Who ya gonna call?: Quabbin Valley Paranormal investigates reported hauntings

By Domenic Poli
For the Valley Advocate

If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood … it could have a perfectly mundane explanation.

A peculiar scratching on a roof might be interpreted as a haunting spirit yearning to be left alone in their home, and an increase in electromagnetic fields inside a residence can indicate some type of paranormal presence.

“Or it could be old wiring,” said Gerry Powling, director of the Quabbin Valley Paranormal, which investigates possible otherworldly activity. “Our biggest thing is, we’re there to debunk. So, if you tell us you’ve got something going on, OK, we’re going to find out what it is.”

Powling leads the team consisting of a handful of amateur ghost hunters that travel much of New England to rule out all rationale conclusions and determine the validity of claims of the supernatural.

“We come — that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out and play. They like what they’ve got going for them there,” he said. “And if [the situation’s] not threatening, you know, they’re probably going to stay there. Sometimes ghosts just want to make sure they’re noticed, then they go about their business.”

Powling, now a retired on-call captain with the Orange Fire Department, started the group in 2007 with some colleagues. He is now the sole remaining original member of the team that meets at the department’s secondary fire station on Mill Yard Road, having previously convened in a space at Workers Credit Union in town.

Member Steven Maggiolino, of Easthampton, came aboard 13 years ago, having long been enamored with the idea of life after death following the loss of friends and family when he was young.

“The older I got, I kind of wanted to know what else was out there … I want to know where they went, I want to know if there is something more [than] just them leaving this Earth and there’s nothing else out there,” he said. “So I did my own research for a number of years and then in 2011 I joined this team.”

The group uses infrared cameras, white noise generators, audio amplifiers, K-II EMF meters and other equipment to try to find and contact the spirits of those who have died. The members do not charge for investigations and Powling said he prefers not to accept donations for them because the money often comes with an expectation of finding a supernatural presence, which is never guaranteed. Clients get a DVD filled with a summary of the investigation, which Powling reviews with them.

“The equipment picks up the littlest things,” he said.

The group’s accouterments also include toys to entice children’s spirits to make themselves known.

Maggiolino said any buildings with a lot of history — such as old houses, town halls, courthouses and defunct hospitals — are great places to find ghosts.

Ingrid Pollard, of Orange, said she and the team often practice their methods at the Orange Historical Society, where she serves as vice president.

“We can get rusty. If we haven’t had any investigations we go in there and try to stay sharp. It’s great because … it’s got ghosts,” she said. “We get hits all the time in there. It’s wonderful.”

The collection at the Historical Society, based out of the Weymouth-French House at 41 North Main St., includes two vehicles made by the Grout Brothers steamed-power automobile company that existed in Orange from 1899 to 1912. One of those cars, manufactured in 1904, was owned by longtime Orange resident Royal Roach, who died in December 2004. But Pollard said it’s not just the cars that the Historical Society houses.

“And I know he’s there, because he’s a personal friend of ours, and I kind of thought it was him and I asked certain questions that were personal,” she mentioned, elaborating that the two used to joke about Pollard once serving Roach too small a piece of apple pie at a fundraiser. “We had a recorder going, and he was laughing. I said, ‘I know who you are, because you’re Royal Roach!’

“They like to talk. The people that are in the [Historical Society] like to talk. And they talk to us. We hear them all the time,” Pollard went on to say. “You can go into the Society, go out in the barn, go to the top floor — because that’s where we have all our sharp tools. They’re always kind of swaying.”

Ann Benard, of Templeton, has been with Quabbin Valley Paranormal for 10 years this month, having previously belonged to two groups in Connecticut. She said she became a believer as a teenager following an incident in her parents’ Athol home in which she believes she saw one of the house’s original owners.

“I can still remember it like it was yesterday, but I cannot figure out who he asked for,” she said. “And after that, I just kind of knew [ghosts exist].”

Benard compared the investigators’ abilities to “spidey senses,” a type of sixth sense attributed to the comic-book superhero Spider-Man.

“It’s kind of weird,” she said. “It’s hard to explain.”

The group most recently investigated a house a few months ago.

Pollard grew up on Mechanic Street in Orange, next to Central Cemetery, where she would regularly explore and play. Looking back, she’s not sure if all the people who spoke with were alive at the time of their conversation. In an eerie coincidence, Mechanic Street was also the site of a house fire that killed two young girls on March 5, 2016. Powling, then the on-call fire captain with the department, was on scene for the tragedy. He has some desire to investigate the house but also said he had “seen enough that day.”

Similarly, Pollard said, the Historical Society used to contain the spirit of a boy named Jonathan, who died at 4 after drinking a bottle of laudanum while his mother was in Boston buying him an Easter suit. Pollard and Benard said they spoke with him during Benard’s first outing with Quabbin Valley Paranormal.

“We were just sitting there. We were talking to him. It was getting really good. He was talking to us. He was comfortable,” Pollard recalled, adding that a fellow investigator scared the boy away by making loud noises. “She scared the crap out of him.”

Pollard said the group’s psychic medium, Joanne Collins, eventually helped Jonathan “cross over” from this earthly realm.

“That was an emotional thing. It was like I was his mom, you know? It was sad for me. But he’s not there,” Pollard said. “I ask for him all the time. I tell him he can come back. But that was quite the ordeal, to get him to go.”

Pollard has her own unique unfortunate connection with the afterlife, as her daughter, Erin, who died of cancer in 2017. She mentioned a spirit in a Hatfield hotel once mentioned Erin’s name.

“Well, I kind of was excited. I wasn’t scared or anything. I was excited, but I never did hear from her,” Pollard said, adding that she still holds out hope. “Our medium tells me she’s always around me, so I fully expect [that] one of these days I’m going to be surprised.”

Powling, who lives in Orange, said some paranormal believers are religious, while others are not. He said worked for seven years with an exorcist Catholic priest out of the Springfield diocese. Powling also dabbles in demonology, the study of demons within religious belief and myth, and conducts basic house blessings for clients. As for non-believers and skeptics, he and Maggiolino said it is normal for someone to be doubtful until they experience a paranormal presence.

“Go out and try it,” Powling said. “But be careful — don’t go ask them to touch you or anything like that. Because we have a policy here — you ask for something to come touch you, you are removed. Like I said, I deal with the demon world as well — you ask, sometimes it might deliver. You might not really want it.”

He said there are various reasons a spirit might linger after a person’s death. One prevailing opinion is unfinished business. Powling explained that residual hauntings are past events playing in the present but with no interaction or connection to the present. He said the Gettysburg Battlefield, the site of the 1863 Civil War battle that was the bloodiest of the conflict — is an example of a place with residual energy.

Pollard mentioned the group’s medium was once “shot” by a ghost bullet fired by a dark-bearded male spirit trying to protect his paranormal peers.

“This guy shot her. She went flying back. I was in the room. She went flying back,” Pollard recounted. “She went, ‘You shot me!’”

Pollard said she then immediately felt cramped in the room and Collins said it was because of the spirits that flocked to the spot see what the commotion was.

“There’s just a lot of things in your life that happen and you go, ‘What was that?’” she said, just as the station’s radio system was receiving a transmission, prompting laughter from the group’s members.

“Good timing,” Maggiolino said. “Otherwise, run!”

More information is available at quabbinvalleyparanormal.com and on the group’s Facebook page.