IS revelations about the paranormal world will leave you spellbound and wanting to know more. And here’s a good chance to have ‘Paranormal Investigator’ Jay Alani take you through some of his haunted hunts and address your queries at his show titled Horror Talks with Jay Alani on August 25 at the capital.
“I feel God and ghost might be real, but no one knows and no one will no. But the way people perceive it all is wrong,”says the 29-year-old Patna-based expert. “Even if something exists, it will not come to bother you. And I see it as my job to bring the paranormal reality to people.”
About the show, he says, “Though people from all age groups attend the show, youngsters come up with the most number of queries because they are of the view that activities happening in movies like The Conjuring and Annabelle are real, and that Annabelle placed in The Warrens’ Occult Museum in Monroe is also real. But they don’t tend to see the logic that if Annabelle is real, than how can people see it so up close.”
It was a visit to Mehandipur Balaji temple in Rajasthan when he was 17 and seeing a priest perform exorcism, that raised several questions in Alani. “So, I started reading about it and met many like-minded people.”
The Mass Communication graduate, who believes in energies and not ghosts, has over 50 horror talks to his credit. “We had gone to shoot an investigation episode for a series titled Dark Destinations in Lambi Dehar mines in Mussorie, and we felt a negative presence playing with our radio frequency. But nothing harmed us,” adds the ‘ghost’ lover, who is “scared of humans” as he believes people have become so selfish, they don’t consider anything else important apart from them.
Alani recalls his Maner Patna case, where he saved a 16-year-old girl’s life. “She was supposedly ‘possessed’. Her family had taken her to a baba, who used to perform exorcism, which involves beating. If harming the body won’t work, they demand the girl’s virginity ‘to get rid of the problem’. But I intervened there and saved her from falling prey to the baba.” Later, the girl was found to be suffering from psychological diseases – pareidolia and paracosm.
Alani, who has investigated over 60 haunted sites and 130 cases of paranormal activity over 10 years, says he never “tresspasses a haunted site”. I always request for permission. But sometimes owners don’t allow,” he says, adding In Delhi, I have asked for permissions to investigate a house in Greater Kailash 2 and Malcha Mahal.”
The TedX speaker doesn’t see a problem in following age-old superstitions, “but I am against beliefs such as witchcraft that harm people,” he says.
Written by him and Neil D’Silva, a book on his life titled Haunted will be launched by Penguin around Halloween this year. This Founder of The Paranormal Company is also working on a podcast for gaana.com set for an October release.