Local paranormal researchers aren’t sure if strange goings on at a local bistro are tied to a 1975 attempted robbery at the same location, but what they did find left them intrigued.
Paranormal North Coast British Columbia is a Kitimat-based team that has, over the past three years, investigated different places around Kitimat, Terrace, and Prince Rupert, looking to try to explain the seemingly unexplainable.
Recently, they conducted an investigation of PF Pizzeria & Bistro at City Centre Mall, after employees reported strange goings-on in and around the establishment.
The team, made up of Danny Nunes, John Powell, Roy Lawson, and Keenan Mosdell, had received a call from employees at PF Bistro that there were weekly occurrences of things that shouldn’t be happening, such as weird noises, dishes flying off kitchen shelves, and something the Bistro staff call “Shadowman,” a shadowy apparition that many would see behind them out of the corner of their eyes.
So, the team decided to come in and investigate.
“The idea is that, if there are ghosts, they are composed of different energies, so the idea is that they can transmit different energy waves to hit different technologies and communicate with you,” Nunes said.
The team uses video cameras, audio equipment, and an app called Spirit Box that emits a loud, white noise that different energies can interact with to try to communicate with humans.
They also use temperature readings to try to document energies, as well.
“Humans emit heat signatures, yeah? So, you know, if you see something on a device shaped like a human, but it’s emitting a cold signature, then it’s like, oh my God, you’re going to freak out because that doesn’t make sense,” Nunes said.
“And even sometimes a heat signature, it’s like, there’s nothing there on the other cameras, but why are we getting this heat signature then?” Powell added.
Nunes and Powell said investigating is often boring and tedious and they’re not finding ghosts around every corner, like the TV shows would have people believe.
“You’re lucky if you get, like, audio evidence, so…you’re setting up cameras, you’re setting up audio devices,” Nunes said. “We document what’s going on, and try to put a face to what the witnesses are telling us.”
Nunes and Powell said the process involves setting up the equipment, then asking a series of basic questions, such as the spirit’s name, if they’re even there, etc., to try to get an intelligent response in return.
“You’re asking questions, like, out of thin air,” Nunes said. “You’re trying to guess whether there’s maybe something there or not.”
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The team starts by interviewing witnesses to get a sense of the situation and try to find out if there’s any relevant history. From there, they try to recreate the witness testimonies to see if they can find out if there’s validity to their experiences.
In the case of The Bistro, Nunes said they talked to the employees and went to the Kitimat Northern Sentinel archives at the Kitimat Public Library to try to validate the stories and get a sense of the restaurant’s history.
They found out that in 1975, there was an attempted robbery at a sporting goods store on the lower level. The man had ended up in a shoot-out with the police. Police chased him to the second level, where the man reportedly later died due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The location of this incident? Right outside The Bistro where they’d been experiencing the strange activity.
Throughout the investigation, which happened near the end of June, the team saw an orb in the bathroom, heard a response that sounded like “Nathan” when they asked the spirit’s name, had a broom fall unprovoked in the kitchen, and got a vocal response to questions posed just outside of the staff bathroom, in the kitchen, and in main dining area.
Nunes and Powell said that they never saw the “Shadowman” the employees had spoken of, and they can’t confirm that the audio and video they got was the man from the 1975 robbery, but they said the footage they got validated the employees’ testimonies that something strange was going on.
“There’s a lot of different theories about what constitutes the paranormal,” Nunes said. “We’re not busting ghosts, we’re documentarians, really.”
Going forward, they said the team’s goal is to try to document occurrences all around Northwest B.C.
“The idea is to go up the road, from Kitimat to Prince George, and basically document these stories,” Nunes said. “If you can [document] something with a human form, that’s the gold at the end of the rainbow…[but] like I said, [we’re] not Ghostbusters, nothing we see is for certain, we’re just doing [our] best.”
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