How Indian paranormal investigators are using science and logic to face all that's spooky

For Sarbajeet Mohanty, a 28-year-old paranormal investigator with an engineering degree, this was the crucial question when he decided to delve deeper into the matters of the other world. For someone who had suffered from a fear of darkness and ghosts and paranormal entities from a young age, the decision to study the subject was a momentous one.

“My father had a transferable job and we would frequently change locations and therefore, houses. My fear of darkness, as a child, was aggravated by the fact that all these houses were ‘haunted’. From an early age, I would have experiences which I couldn’t explain, sounds of things moving, falling, shadows moving,” he recalled.

When they finally moved to Bhubaneswar, this time to their own house, Sarbajeet decided to be prepared. “I had just cleared my class X board examinations at the time. I told myself that as long as the spirits couldn’t kill me, I could handle the rest. I started researching online and also talking to other people — friends, parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. I realised fear of the unknown was something everyone shared,” he added.

In 2016, having moved to Mumbai after meeting business partner Pooja Vijay (Sarbajeet claims she is a psychic) on a WhatsApp group of like-minded people, the duo launched the Parapsychology and Investigations Research Society (PAIRS), to probe "subjects like ghosts, demons, possessions, near-death experiences, telekinesis, to name a few”.

The organisation was not the first of its kind to have been set up in India. In a country which has a long history of tantric study, beliefs in djinns and atmas and other entities that go bump in the night, the existence of ghostbusters, ojhas, exorcists and those allegedly indulging in kala jadoo (black magic), is not new. But the past 15 years at least, if not more, have seen the rise of modern paranormal investigators, who claim to use rationale and science to investigate, and often debunk, reports of hauntings, possessions and the like.

In 2009, Gaurav Tiwari founded the Indian Paranormal Society (IPS), “a pioneer in metaphysical/anomalous research around the globe, especially in India”. After his death in 2016, the group shifted its base from Delhi, where it had previously been headquartered, to Mumbai, from where it continues to operate. While there had been speculations of paranormal involvement in his death, IPS members insist Gaurav had committed suicide, as had been the findings of the police.

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For many practicing paranormal investigators, the entry into the spirit world happened through purported personal experiences. If Sarbajeet was propelled by a need to rise above his fears, for 47-year-old Meghna Porwal, a member of the IPS, it was “seeing her father’s spirit” that triggered in her a desire to explore the subject.

Interestingly, though both Sarbajeet and Menghna make claims of personally having experienced the paranormal, the investigators insist their work is more about probing and debunking false alarms, rather than chasing spirits.

“When clients approach us with claims of paranormal experiences, requesting our help, we find that in only one per cent of the cases would there actually be a paranormal presence. So, we ask a lot of follow-up questions to eliminate medical, environmental, or other such reasons, before we take up an investigation,” said Meghna. Cases of possession are even rarer, she added. “Often patients of schizophrenia exhibit symptoms similar to those traditionally associated with possession, such as hearing voices, change in behaviour, etc. So whenever someone tells us that there is a case of possession in the family, we tell them to first take the person to a medical practitioner.”

Only once the investigators have ruled out all other possibilities do they consider a paranormal presence, they claim.

Sarbajeet gives an example of a client where every member of a family was experiencing a purported paranormal presence in their house. “They would hear sounds, see apparitions, the baby of the family would look at one corner of the room and keep wailing,” recalled Sarbajit. “When we went there, however, we realised the house was built on an electromagnetic hotspot and what the family was experiencing was the side effects of electromagnetic pollution, such as hallucination, hearing things, etc. We recommended that they contact an electrician and do a proper grounding and two weeks later all their problems were gone, the baby was sleeping peacefully,” he added. According to him, in eight out of ten cases they get, there is a logical explanation to the issue. Ironically, one of the things that alerted them to the absence of any paranormal entity in the above case was a spike in their electro-magnetic field (EMF) metre, which, according to investigators, would normally indicate the presence of a spirit.

Rather than using rosary beads, crosses, holy water, or sacred ash in their work, modern-day investigators go armed with gadgets like digital audio recorders (which pick up sounds not audible to the human ear), infrared cameras (to capture images of apparitions, if any) and EMF metres, to name a few. “The EMF metre measures the electro-magnetic field at any place. EMF is everywhere, but it usually shows zero on the metre, unless there is an anomaly of some kind, one of which could be a paranormal presence, when we get a spike. To rule out other reasons, we usually switch off power connections during an investigation to ensure that a spike is not being caused by an electrical gadget in the room. In this particular case, however, we found a very high and persistent spike, which in our experience indicates a man-made reason and not paranormal. This is because spirits behave like humans; if humans are not constant in their behavior, neither are spirits. Such a constant spike as we were getting wouldn’t be caused by a spirit, which led us to believe that the house was built on an EMF hotspot.”

When they do find themselves in the presence of a spirit, the mode of communication is quite different from what fiction and films may lead us to expect. Neither IPS or PIARS investigators use Ouijja boards or have done seances, they say — though, in a first, Sarbajeet and Pooja did use an Ouijja board they found at the UK’s Ram Inn, said to be among the most haunted spots in the world, during a recent investigation. The video is available on their YouTube channel.

“Investigators must go with an open mind and have done their research so that they know the right question to ask the spirit. There should be respect, both for the living and the dead, and the investigator must always remember that the idea is to help both the living and the dead,” said Meghna on interacting with a spirit.

The medium of communication is verbal, said Sarbajeet, equating the process to counselling. “In our experience, the spirits do not wish to harm; they are caught in a loop, often not realising that they have crossed over,” he said. Talking about the notion of unfulfilled desires or duties tying an entity to a place, he added, “If the spirits are very old, say of victims of witch hunts or sacrifices centuries ago, we explain to them that we have heard them, but there is no way of setting anything right after so much time has passed.”

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While neither the IPS nor PAIRS use the religious medium in their investigations — though Gaurav himself had been an ordained minister of the Metaphysical Church of Humanistic Science — not all investigators are averse to the faith methodology.

For Devvrat Puri Goswami, who identifies as a private detective and paranormal investigator, one of his earliest memories of the paranormal was that of his sister “being possessed by a djinn [a paranormal entity]”. “Her behaviour had changed, she would be found missing from home at night, lift furniture too heavy for her; doctors could do nothing to help. Finally, it was a maulvi who captured the djiin and set her free,” said Devvrat, who claims to have later trained under an aghori (member of a monastic order). “But I am an engineer by education and have also completed multiple specialised courses in parapsychology from the Rhine Research Center (Durham, North Carolina),” he added.

While he claims that what sets him apart from traditional faith practitioners is that he looks for solutions rather than conventional cures, his methods are a blend of the rational and the religious, especially when it comes to ensuring his own protection. “When I go for an investigation, I don’t carry any charm or religious symbol to protect me. But if I ever feel a paranormal entity is following me or attaching itself to me, I go to a temple and get myself cleansed,” said Devvrat.

Meghna carries a small bottle of holy water and a rosary with her when she goes to an investigation and takes a salt water bath at least once a month to clean herself. Sarbajeet meanwhile, depends on meditation and building his aura for strength.

Despite the common unease with paranormal, however, investigators say there is also a lot of interest in it. Both IPS and PAIRS offer paranormal courses. “We get five to six requests a day,” said Megha. But it is a career path which no investigator would recommend, the primary reason being that “there is no money in it,” they say. “Most investigators I know have full-time jobs and this is just a side gig. I work as a content writer. We can’t charge our clients exorbitant fees, because often they are not in a position to pay us. Mostly we ask them if they can just pay for our travel, food etc,” said Meghna.

Payments by clients vary greatly, from Rs 2000-20000, with the latter being a rare case, they say.

Sarbajeet held a digital marketing job in his initial years as a paranormal investigator, while his partner Pooja, worked as a tutor. “But the Covid pandemic put an end to both those careers,” he recalled. The duo have since moved to monetising their YouTube channel — which currently has over 2,50,000 subscribers and also run Ghost Encounters Tours, charging clients Rs 17,000-20,000 for a two-day “guided paranormal exploration”. The company has recently also launched day-long tours. “But like I said, spirits are inconsistent in their behavior, like humans and so being on an exploration doesn’t guarantee a paranormal experience”. It is like being on a safari; you may spend days at Corbett National Park without seeing even a pug mark, while someone else may spot a tiger in hours. “Most of our clients are, however, those who regularly follow our work, and so are aware of this. We also understand the responsibility of taking laymen on a paranormal exploration, so we start with a workshop to prepare them,” explained Sarabjeet.

The investigator has also appeared on television shows and collaborated with writer Neil D’Silva on two books; The Spirits Talk To Me, published in 2020, and the recent Ghost Whispers. These projects have helped his family better accept his unconventional choice of career, said Sarabjeet, with a laugh; “In conversation with people, they now refer to these rather than paranormal investigation as my work.”

For Neil, who started his career writing horror fiction centered around characters from Indian folklore such as betal, pishacha and yakshinis, working with Sarbajeet, and another investigator, Jay Alani, with whom he collaborated for the book Haunted in 2019, has created a shift in his perspective of the paranormal. “I now believe in spirits,” said Neil, who has since accompanied Sarbajeet on investigations. “I don’t believe in the fictional horror characters I write about. That is entertainment, though I do believe folklore used these characters as metaphors. But I believe there are energies, aura which can’t be explained. I believe spirits have no form,” said Neil, who also claims to have once seen the spirit of his dead grandfather.

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The investigators, in addition to probing cases from clients, also take up independent exploration of places which have been branded haunted. Sarbajeet has investigated Bhangarh and Kuldhara in Rajasthan and Jamali Kamali in Delhi, among others. “The list needs to be updated,” he said. “For years, we have been talking about the same sites. Sure, we found EMF metre spikes or audio recording at these places, but you can’t brand any one as ‘most haunted’,” he explained.

Explaining how these sites have continued to be regarded as ‘haunted’ for so many decades, despite repeated investigations by multiple paranormal experts, he said, “One reason for this is that many of these places have the presence of more than one entity, so even if one investigator manages to set a spirit free, there are others. The other reason is what is called the Egregore Effect — the collective unease about a place sustaining its paranormal character.”

For Halloween, Sarbajeet and Pooja have another tour planned for clients of Ghost Encounters Tours. For someone who claims to have spent sleepless nights as a boy fearing the paranormal, seeking out what once terrified him appears to have set him free. Unlike many other investigators, he claims to have never had a spirit follow him back from an investigation or attach itself to him. “The most important precaution is not to be afraid. If there is no fear, there is no harm. Often, people harm themselves when they are in a state of terror and word gets around that a spirit has caused death or injury,” he said.