shack reportedly had been the location of three grisly murders committed by a man who believed he was a member of a cult and was attempting to raise his father from the dead.

All at once, the eerie feelings made complete sense, and Brightman became a believer for life.

Today, as founder and lead investigator of New England Paranormal Research, Brightman spends his days researching potentially haunted sites and helping the living understand the actions of those who have transitioned to the other side.

“We’ll get calls from people who will say that something’s going on in their house that they can’t explain,” he explained. “They could be seeing a shadow figure or hearing a strange voice telling them to leave or get out. Some people even report having unexplained scratches or marks. We’ll set up an appointment and go to their house and try to determine what’s going on.”

Brightman’s clients could be suffering from overactive imaginations, or their houses could have malfunctioning electrical wiring that would explain the odd occurrences … or they could actually be dealing with a ghost.

Such was the case of a Westborough family. When the family contacted Brightman, the family said that the children in the house had been seeing shadowy figures and hearing voices. Brightman and his team headed to the site, and during the initial investigation, noted that their detection meters were registering activity. They were also able to capture a voice on tape. After analyzing the evidence further and confirming that there was indeed paranormal activity in the house, Brightman asked a medium ~ a person who uses his or her psychic abilities to aid communication between the living and the dead ~ to visit the home and cleanse it.

“As the medium was walking around, she was talking to the family,” Brightman explained. “The medium had never met the family before and had no way of knowing them. But as she was speaking to the husband and the wife, they started crying.”

Brightman reassured the couple that the team was there to help free them from the ghostly presence. But the couple then revealed that the spirit the medium was describing had actually been the best man at their wedding. His spirit had become stuck between this world and the next.

Brightman believes there are different types of spirits ~ residual spirits, interactive spirits and, although very rare, demon spirits. According to him, residual spirits are mostly harmless and are simply going through the motions of what they used to do while they were still alive.

“Say you’re in a restaurant that was built in the 1940s,” Brightman explained. “You see this figure, and he walks through a wall. Chances are that years ago, that wall was actually a door, and that spirit used to walk through the door on a regular basis. He’s just going through his normal routine. He’s not aware of other people watching him.”

Brightman said that his team typically won’t attempt to encourage residual spirits to move on because they aren’t disruptive. Many people don’t even actually see the spirit itself, but instead see cabinet doors being open and shut, for example.

“When we’re dealing with the interactive spirits,” Brightman explained, “we try to move them along. They’re intelligent. If you say, ‘Can you turn this flashlight on?’ they will. Sometimes, they’re just stuck, and they actually understand that the medium is trying to help them.”

According to Brightman, to help a ghost transition to the afterlife, a medium might begin at one corner of the haunted site and then, using sea salt or sage, slowly cleanse the entire house. Eventually, the medium will help the ghost find the front door of the house and escort it to freedom.

Brightman has thankfully never dealt with a demon or needed to employ an exorcism. He has had a number of brushes with “bad spirits,” but these interactions don’t faze him.

“Of course, there are bad spirits because there are bad people in the world,” Brightman said. “If you’re a good person in this life, you’ll probably remain a good person in the afterlife. If you’re a bad person, just because you pass over doesn’t mean you instantly become good. Today, a lot of people think that if a spirit scratches you or hits you, it’s a demon. That’s not the case. It could just be a very mean spirit who doesn’t want you there. They just want to explain to you that they don’t think you belong there.”

Every so often, Brightman and his team find themselves investigating sites where odd things are happening, but a ghost isn’t to blame. He remembers a home the team investigated in Amherst. The team had received the call right after a horrible snowstorm. The family reported seeing things and experiencing headaches and severe nausea. The home had been without power for a week, which was ideal for the team simply because any readings on their meters would be due to paranormal forces and not electrical interference.

During their second visit to the home, they were able to determine that the house was not grounded, and the symptoms that the family was experiencing were due to an electromagnetic field collecting in their home. At the time, Brightman had an electrician on his team who was able to connect the family with the power company. Once the issue was rectified, the symptoms and the sightings went away.

But if you’re looking for the ghostly hot spots in and around Worcester, Brightman and his team can point you in the right direction. Ever catch a concert at the Worcester Palladium? It might surprise you to hear that the popular venue is known to be haunted.

“People have seen apparitions there,” Brightman said. “They’ve heard what sounds like people dancing on the stage when there’s no one there. A friend’s group went there to investigate and came back with some great recordings of voices. It’s very active.”

Then, there’s the Victorian House in Gardner. It was built in 1875 by furniture tycoon S.K. Pierce, but Pierce’s son, Frank, lost it years later in a poker game. Supposedly in 1963, a man named William Callahan spontaneously combusted in one of the bedrooms of the house. Brightman has investigated the home several times, and during one of his recent investigations, which is featured on an episode of Ghost Adventures, he really pushed the envelope by camping out in the room where the spontaneous combustion reportedly took place.

“I was saying things like, ‘We’re not going to leave unless you give us a sign that you’re here,’” remembered Brightman. “Suddenly, it felt like I’d been hit with a baseball bat. I stood up; my ribs were burning. I lifted up my shirt, and you could see a scratch in the shape of a W. Right after, we thanked the spirit for letting us know it was there. We have a machine called an ovilus that will spell out single words that the spirits are communicating. The machine read ‘squeeze… every throat… in this house.’ We pissed it off that night. So we left that room.”

During a typical 9-to-5 job, it can be challenging to not bring work home with you. But when you’re a paranormal investigator, work sometimes follows you home.

“My house is in the Bridgewater Triangle of Massachusetts,” said Brightman. “It’s a very active location. Native Americans died in the area. There have been horrific suicides, cult murders and sightings of unusual animals ~ Bigfoot creatures and huge snakes. I know my house has activity in it. We’ve seen cabinet doors open and shut. My girlfriend has come down to the kitchen in the morning (after a spending a night in the home by herself) to find all of the cabinets open and all of the dishes spilled out onto the floor. We all have grown to live with it in the house. If things got out of control, we’d do something, but for the most part, we’re used to it.”

Brightman loves his work and doesn’t intend to stop investigating any time soon. He and the team travel often, attending conventions and giving lectures across the country. Brightman will be appearing on episodes of both Ghost Adventures and A Haunting this year, and the team will air a film, The Bridgewater Triangle Documentary, on Oct. 20 at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As long as there’s an afterlife, Brightman and the members of New England Paranormal Research will keep investigating.

For more information, go to neparanormalresearch.com.