Do strange sounds in your musty old Georgetown townhouse keep you up at night? Ever wonder who that bloody, transparent little girl is at the foot of your bed? Is George Washington, himself, sharing your bathroom? Who are you gonna call? Why, you’ll call the CPRI (Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation), of course. With Halloween right around the corner, we thought it might be helpful to prepare for the horrors that await by speaking with Bobbie Atristain, the founder and director of the Richmond-based CPRI, which, if its web site is to be believed, is more about hard science than Ghostbusting:
Our main focus on researching the paranormal is science. Our scientific research staff is composed of physicists,environmental scientists, geologists, chemists, radio-nuclear chemists and Aerospace engineers. These scientists are from the National Academy of Science, NASA and Lockheed Martin to name a few.
Atristain founded CPRI in May of 2000, and has served as a “paranormal consultant” on a number of ghost-focused TV shows, things like the Travel Channel’s The World’s Most Cursed Places and PBS’s Things that Go Bump in the Night 2. She took some time out of investigating ghosts to speak with DCist.
How did you first get started in this line of work? Was there a specific paranormal encounter that sparked your interest?
I’ve always been interested in the paranormal. As a young child, I remember hearing my mother recount tales of seeing dead relatives at the foot of her bed. This began a lifelong interest in the paranormal. In the spring of 2000, I founded the Virginia Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society (which became the Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation in 2005).
What signs do you look for in an investigation request that make you take it more seriously? Do you get a lot of prank calls?
We also conduct a psychological assessment of people during our initial investigation phase, and use such tools as the Magical Ideation Scale to determine if people are prone to paranormal belief. When we do our preliminary onsite investigation, we also look for too many Stephen King books and horror movies, etc.
