Who You Gonna Call? PI-NYC
Tuesday May 13, 2008 8:22 AM
New York. The Big Apple. The city of five boroughs is an intense and fascinating place, brimming with people, art, marketing, culture and, of course, ghosts. New York City has its share of paranormal phenomena, and when something goes bump in the night, native New Yorkers don't call the Ghostbusters. But they can turn to the members of Paranormal Investigations NYC.
Founded by Dominick Villella in 2003, Paranormal Investigations serves all five boroughs of New York City, from swanky downtown Manhattan to modest neighborhoods in Queens. Dom's interest in the paranormal began in 1998, and his studies in this area naturally led him to the founding of a group devoted to investigation and research. One of Dom's other main goals with the founding of Paranormal Investigation NYC was to help people who might not have a background in the paranormal gain a better understanding of what was going on in their homes when they found themselves unexpectedly confronted with something otherworldly.
Dom and his team have a hybrid investigation technique. They certainly know their way around technological gadgets, and they feel that scientific research has a place in paranormal investigations. However, they feel that science can only provide a limited range of answers when it comes to the paranormal, and so they also take a metaphysical approach to their investigations. PI-NYC employs psychics in their work, largely because Dom feels that psychics operate on the same level that spirits do. Thus, a psychic can meet spirits more or less on their own turf and can be invaluable when it comes to clearing unwanted or harmful entities from a home.
Running investigations in New York City can provide a lot of high profile opportunities. Even though Dom and his crew are not into paranormal investigations just to get their names in the press, they have nevertheless gained a lot of attention in recent years. They have appeared in the New York Times, Fox News, Time Out NY, the New York Resident and a number of other publications. In 2005, they were invited to investigate hauntings at the Ed Sullivan Theater, and they have run investigations at the historic Belasco Theater, the Eastern State Penitentiary and the famous restaurant, One if by Land, Two if by Sea. One of Dom's favorite investigations was at a location in Upstate New York called the Willowby House. Originally a sanitarium, this massive mansion was later converted into a funeral parlor. When Dom and his team were there, the embalming room still had equipment. Dom recounts an experience he had with fellow team-member Gilberto. He and Gilberto were up on the third floor of the Willowby House, sitting on the stairs. They started talking out loud to the spirits of the place, inviting them to communicate. Much to both men's surprise, they began to hear a woman's voice speaking to them in a foreign language. As Dom speaks Italian and Gilberto speaks Spanish, they ruled out both of those languages, guessing that the woman's words were coming to them in German or Russian, based on the general sound.
Gilberto didn't want to miss an opportunity to record such amazing spirit communication, and so he rummaged around for the tape recorder while Dom kept the woman talking. However the minute Gilberto turned the recorder on, the voice ceased. Playing a hunch, Dom asked Gilberto to turn the tape recorder off. When Dom asked another question, the woman responded audibly again. This just reinforced one of Dom's belief about the spirit world — the residents of that mysterious realm are not generally eager to give us proof. Although he believes that science has the ability to measure at least some portion of ghostly phenomenon, he believes that the spirits themselves often work to frustrate these attempts, preferring to leave a certain amount of mystery between our world and theirs.
