TV profile of haunting case includes local psychic.

By Ellen Lyone
Patriot News

Every time Kelly Weaver of Lower Allen Twp. tried to look at photos of a supposedly haunted house, she said she would get a violent headache.

The photos had been sent by paranormal investigator and ghost hunter Doris "Dusty" Smith
of Daytona Beach, who was trying to help a family terrorized by strange sightings in their
3-bedroom ranch house in central Florida .

They had seen ghosts and heard inexplicable noises on the roof of the house, which was surrounded by a heavy mist, according to Weaver, a self-described psychic.

When Weaver, who received no payment for her work on the case, forced herself to look at the photos she said she contacted Smith "right away and said this place is evil. ... It was just negative. It wasn't your typical earthbound spirit, someone who didn't make it to the other side.

"I just said 'get out. They need to get out of the house,'" recalled Weaver, who considers herself both a medium -- one who communicates with the spirit world -- and a psychic -- one who can read the energy around people.

Smith, who has written a book about the case called "Dread and the Dead Filled the Dunnam House," said the family eventually fled the place that Weaver told her was "a sewer of nasty energy."

The three-year-old case, including Weaver's role in it, will be profiled on an episode of the Discovery Network series "A Haunting," tentatively scheduled to air at 9 p.m. Sept. 28.

The show is among several TV series that portray mediums and psychics. A Harris Poll conducted in November found that 40 percent of American adults believe in ghosts.

Theorists had expected interest in psychic phenomenon and the spiritual realm to wane with the industrial revolution and the rise of the age of reason, said Simon Bronner, distinguished professor of American Studies and Folklore at Penn State University .

"It didn't go away. If anything there were signs it became more appealing [because] there's more uncertainty created by reason," Bronner said.

Some people turn to psychic readings to assuage their anxiety about the future, while others find entertainment value in them, he said. "We want to vicariously feel what if we could do that."

Not everyone is a believer.

"There is no good evidence that people can see into the future or talk to the dead," said Barry Karr, executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Amherst , N.Y. , which publishes "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine. "These people are providing them with comfort, but there's no evidence they can do what they claim."

There also is "no good scientific evidence of ghosts," Karr said, but "people want to believe. ... People love a good ghost story."

Karr said committee investigators have gone into "alleged haunted houses" and found other explanations.

Weaver, 46, founded the Spirit Society of Pennsylvania, formerly called Capital Ghost Forum, and wrote the book "Whispers in the Attic, Living with the Dead."

"Ever since I was little I thought everyone could see auras. I saw colors around people," she said. "I always knew what people were thinking."

Weaver said the Hummelstown home she grew up in was haunted. The TV would turn on and off by itself and the closet doors in her attic bedroom would open and close all night long, she said.

But she said she didn't realize she is a medium -- a "secretary for the spirit world" as she calls it -- until several years ago when she held a dead woman's bracelet and visualized her death.

Troy Taylor, founder of the 600-member American Ghost Society, for which Weaver is a field representative, recommended Weaver to Smith for the Florida case.

"I really don't think there are too many [psychics] out there, especially people who claim to be," Taylor said.

But Taylor said he was impressed with Weaver's performance at a Halloween night séance at the Lincoln Theater in Decatur , Ill. , in 2004. Even though she failed to contact Houdini, who had performed at the theater in the 1920s, she was able to pass along messages from deceased loved ones to audience members, he said.

Taylor said such events often disintegrate into "eye-rolling territory," but he added that "some of the things that came up and happened during the séance were really convincing to me."

Weaver's messages were "very specific" and involved private matters she wouldn't otherwise know, he said.

Most ghosts have unfinished business, Weaver said. Perhaps they died suddenly and don't yet realize they are dead, she said.

Apparently, they also tend to act in the afterlife much as they acted in this world. "Let me put it this way. If you're a grouchy person, you'll be a grouchy ghost," Weaver said.

ELLEN LYON: 255-8167 or elyon@patriot-news.com

ON TV

WHAT: Kelly Weaver, a self- described psychic from the West Shore , will appear on "A Haunting." WHEN: 9 p.m. Sept. 28. CHANNEL: Discovery Network.