The season for haunted houses wraps up this week, but for the members of Lake Erie Paranormal, it’s a year-round activity.

Paranormal investigation teams are common — several have their own TV shows. What makes Lake Erie Paranormal unique is that  the members go into each investigation as skeptics.

“We don’t go into an investigation because somebody calls us saying their doors close or they hear creaks and assume it’s ghosts,” lead investigator Jason Schneider said. “We try to prove why the door is closing on its own or what the creaks are. We don’t go into any investigation thinking there’s activity. We do our investigation then conclude with what we have. Ninety percent of the time there is a logical explanation for what is happening.”

Lake Erie Paranormal

“Jason is the worst skeptic in the world,” investigator Vicki Schramm said. “When we get something and he believes that we got something, then you know we got something.”

Another unique fact is all the members, except for medium Dani Wurzell, are in law enforcement. Schneider, founder Steve Rogers, team leader Shawn McMahon, tech manager Dan Hannon and Dave Howell are all sheriff’s deputies. Schramm and Todd Althouse are former police officers.

“Being a police officer, I was skeptical on a lot of things,” Schramm said. “That’s just the way we’re taught. You have to work it out and figure what is truth and what isn’t before you make a conclusion.”

Schramm and Schneider both said they joined the team to overcome fears.

“I never believed in paranormal stuff,” Schramm said. “My father committed suicide in our house, and I went into the Air Force after he passed away. My mom kept writing me letters and telling me that my dad was there and things were happening. When I got out of the service, I bought the house. There was a lot of activity. We’d come and lights would be on. If we’d lose something, it would appear on a bed. I think it was for him to remind us he was there. That’s when I started believing and reading about it.”

Lake Erie Paranormal is a nonprofit group, and Schneider said a true paranormal team never charges for an investigation.

“We started this group to help people,” he said. “We’re all in law enforcement, so we want to give back and help people with these problems. People don’t feel comfortable and think people will think they are crazy. There are a lot of people that have experiences and keep them bottled up. I stay in contact with the people we help to make sure there is no activity. We build a bond with our clients.”

The team has been around for two years and does two or three investigations per month using equipment such as night vision cameras, temperature gauges, voice recorders and electromagnetic field detectors. The voice recorders yield the most evidence, picking up voices that Schneider said operate on a different frequency than we are able to hear.

“We’ve been doing this for two years, and when I get one it’s like the first time,” he said. “It’s still neat to catch it.”

The voices captured are often just responding yes or no to a question, but sometimes they capture full phrases. A few notable captures are “Help me,” “You afraid?” “Hi, Mom” and “Hey motherf—er, come and get me.”

The team has been much more selective with its visual evidence, posting one video in two years.

“It has to be something that we can’t explain,” Schneider said. “We’ve gone over every possible explanation for it. We know where everyone is at in the building. You see a shadow or something go across, and we know it’s nobody else.”

The posted video is from an investigation of a house where a 9-year-old boy said he had been followed by a ghost called Doc since he was two.

“We were setting up in the kitchen, and Vicki saw something go down the hallway,” Schneider said. “I marked the time. We didn’t see anything in the hallway on video, but in the room there’s a little ball of light by the side of his bed. As it goes toward the headboard, it gets bigger then shoots straight back. There was nothing in that room that would cause the light to do that. Nobody has been able to figure it out.”

The group has several other notable incidents, including an investigation of the Old South Hospital in Pittsburg, Tenn., where a sock monkey was moved around at the nurse’s station in the pediatric ward. Another was at Prospect Place Mansion in Trinway, Ohio, where members got sick.

“We were up on the third floor asking a lot of questions and asking for activity,” Schneider said. “It got real hot and real hard to breathe. It was an unpleasant experience, but an experience nonetheless. We all left, and as soon as we got outside it all went away.”

Visit LakeErieParanormal.net to see the evidence. Contact LakeErieParanormal@gmail.com to inquire about potential investigations.

Tags: Halloween, Lake Erie Paranormal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 10:32 am and is filed under Halloween, Star.
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Lake Erie Paranormal (LEP), a nonprofit paranormal investigative team, seeks to explain the unknown. The team investigates unexplainable occurrences in businesses, homes and public spaces throughout Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.

“Nine times out of 10 there are reasonable explanations for what our clients are experiencing. Whether it is the house settling, for noises, or doors that aren’t on all the way swing back and forth on their own,” said Steve Rogers, LEP founder.

What the team considers to be paranormal activity are things it cannot logically explain after going through its investigation material, he said.

Each investigation usually takes four investigators and between four to six hours to compete.

During an investigation the team uses several night vision cameras, digital cameras and voice recorders as well electromagnetic field detectors and temperature gauges in an attempt to verify a client’s claims.

After going through its evidence several times, the team presents its findings to the client. There have been many times where clients have been shocked or scared by findings, especially when presenting electric voice phenomena (EVP), said Jason Schneider, lead investigator.

From left, Steve Rogers, Jason Schneider, Shawn McMahon and Todd Althouse.

“[People are scared] because it’s the unknown and fear of the unknown. A lot of the time you can’t see [the spirits] or hear them, but then you get this contact with them and we play ii for the people that are living in a home and it can be an experience for the home-owner as well,” he said.

EVPs are voices caught by electronic voice recorders. The theory behind EVPs is spirits can manipulate the noise generated through a recorder and say whatever they want, Rogers said.

One of the team’s most active investigations was at a converted school house in Southeast Michigan, where it gathered a number of high quality EVPs.

“My favorite evidence that we can collect during an investigation are EVPs.  When we’re setting up and they’re commenting on what we’re doing, it is one of the most exciting pieces of evidence we can get,” Schneider said.

At the schoolhouse, the team experienced several incidents of EVPs commenting on what was going on during the investigation, Schneider said.

“Shawn and I were upstairs in the middle of setting up and there was a black spider on the ceiling. When we do our investigations it’s in complete darkness and we’re both babies and I kept saying we needed to do something with the spider before we start,” he said. “He and I are talking about how we’re going to knock it down and there’s a voice on the recording that says ‘You afraid?’”

At the same location voice recordings of males, females and children were all found.

The LEP team helps homeowners and businesses with paranormal experiences anyway it can.

The group works with a medium who has helped spirits cross at certain locations, Rogers said.

At one location, a dark shadow was bothering two young children. After investigating the house multiple times the team brought a medium with them and the family hasn’t experienced problems since, said investigator Shawn McMahon.

“That’s why we do what we do — to make people more comfortable. Hopefully, we can explain something to make them feel more comfortable in their surroundings,” he said. “The end thing is it’s their home. It’s not the entity’s home.”

LEP investigations are free, as the team does its investigating on a volunteer basis. Members of the investigation team all work for the Lucas County Sheriff’s office, giving them more credibility when entering an investigation, Rogers said.

“We approach everything in a professional manner, but we all have daytime jobs,” Schneider said.

In the future, the group is hoping to investigate areas around the state and put together footage of the most haunted places in Ohio.

“We really have quite a few [paranormal] locations within driving distance where the public can go and investigate,” Rogers said.

Rogers said the now-abandoned Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, where “The “Shawshank Redemption” was filmed, is a great place for paranormal investigations.

Those experiencing unexplained activity can e-mail LEP at

lakeerieparanormal@gmail.com to arrange an investigation.

Visit the group online at www.lakeerieparanormal.net.

Tags: Halloween, Lake Erie Paranormal

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 2010 at 11:44 am and is filed under Halloween, Star.
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