Page 72 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Vol 24 No 2 - February 24 2015

From Funeral Home to Paranormal Museum
Haunted Collector John
Zaffis says former Adams
funeral home has 'creepy'
edge needed for
paranormal museum
Scott Stafford
Berkshire Eagle
Paranormal specialist and investigator John
Zaffis is one step closer to having a new haunt.
Zaffis walked through the former McBride
Funeral Home on Thursday night, with a town
building inspector and an architect so he could
have a better idea how much it will cost to make
the structure work as a museum of the
paranormal.
With two buildings attached by a single
enclosed porch/hallway, Zaffis said the floor
plans of the two structures are uniquely suited
for what he has in mind.
" It's got that creepy element," Zaffis said.
"When you're in my business, that's something
you look for."
He has not yet made an offer to purchase
the building, and said the deal still may not
happen. But he does seem determined to
continue on with the due-diligence process. The
building is listed for sale at a price of $79,900.
Zaffis lectures on the paranormal and
has investigated paranormal activity for years.
In 1998 he established the Paranormal and
Demonology Research Society of New
England. From 2011 to 2013, he hosted a
television show, Haunted Collector, on the SyFy
channel.
Each of the two buildings has a meeting
room on the first floor, where the wakes were
conducted for grieving friends and family. In
one of these meeting rooms, Zaffis envisions a
room where lectures and symposiums on
hauntings and other paranormal activity would
be hosted. In the other meeting room, rather
than viewing the recently deceased, visitors
would be viewing items Zaffis has concluded
are, or were, haunted by the long-term
deceased.
On the second floor of the northern most
building is an apartment-type space where
Zaffis would live while in town. The second
floor of the other building once served as a
showroom for the latest in coffins and has a
back room where the embalming was once
performed. Zaffis intends to use these two
rooms for storage of his other-worldly artifacts,
which will be rotated periodically into the
museum space.
"The two separate buildings are what
caught my eye," Zaffis said, standing by the
polished wood bannister of the stairway leading
to the second floor. "And during the walk-
through, things seem to have lined up better
then I was anticipating. There is not much I
would change here."
He said his main goal, in this building or
another, is to establish the museum in such a
way that it will live on with or without him.
According to Marc Tetlow, CEO of Ideal
Event Management and associate of Zaffis, he
and Zaffis were taking a break form a photo
shoot at the Adams McDonald's a few months
ago when they noticed the vacant funeral home
across the way. They already had been looking
for a site for the museum, and this one seemed
like it might work. So they called the real estate the city.
agent and started the ball rolling.
Zaffis already has been granted a zoning
variance on the property, changing it from
residential to commercial, by the Adams Zoning
Board of Appeals.
If the process were to continue, there
would be several other visits to town boards and
a process of renovation and moving in. If the
deal works, he estimated it would be at least
several months before the museum could start
operating.
Zaffis explained that this would not be a
museum open for walk-in visits. It would only
be open by appointment on Friday and Saturday
afternoon and evening. Groups would be
booked, they would come and hear a
presentation by Zaffis or a visiting specialist,
then the group would move into the museum
and view the artifacts.
He said the main museum space would
house about 20 of his larger items on a
permanent basis, such as the haunted piano and
the organ. He pictures a standalone display with
his extensive collection of haunted dolls.
Smaller artifacts would be rotated out
periodically. Zaffis said his collection is large
enough to keep the displays from being
repetitive.
Both Zaffis and Tetlow anticipate a
significant number of visitors to the museum, if
the plan comes to fruition.
"We'll push a lot of people through here, reported in 2011 that many clairvoyants were
there's no doubt about that," Tetlow said. []
Norwegian Care Facility
Reprimanded for Hiring
Exorcist
A residential care home in Norway for
developmentally disabled people has been
reprimanded by a judge for hiring an exorcist. A
few staff members reportedly brought in an
exorcist after they got spooked by flickering
lights; a dueling group of staff members, upset
by what they saw as blasphemy, complained to
According to English-language news
outlet The Local, the staff at Madshaven
residential care home contacted Bent Egil
Albrechtsen in November, an artist and self-
proclaimed (is there any other kind?) exorcist.
It's not clear what exactly spooked them besides
the flickering lights; Albrechtsen told the Local,
rather ominously, "When the employees worked
there at night, they saw things and they were
very scared. There were cosmic radiation lines
there which were very bad because one of the
lines went through a graveyard."
An appalled group of Christian staffers
called the city and got the exorcism quickly shut
down. That was a bad decision, Albrechtsen
said, considering that the staff at the facility had
gotten sick when spirits "invaded their bodies."
"When they asked me to stop, that's
when the problems really started," he told the
Local. "They didn't understand that this was not
a normal place. This building was so heavy in
bad energies and spirits that I had to handle it in
a special way. I had too many to send home to
the other side, so when they asked me to stop I
had to send the spirits back into the building."
It all sounds like a very hostile work
environment indeed, but a local politician
issued a report slamming them for "poor
judgment," virtually ensuring that the whole
place stays ghost-infested from top to bottom.
Routing paranormal beings is a
surprisingly big business in Norway: the Local
seeing an uptick in customers following a
number of popular ghost-centered reality
shows. Princess Martha Louise publicly holds
exorcisms in collaboration with British medium
Lisa Williams, claims to be able to talk to the
dead, and co-founded something called
"Soulspring," which she referred to as an "angel
school." The school's new management has
since clarified that they don't talk to the dead. []