News Release

Founder brings ‘Paranormal State’ to campus

October 15, 2009

The founder of the student Paranormal Research Society at Penn State University Park and now a producer and cast member of “Paranormal State” on the A&E Network, Ryan Buell recently brought his spirit-hunting message to Penn State Harrisburg.

Buell’s quest to examine and explain paranormal activity began when he was a child in his Sumter, S.C. home one night when he was in bed. He saw something standing in his doorway. “Its face was wide and it had a huge grin,” he recalls. His screams brought his mother to his room, but she saw nothing and went back to bed. Minutes later, “the thing rose up from the foot of my bed,” he said. All he got was a spanking from his mother.

That fear fostered a longtime fascination with things he can’t explain. During his sophomore year at Penn State, he started the Paranormal Research Society, a group of Penn State students and alumni who now travel the nation to investigate claims of paranormal activity.
That led to “Paranormal State” which premiered in December 2007 and now draws an estimated 3 million viewers. He explained that each episode features a different client – bar owner whose wine glasses won’t stay shelved; a young woman whose barn houses black mists; and a couple whose religious relics are burned without explanation.

“There are no official qualifications for being a paranormal investigator,” Buell said. “I’ve spent the last ten years training myself, working with highly regarded professionals in both the paranormal community and in other professions, [including] Catholic exorcists, law enforcement [and] psychologists, to become a well-rounded individual.”

During his presentation, Buell profiled the different types of spirits – ghosts, spirits, and poltergeists while listing for those in the audience typical signs of a haunting which include a sense of being watched, hearing voices, seeing things out of the corner of your eye, witnessing objects levitate and/or move, and even unusual odors.

He pointed out that formal paranormal investigation dates to 1882 in London with the creation of a society of research and spiritualism began in New York in 1848 with a pair of sisters.

He concluded with a series of reasons “spirits return” – unfinished business, to deliver information, to punish living enemies, to protect loved ones, and even the result of a painful or tragic death. And the comment that ghost hunting is “all in a day’s work for him and his cast members.”