'World's Biggest Ghost Hunt: Pennhurst Asylum' investigators open up on the chilling findings you WON'T see on the show
A group of paranormal investigators spent an entire two weeks inside the infamous Pennhurst asylum, one of the most haunted locations in the United States.
A&E's 'World’s Biggest Ghost Hunt' features some chilling findings from inside the ghost hotspot, including full-body apparitions, unexplained attacks, and noises. However, there was only so much the one night special will show you.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) spoke to Zak Heino, Ali Horrick, Austin George, Max Baumle and Katie Burr to figure out if there was more evidence of the strange things that happened during their eerie vacation in the mental institution that is said to have left mentally-ill patients and children to die.
Zak Heino, a paranormal investigator and electrical engineer, had taken the playground area in the institution to investigate along with Ali Horrick.
While looking around, Horrick thought she spotted a figure on the catwalk towards the Dietary Building, one of the structures inside the Pennhurst State School and Hospital campus.
Being a pro, Heino immediately pointed the thermal camera in that direction and what they saw will send chills down your spine — a hot spot in the shape of a person in one of the windows.
"At first, I suspected a possible heat reflection, but after looking closer none of the windows had any glass and when I climbed up on the catwalk the figure had disappeared," Heino recalled.
He added, "The interesting part was that this entire section of thermal footage was not recorded, which really perplexed me since I am extremely careful when it comes to the tech stuff."
If you think that's a coincidence, he says that throughout the two-week investigation, they had multiple technical problems, fresh batteries were drained and cameras died — for no apparent reason.
"Never have I experienced so many tech and battery issues during an investigation. Being an electrical engineer, one tech issue is one too many so these incidents still baffle me to this day," he shared.
The investigators generally worked in pairs, but Katie Burr conducted a solo investigation in Mayflower on the third floor, in the same room where they placed their sensor-equipped toy dog.
Armed with the REM pod and her audio recorder, she had been attempting to get EVPs from the child spirits in the building but wasn't having any luck. "After about 20 minutes in the room I started to feel as if something was touching the back of my neck," she said.
"At first, I thought it was my imagination, but it continued to happen in the same spot," she revealed. Soon, Burr started getting direct responses through touches. She found out after the investigation that more than half of Pennhurst's residents couldn't communicate verbally and it was their way of reaching out.
Investigators Ali Horrick and Austin George were in Candy Land, located beneath the Devon Building at Pennhurst when they heard an unexplained noise in the entryway like "someone ran their hand on the door before they entered and saw a nurse walk around the far side of the room, behind me, and then to Austin," said Horrick.
They did a meditation thrice in the room and activity got so intense, they were concerned for George's safety, she said. The chilling part is, while this was happening, the only camera that did not work — out of the 9 in the control room — was the one in Candy Land. This room was once used for occupational therapy.
George also recalls hearing a woman's voice on the spirit box, sounding very distressed. "For some reason, this distressed voice set me off, though, and I started feeling like I had to help."
"We had a spinning piece of equipment resembling a tesla coil that I used as a focus to meditate and try to connect. I nearly had another freakout and had to leave the tunnel and Max and Katie had to talk me down," he said.
The most chilling one so far has to be from investigator's Max Baumle's personal files. While in Devon Hall, he was monitoring the data being streamed in from these multi-sensors that catch any hits they may get.
These wireless sensors, designed for home security, work in tandem and record vital room data, including motion (using a passive infrared sensor), room brightness, temperature, vibration, and humidity, he explained.
He added that combined with the security cameras, these sensors help analyze room conditions without the need to enter, "thus eliminating any false positives and isolating any external variables."
While analyzing the data, he kept picking up motion from two sensors. Oddly enough, no one was close to them at the time. "They swapped it out and still the movement stayed.
"Shortly after, that's when I noticed the shadow figure on the camera in the hallway and a flash of light in the bathroom. I instructed Zak and Katie to investigate those areas," he recalled.
Baumle added, "And that's when we immediately started getting figures on the SLS camera in the bathroom of the man looking like he was showering, the EVP of water running, and the recording of the shadow moving across the open hall."
'World's Biggest Ghost Hunt: Pennhurst Asylum' premieres on Wednesday, October 30 at 8 pm ET exclusively on A&E.
