Christine Kaczynski comes from a long line of exorcists.
"It's something that some people were born to do. Not everyone can do it," Kaczynski said. "It's a war between minds and spirits."
Despite a family exorcism lineage that she traces back to her grandparents in Greece, Kaczynski prefers to focus her energies on house calls to investigate the paranormal. Kaczynski says she's been at it for 35 years, communicating, she contends, with spirits that don't want to be exposed, and freeing souls.
And, to an extent, the work stays in the family. Kaczynski says her daughter is "a sensitive," someone who those who embrace the paranormal believe has the ability to communicate with, and feel, spirits. Her husband often accompanies her on investigations. Her son prefers to be a skeptic. Kaczynski keeps her family away from the worst cases. Take the East Haddam house she worked in a few years back. Like most of her cases -- she's done hundreds, and she does not charge a fee -- she was called based on word of mouth. She approached this case, like all cases, with a high-degree of skepticism. (She requires prospective clients to see a mental health professional before she takes a case.)
Not knowing the case would be among her most difficult. Kaczynski said she and another exorcist were in the home overnight, struggling to cast out an evil spirit. The two finished by about 5 a.m., after a long night of equipment malfunctioning and doors mysteriously opening. She said both of them became very sick afterward. She'll never return to that area again.
"When you cast it out, you don't destroy it. It's just waiting again for everything to come together, for all the elements to be correct, to possess someone again," said Kaczynski, of East Haven. "I don't want my family close to anything that evil."
Kaczynski, who runs an engineering company with her husband, encourages skeptics and paranormal veterans alike to join Connecticut Paranormal Research and Investigations, a group she founded and leads. She runs the organization through Meetup.com, a social-networking site, and there she posts times and meeting dates.
The organization's East Haven office has photographs of shadow people and other phenomena, books about ghosts and a Ouija board. A door with the words "CT PRI Evidence Review Room" houses files, photos and video clips from various projects.
Kaczynski offers lectures in the office -- where the presence of spirits has been felt before -- and answers questions about the paranormal. The presentation, "Journey Into the Paranormal," includes a slide show. It has a series of photos from an investigation at the Carousel Gardens restaurant in Seymour and a private case in which Kaczynski speaks with a demon possessing a woman's body.
Most recently, the group asked to visit the Bank Street Coffee House in New Milford. Lauren Street, an employee of the eatery who lives next door, said she sensed something was amiss since her first day on the job in September.
"A couple of days ago, our baker went downstairs to grab something, and she turned around, and there was a little girl sitting on a chair. Then she disappeared," Street said. Her boyfriend Kenny Ramey believes that was the same little girl he once saw watching Street sleep, a girl who died in a fire that consumed the downtown area in 1902.
As Kaczynski does before any attempt to speak with the dead, she asked everyone in the basement storeroom to recite the "Our Father" prayer -- to help, she says, keep the negative energy at bay -- before reaching out to the Bank Street ghost.
Ten members of the investigations team checked the coffeehouse thoroughly, opening doors that had been nailed shut and walking up staircases that had been walled off. Kaczynski sensed the energy in the coffeehouse, feeling a strong "female energy" full of anxiety and tension.
In the end, the group sensed several different spirits that have roamed downtown New Milford since the 1902 fire. The owner of the coffeehouse invited the group back in late November.
Only a few people on the investigations team are "sensitives." Most are curious believers.
Francis . of Manchester joined the group out of curiosity. He said he has been with the group on about 20 investigations and exorcisms.
"You can believe in this stuff," Cook said. "Instead of believing, I wanted to see it myself."
And he has, thanks in part to Kaczynski's level-headedness.
"Christine ... has the ability to make you feel comfortable in a not-so-normal situation," Cook said.
To each investigation, the group takes electromagnetic field detectors, voice recorders and several digital cameras to measure and capture abnormalities caused by what they contend are ghosts, rather than dust, lighting or weather.
"You've got a lot of groups who like to grasp at straws. I don't like to do that," Kaczynski said. "I like things that are more concrete. If I'm going to attach my name to it, it's got to be good."
Connecticut Paranormal Investigator
Connecticut Paranormal Investigator
