LIers investigate paranormal activity

Lake Ronkonkoma County Park was pitch black when a group of eight entered around 10 p.m. on a recent Thursday and weaved its way around the park’s wooded paths.

“Go in quickly and quietly, guys,” said Chris Vickers, 24, of Medford. “You know the drill.”

Vickers, a retail store manager, was at the park as a member of Long Island Paranormal Investigators, an 8-year-old volunteer organization that has investigated more than 300 homes and businesses on Long Island and looks into local urban legends every Thursday night.

At the park, the group walked silently, cell phones and flashlights off, until they reached a clearing and circled. Sixteen years earlier in the same clearing, a group of teenagers threw a keg party and gathered around a bonfire. According to a published newspaper report, a 21-year-old Lake Grove man threw a keg into the fire. The keg exploded, shooting shrapnel into his arm, ripping it off and killing him.

During the recent Thursday night investigation, the members of LIPI believe they spoke to him.

LIPI has investigated the park 18 times since the group was founded in 2008 by Michael Cardinuto, 31, and Rob Levine, 28, both of Ronkonkoma. They say they almost always find signs of paranormal activity there, evidence of which comes in the form of electromagnetic readings, photographs, video, audio recordings and personal observations.

Levine said he and Cardinuto went to high school together and always had an interest in the paranormal. In college, Levine took a class on sociology of the paranormal, and as an assignment, began investigating local urban legends. Now working as a sales consultant, he never stopped, and instead, gathered the dedicated group he has now.

Stephanie Bree, 24, of St. James, a member of the group who works in a medical billing office, said people are often skeptical of the work that they do.

“The response is mixed,” she said. “When people find out at work, sometimes it’s like, ‘Really? You do that?’”

LIPI, which requires newcomers to pass an exam to be admitted, brings with them a slew of equipment to aid investigations. The equipment’s validity is all based on different theories surrounding paranormal activity, including those that claim spirits give off an electromagnetic field, take energy from the living around them, and communicate on levels that are only audible when playing back a digital recording -- called electronic voice phenomena.

The most reliable sources of evidence, said Vickers, is personal experience and video. While the group relies on their other equipment, it also goes to great lengths to disprove the findings. Sounds on an EVP recording are often explained as passing cars in the distance or other interference, glowing orbs in photographs could be dust, and electromagnetic readings could go off because of a cell phone.

When investigating private homes or businesses, LIPI finds it has more trouble getting clients to believe they did not find paranormal activity than the other way around. But they don’t take their responsibility lightly.

“We aren’t yes people,” said Levine. “That doesn’t help anyone.”

For all its rationalizing of strange sights and sounds, LIPI has found plenty of evidence of hauntings. Last year, a family in Blue Point moved after LIPI’s investigation showed a number of paranormal findings, including a video recording where a lamp moved on its own, Vickers said.

LIPI also puts stock in its empath department, made up of a few individuals who believe they have a connection with the spirit world. Peter Ferraro, 43, of Huntington, is one of them. He was hit by a car when he was 8 and claims he’s been clairvoyant ever since.

Ferraro, a radio dispatcher for the New York City Fire Department, said he remembers seeing an angel watching over him while he was recovering from the accident.

“After that, I would start feeling all this activity,” he said. “I would see things in my room.”

On the recent Thursday night investigation, LIPI members were convened in the clearing on their way out of the park. They had split into groups of three earlier in the night, and though two of the groups reported that their equipment had indicated a paranormal presence, it was getting late and the devices were quiet.

As they were preparing to leave, one member, Ryan Fesler, 21, of Farmingville, stopped. His electrosmog meter was going off. Others’ equipment followed suit. Ferraro felt a presence, his chest hurt and he felt lightheaded.

“He’s five feet in front of you, Ryan,” Ferraro said, his eyes closed and arm out.

“You obviously don’t want to be alone,” Fesler said out loud. For the next 15 minutes, Fesler continued to talk in what appeared to be a one-sided conversation. He asked questions for the benefit of the video recording, hoping that when played back, the questions would be answered.

Time and time again, Fesler would ask the spirit for confirmation that he was still there, and on cue, the meter would go off.

Eventually, the equipment stopped responding and the group said its goodbyes. Members would have two weeks to file a report on their experience that night and review the footage.

Like all the members of the group, Ferraro said at the end of an investigation he protects himself by telling the spirits not to follow him home. But even so, as he walked with the group out of the park, he couldn’t help but hear rock music in his head - the kind that might be playing at a keg party.