By Carly Aulicky
RVCC is haunted.
That’s the opinion of investigator-of-the-paranormal John Zaffis who gave students a glimpse into his mysterious field Nov. 29 with a lecture about supernatural cases he has handled.
He then led them on a ghost hunting tour of the campus.
In more than 30 years of ghostbusting, Zaffis has covered many high profile paranormal investigations. In his lecture, he covered many aspects of paranormal activity including poltergeists, apparitions, objects containing supernatural properties and the sensations linked to otherworldly presences. He showed photographs with orbs, light bars and mist which he said were evidence of ghostly apparitions not visible to the naked eye. Pictures of poltergeist-damaged homes depicted walls punched out from the inside.
The photos and lecture impressed psychology major William McCarthy. The lecture, he said, “was the best part (of the event.) A lot of people have caught the same thing on film to have it be coincidence.” The faint outlines of demonic faces in photographs seemed to captivate some among students and faculty members present.
Zaffis spoke of many cases he’d been involved in, including a funeral home featured in the Discovery Channel special, A Haunting in Connecticut. “He had contact with the demonic spirit there,” McCarthy said. “He actually told me afterwards that the presence was the reason why he stopped researching demonic paranormal stuff.”
But he wasn’t afraid to lead the group on a paranormal hunt here.
The first stop was the men’s locker room in the Physical Education building. Entering the locker room, Zaffis immediately said that he felt a presence in the room. After a brief moment of peering about the lockers, he added that he felt a second, younger presence. Eager RVCC ghost hunters soon began walking among the lockers, cell phones in hand, hoping to catch a ghostly presence on camera.
The next stops on the tour were in the oldest and newest buildings on campus, the Arts and West buildings. However, unlike the locker room, both buildings were paranormal-free, Zaffis said. Human spirits were slightly dampened by this lack of otherworldly success as the ghost hunt headed for its last stop.
There, the ghost hunters were not disappointed.
The ghost tour peaked in the library resource center, up on the second floor. Zaffis, clearing the stair landing, looked thoughtful as he said that he felt a presence. Inside the dark room, Zaffis “felt multiples,” he told the RVCC ghost hunters. There were at least five different presences, he said. This time, Zaffis wasn’t alone in sensing spirits. Some RVCC ghost hunters felt something in the library too.
McCarthy was one of them. “I felt a little something up in the library. [Zaffis] described it best: suffocating and heavy, so to speak.” Zaffis told the group to take pictures because someone was bound to catch something on camera. He sat calmly in a nearby chair as ghost hunters wandered the dark room, but said he wished that he had brought his camera.
After the lights were turned on the spirit world tourists discovered they were standing in a room filled with holocaust artifacts. According to Zaffis, these artifacts are the source of the paranormal presence in the reference room.
The tour ended, but the paranormal presence at RVCC lingers on.
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