Page: “The Team”
Matt Kirklin, Lead Investigator
Hi, I’m Matt Kirklin, paranormal investigator. Welcome to my bio.
I’m not going to tell you about where I worked or went to school. I want to tell you about my imaginary childhood friend who turned out to be something else.
The time I first learned about death.
My life had just turned upside down. Mom and Dad had packed my whole life into cardboard boxes so it could be moved to a new house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Only a little downstate, but for ten-year-old me, it was like moving to another planet.
We were going to Grandma’s house.
At her viewing, my grandmother had looked lifelike yet deflated without her soul. I pictured a balloon with all the air let out and replaced with sawdust.
“You should say goodbye,” Mom told me.
I didn’t know what to feel. I hadn’t really known her. She’d always been cold to me, and I’d convinced myself she didn’t like me.
Her house had a lot of old-fashioned furniture in every room with patterned pillows and glass knickknacks everywhere. When we’d visit and I’d end up in the same room with her, she’d keep an eye on me to make sure I didn’t break anything.
I felt like a tourist in a hostile country. The worst part was Mom always went along with it. She became a different person around her mother. To my ten-year-old mind, this was frank betrayal. At Grandma’s house, she’d turn cold and watchful too, and I’d get angry and sullen imagining everybody ganging up on me.
Mostly, I stayed outside. The house backed onto woods, where I could explore and invent stories. In the winter, though, sometimes it was too cold, and I’d be stuck in the house for most of the day with my books and drawing pads and LEGO sets.
Standing in front of the open casket, Mom tugged my hand. “Say goodbye to your grandmother, Matt.”
Usually a warm if looming presence, Mom wept and seemed distant.
“Goodbye, Grandma.” Then I imagined her soul was still here, watching me like a hawk, so I added, “Thanks for making me cookies.”
By the time we arrived at Grandma’s house to start our new lives there, it had been emptied. Like her soul, everything that defined her house had gone somewhere else, leaving a hollow shell. The rooms still smelled like her, though, just a hint of bitterness.
Mom seemed both sad and happy. “I grew up here, Matt.”
This time, we weren’t visiting. From now on, this would be my home. Because we’d moved in the middle of June, I hadn’t been able to make any friends at my new school before it locked its doors for the summer.
As I always did, I went outside and played in the woods, inventing stories.
That’s when I first saw the girl.
Walking back at the end of the day, the sky glooming with twilight, I spotted the pale face shining like a candle in my bedroom window.
When I blinked, she was gone.
That night, after I went to bed, she climbed in next to me and whispered, “I want you to be my friend.”
Half-asleep, I said, “Okay.”
Several times, her coughing woke me up. It would start as a rattle, the kind of involuntary dry cough that sounds like an engine trying to start. I could hear it in my dreams. Then it turned into a wet, violent hacking, alarming and sad, the desperate choking of somebody who is drowning.
The next day, I stayed in my room hoping to see her, but I grew bored just sitting there on my bed, so I played with my PlayStation for a while, and then after that I started to build a robot with my LEGOs.
When I looked up, she was there, kneeling on the carpet.
She was around my age, maybe a little younger, cute but frail looking. A lot of her cuteness came from the bonnet she wore, along with an old-fashioned Revolutionary War dress.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“I’m Tammy. You’re Matt.”
“You woke me up last night coughing. You were so cold.”
“I’ve been sick, but Mommy says I’ll get better soon.”
“Where do you live?”
“At the house next door.”
“Do you want to play LEGO with me?”
And just like that, we became friends. Because Tammy wasn’t allowed to play outside, I spent a lot of time in my room. Mom didn’t like that. She’d hear me talking and come in to find me alone, as Tammy vanished whenever grownups were around.
When she caught me stealing a bottle of NyQuil from the closet, she became furious. “What are you doing with this?”
I said nothing.
“Were you going to drink it?”
“No!”
“Then what? Tell me. This is medicine, Matt. You don’t play with it.”
“It’s for my friend.”
“What friend?”
“Tammy. She’s really sick.”
Mom’s scary when she’s mad. She’d get what I’d call evil eyes. Her face would turn into an angry mask. I’d feel helpless, cast out, alone.
This time, her face became a Medusa mask of fury.
“That’s not funny, Matthew.”
I started crying. “It’s true. She’s real.”
Mom took me to our new family doctor.
“Six out of ten kids between the ages of three and eight have an imaginary friend,” the doctor said. “He’s a little old for one, but it’s perfectly normal.”
“His imaginary friend told him to take medicine from the closet,” Mom said.
“You told me it wasn’t for him but his friend.”
“He doesn’t go outside. He just stays in his room playing with LEGOs, puzzles, and board games.”
“Tammy doesn’t like PlayStation,” I explained.
“He’s not the same boy. It’s like he’s regressing.”
“Tammy’s favorite is puzzles.”
The doctor smiled. “He’ll grow out of—”
“Stop it, Matt.” She was so angry, she scared me and I think the doctor a little.
When we got home, I went to my room, only for her to call me back to the kitchen, where she started making dinner.
“You can watch TV in the living room. Or better yet, go outside.”
I stuck around the living room for a while, but the angry rattling in the kitchen made me nervous, so I went out. In the backyard, I checked my bedroom window, but no face appeared, so I went back in.
A dark shape stood in the hallway.
“Where are you going?” Mom eyed me from the kitchen.
Skipping past, I yelled, “I have to pee!”
In the hallway, Tammy whispered in my ear. Told me what to do.
I went to the kitchen. “Mom?”
She placed a fistful of dry pasta into a boiling pot. “What is it?”
I gazed down at my feet. I did not want to be doing this, but I’d promised. “Tammy said she’s sorry about the NyQuil.”
“You’re going to stop this right now, Matthew.”
“But she wanted me to tell you something else.”
“What.” Not a question but a warning.
“She said the Bicentennial is coming up, and she wants, wants…”
Mom blanched and turned bone white.
I steeled myself to keep going. “She wants to wear her special costume dress to school. She just wants to get better so she can do that.”
Mom turned away to grip the counter with both hands. Her shoulders started to shake, and I heard her sobbing.
I started crying too. The look on her face had terrified me. Maybe I really was just seeing things. Maybe I had a mental illness.
“Sorry, Mom. I’ll stop talking to her. Just stop crying. Please.”
Mom slowly collected herself and started talking in a quiet, flat voice. “Tell Tammy that Pat sends her love. Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t visit her before.”
“Okay,” I sobbed.
“I’ll bet she looks beautiful, so beautiful, in her dress.”
I wasn’t sure what was happening. Either Mom believed me, or she was now humoring me. I didn’t want her humoring me. In a way, it was worse than her telling me I’d made Tammy up.
When I gave my friend the message, she smiled and vanished.
School started then, and I quickly made new friends. When I got home from school, I avoided my room. When I did have to go in there, I announced I didn’t want any guests. I didn’t want to make Mom upset anymore. I didn’t want an imaginary friend. I wanted real friends. I wanted to be normal.
It wasn’t until years later that Mom filled me in on the whole truth, which explained everything.
Tammy had been her friend before she was mine.
At the age of nine, the girl died of a lung infection, a complication of cystic fibrosis. The year was 1976, the two hundredth anniversary of America’s founding. The Revolutionary War dress was the costume her mother had made for her to wear to school for the Bicentennial celebration.
Tammy never wore it to school. She’d been kept home sick all week. Mom hadn’t been able to see her. Then one day, she was told her friend died.
My mother had never known peace with it until the day I gave her Tammy’s message and was able to relay hers back. As for me, I never saw the girl again, though I’ll always be grateful to her. She was a good friend when I needed one.
This is why I started Fade to Black. Because I know there is life after death. Because I know spirits are real. And by finding them and trying to communicate, perhaps both they and the living can find the same comfort.
Matt Kirklin, Lead Investigator
Jackpot! We got it, gang.
Foundation House for lucky thirteen.
During my five-plus years as a paranormal investigator, I’ve always wanted to check out this house. In our little community, it’s pretty infamous. Not for the haunting, which is honestly kinda run of the mill, but for the general weirdness.
This place has some wild lore connected to it. Seriously, I could write a book.
Nobody’s ever been given access until now, a real stroke of luck. You heard me right. It’s never been investigated. Ghost Hunters, eat your heart out!
Built in 1920 near the historic Belle Green Plantation a few miles from the little Virginia town of Denton, the mansion is a throwback to antebellum architecture. Picture large, wrap-around porches where you sip mint juleps while you enjoy the sunset. The house was built by Jared Wright, heir to a sugar company. When he died in the sixties, it stood intestate until the Paranormal Research Foundation, or PRF, bought it and moved in.
That’s when Wright Mansion became Foundation House.
In 1972, while the Republicans renominated Nixon for president, the last American troops left Vietnam, and Bobby Fischer became the first American world chess champion, five paranormal all-stars lived in this house and recruited dozens of people to take part in weird experiments.
Their motto was “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” They believed paranormal powers reside in all of us, dormant in our DNA. They were members of the Human Potential Movement, which believed humanity only used a fraction of its potential intelligence and ability. They wanted to identify paranormal abilities in people, discover the underlying mechanisms, and learn how to train and develop them to make a utopia.
In short, they were wacky as hell, but see it through their eyes for a minute. They envisioned a world where people could talk to the dead. Could read minds, control objects remotely, travel out of their bodies, know the future. And they weren’t stereotypical hippies. They were some of the leading scientists of their time, and two of them—Shawn Roebuck and Don Chapman—were certified geniuses.
As for the researchers, we know they went missing in 1972. The police files themselves vanished in the Election Day Flood of 1985.
So what are we investigating, exactly? Over the years, neighbors driving past the property reported seeing the ghostly apparition of an abnormally tall woman appearing in the upstairs window. Local kids using it as a party hangout said they heard invisible feet stomping on the grand staircase, experienced cold spots, and witnessed strange flashing lights in the woods around it.
In Episode 13, Fade to Black’s crack team will spend seventy-two hours at Foundation House. According to the owner, nobody’s lived in it since 1972, so we are hoping to find it more or less how the scientists left it.
Using cutting-edge techniques and the latest technology, we’ll investigate the paranormal claims and also see what we can learn about the Foundation itself. Which makes a great opportunity for me to brag about my team.
As our camera shooter, Jake Wolfson is the eyes of our little operation. Because the show is unscripted, we have to be careful about what we shoot so we don’t flood out postproduction. Hence his motto: “The most story for the least footage.”
Camera shooters are usually pretty stressed out. They track the action on their little black-and-white viewfinder while being aware of everything that’s going on and anticipating what will happen next. Jake’s a solid pro, though. Nothing ever seems to faze him. He’s a big, muscly guy with a braided gold beard and runic tattoos running down his arms. A real badass in look and deed.
Then there’s our tech manager, Kevin Linscott, the man with the mustache, our operation’s ears and technical wizard. He helps set up all our gear and monitors it while mixing audio for the show. If the camera doesn’t see it, the audio catches it.
Kevin’s a retired Philadelphia police officer who did a lot of ghost hunting with me at Ralston Investigates the Paranormal (RIP), an amateur local ghost hunting group, before joining the show, and he’s got all these great stories. When Claire tells me to trust the equipment, Kevin reminds me to trust my instincts and senses.
Jessica Valenza is our understudy and protégé. She’s a professional actress the producers added to the show to round out the team. She has turned into quite the paranormal investigator, and she fits right in.
For a reality show, we keep things lean and mean, as we don’t want people crowding around bumping into stuff and producing false positives on our instruments. Jessica not only helps with the investigating but does a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff for the show, a real jack-of-all-trades.
And then there’s Claire, my wonderful wife. The best of the best. Adorable and smarter than a bullwhip, she graduated magna cum laude from Virginia Tech with a PhD in physics. She designed all our ghost hunting protocols and is a crack investigator.
I honestly couldn’t do this without her.
Working together, we’re a team. But more than that, we’re family. A family that explores the unknown with a spirit of comradeship and a whole lot of scientific curiosity to solve the oldest and greatest of human mysteries: What happens to us when we die?
Oh, and I should give a shout-out to one more person who makes all this work.
You.
Seriously, without you, there’s no show, so as always, thank you for watching and participating. This show is heaven for me, as I get to earn a living doing what I love doing most, something I’d be doing either way.
So really, it’s about you. I’m proud that you’re on our team.
And I hope you’re as excited as we are about Episode 13.
It’s going to be amazing.
Foundation House, here we come!
Television Review | Fade to Black
By Max Hamil
Ghost Hunters, Paranormal Lockdown, and similar reality ghost-hunting shows capitalize on America’s fascination with the supernatural based on a tried-and-true formula. A paranormal investigation team explores a haunted location under the costumery of scientific rigor and confirms the presence of ghosts based on queasy feelings, fancy gadgets, and a few weird thumps in the night.
Deserved or not, criticisms of these shows being pseudoscience smack of party pooping, as they offer good fun aimed at the nearly one-half of Americans who believe in the supernatural, ghosts in particular. Though I’m personally agnostic on the subject, I sometimes watch for the fascinating locations and cheap thrills. Which goes to show you don’t have to believe in ghosts to have fun in a haunted house.
Enter newcomer Fade to Black, a series picked up by Pulse USA Network. Produced by former members of Ralston Investigates the Paranormal, or RIP, in Ralston, Virginia, it stars husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin as they follow the proven formula but with a nice twist: Matt’s a true believer, and Claire’s a born skeptic.
Instead of coming up with new gimmicks to compete and stay fresh, they go the other way, putting the real back in reality television.
With his earnest good looks, bright smile, and eternal font of optimism, Matt comes across as a nerd who woke up a rock star in an alternate universe. Even when something goes bump and the team has a freak-out, you can tell he’s having the time of his life.
With her short, curly red mop top, Claire is cute as a button in a retro vest or cardigan complete with collared shirt and tie, sometimes even a large-brimmed bowler like she’s the new Annie Hall. This willowy tomboy is the real nerd—physics PhD and all—doing her damnedest to debunk every paranormal claim using highly sophisticated equipment.
While other shows claim to use the scientific method to prove a haunting by trying to disprove it, Claire does it for real and with a vengeance. She steals the show by offering a catharsis narrative for the other half of Americans who aren’t true believers and want to see a slam debunk.
But it’s Matt and Claire together that makes the whole thing work, in no small part due to their on-screen chemistry, which involves inside jokes and occasional good-natured bickering leaking from their marriage. It gives this otherwise self-contained reality TV show something of an arc. Imagine if The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully ever tied the knot, and it’d probably look something like this.
At the end of each episode, the Kirklins make their separate cases, laying out all the evidence and letting us, the viewer, decide for ourselves, spilling over into lively debate online. Most episodes seem to end in a bust for the believers—a creative decision that takes courage on its own—but a few made me go hmm.
And that makes Fade to Black good television. The show tackles one of life’s biggest questions—What happens to us after we die?—and turns it into fodder for Monday morning chats around the water cooler. In doing so, it recognizes the fact that belief is rarely certain and always personal, while reminding us that the search for truth itself is half the fun.
FADE TO BLACK
Pulse USA Network, tonight at 9 ET and PT; 8 CT.
Paisley Hirsh and Jonathan Vogan, executive producers.
WITH: Matt and Claire Kirklin (lead investigators); Jessica Valenza (investigator); Kevin Linscott (tech manager).
Subject: Calvin Sparling
Files of Jessica Valenza, Investigator
Jessica: How old are you, Calvin?
Sparling: I turned sixty-five just last month.
Jessica: Are you married? Children?
Sparling: Divorced. That was a long time ago. No kids.
Jessica: You said in your voicemail back to me that you participated in an experiment at the Paranormal Research Foundation in Denton, Virginia. You lived at Foundation House for seven weeks.
Sparling: In the summer of 1972. I answered a classified ad in The Free Lance–Star. It said they were looking for young folks to take part in a paranormal study. Paranormal research was coming on big back then.
Jessica: Is that what attracted you to answer the ad? Were you interested in it yourself?
Sparling: Maybe. I don’t know. I was very young, and like a lot of people, I was looking for something, only I had no idea what it was. I thought this might be it. I saw myself as having an open mind and wanting fresh experiences. I’d tried LSD and was thinking about traveling the Hippie Trail and spending some time in India.
Jessica: I went through that searching phase myself.
Sparling: Yeah. I was a bum.
Jessica: Well, I guess it’s lucky you weren’t drafted and sent to Vietnam.
Sparling: By then, the troops were coming home. The last of ’em pulled out while I was at the house.
Jessica: Oh, sorry. That’s right.
Sparling: In hindsight, I wish I had been drafted.
Jessica: Why is that?
Sparling: You should get on with the real questions y’all want to ask.
Jessica: Okay. So you went to Denton…
Sparling: Which is in the middle of nowhere. A lot of deep, dark woods. There was once a slave plantation around there. The big house ain’t easy to find. We finally came up on it, and my friend dropped me off. I was supposed to live there for three months, with room and board taken care of plus two hundred fifty dollars.
Jessica: What were your first impressions?
Sparling: The researchers were eggheads but overall pretty laid back. They all lived at the house with me and around a dozen other subjects, so it had a commune vibe to it. They did weird science. They grew their own food. They saw themselves as revolutionaries, part of the Human Potential Movement. Pioneers of a whole new science and understanding of reality. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Jessica: What does that mean—that last part?
Sparling: It was their motto. History is filled with unexplainable and dismissible phenomena. They wanted to stop ignoring and start explaining it. If they could explain it, they could control it. Make it work for us.
Jessica: Us?
Sparling: People. Humans. They wanted to change the world.
Jessica: What kinds of experiments did they have you do?
Sparling: A whole mess of things. They held up cards with numbers on the other side and asked me to guess what number they were holding. They had me stare at a gal in another room while they monitored her heart rate and so on. I figured I was good at staring, because next they had me eyeball a string of random numbers produced by a computer and try to force them to go a certain way with my mind. It seemed kind of silly, but it was interesting.
Jessica: What else do you remember about the experiments?
Sparling: The ganzfeld experiments were pretty odd. I’d sit in a sensory deprivation chair with headphones and blacked-out goggles and talk out loud about what I saw in my mind’s eye. What I didn’t know at the time is they had somebody else trying to beam the image of an object into my head. With their own mind, you know. Afterward, the docs would hold up four cards with images on them—a horse, an apple, that kind of thing—and ask me to point to the one that was beamed at me. We also tried it with dreams, in my case lucid dreaming, as I can do that.
Jessica: Did it work?
Sparling: Well, the researchers didn’t jump for joy or nothing, so maybe not. I was starting to wonder if they were really just studying blind chance. Later, I found out I did better than most, either through luck or something else.
Jessica: But you left the program early anyway. You quit.
Sparling: Yup. I did.
Jessica: Can you tell me why?
Sparling: At a certain point, the experiments stopped, and the docs let all but three of us subjects go. I soon figured out the experiments had been a vetting process to find a certain kind of subject, and me and two of the others were special for some reason. We were the ones who took part in the big one.
Jessic. . .
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