If there’s something strange in your neighborhood — a bump in the night, a voice in the wind or a spirit in your closet, you might want to call Boston Paranormal Investigators. 

New England is no stranger to the paranormal, with hundreds of preserved historical sites and accounts of hauntings stretching back centuries. For most, these stories are a source of frightening entertainment or morbid curiosity, but the Boston Paranormal Investigators, or BPI, see these cases as opportunities for discovery. 

BPI doesn’t charge for private investigations and isn’t promoting a radio or TV show; they are gathering research on the afterlife. 

Barry Corbett, a former BPI lead investigator, said that 80-90% of the spirits they encounter in their historic and private cases are “completely harmless, just stuck between two worlds,” unlike poltergeists and demons as depicted on TV and in movies. Corbett’s lifelong fascination with the paranormal led him to write and publish “The Boston Paranormal Archives” in 2024, which highlights several haunted New England locations.

“The fact that we can get evidence, someone’s voice on a recorder that was once alive, to me, that tells me that the soul exists and is real, and we go on when we die, so that’s a big deal to me,” Corbett said. 

In April, the group visited the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, Mass., a revolution-era estate that has been the scene of several otherworldly sightings and phenomena, according to Corbett’s 2024 novel. 

“This was the home of someone who we like to call the forgotten revolutionary Jeremiah Lee,” said Associate Director of the Marblehead Museum Jarrett Zeman. 

Lee was the wealthiest merchant in Massachusetts right before the American Revolution. He fought alongside Samuel Adams and John Hancock and used his vast shipping empire to smuggle cannons and weapons to support the war. 

“Unfortunately, he never got to see the revolution happen. He died right after the battle of Lexington and Concord of a cold he caught right as that battle was happening,” Zeman said.  

The museum preserves the estate as it was when it was first built in 1768. In some rooms, it pays homage to the later history of the building, like when it was a bank and family residence. 

During its time as a museum, visitors and staff have witnessed multiple otherworldly happenings, including when a little boy on a tour saw a female ghost walk through the wall, Corbett said. 

“The poor kid was so scared, he ran out of the building yelling down the street,” Corbett said. 

On another occasion, a tour guide on the second floor claims to have seen a spirit in colonial garb on the second floor. 

BPI has been to the Lee Mansion three times before the April investigation, conducting research and doing public demonstrations. During one of its sessions, the group caught a whisper on the digital recorders, and one member said they felt something poke the back of their head. 

In his eight years with the group, Corbett has been to around 150 haunted sites.

“We get a lot of voices, EVPs – electronic voice phenomena,” Corbett said. “We’ve heard knocking sounds; some of us in the group have seen physical manifestations before — I haven’t, but a spirit did walk through me twice, and that’s something to experience. It felt like electricity going through your body.” 

BPI uses a variety of gadgets to capture this ghostly evidence, including infrared camcorders, voice recorders, motion-activated trail cameras and regular iPhone cameras, trying to cover and monitor each room of a haunted site. 

They also employ REM pods, which detect changes in temperature and electromagnetic fields, as  well as laser grids — devices that highlight movements and disruptions — and movement-activated cat toys in an effort to give spirits as many avenues as possible for interworldly communication. 

The group had three hours to conduct its investigation at the Lee Mansion, meaning BPI investigators had to quickly assemble their equipment in each room and gather in the lobby to begin the session. 

In each ornately-decorated room, the group attempted to coax out a spirit. 

“We have cameras in quite a few of the rooms here, and we’re hoping to catch an image of you. I can see why you might be camera shy, but we would sure love to see you,” Corbett said. “It’s easy to communicate with us just by touching one of these, you don’t have to touch it. None of these things can hurt you, they’re just tools we use to alert us to your presence.” 

As the storm outside beat the trees and shook the windows, the investigators spitballed Ouija board-style questions, asking spirits if they’re present, why they remained and to share their story. That night, the house mostly remained quiet, except for some unaccounted for knocks and creaks. 

The investigators made their way through the mansion and upstairs to a dark 19th-century nursery filled with antique baby rockers and eerie paintings of children. 

“This room is set up to represent bank families that lived in this house when it was a bank in the 19th century, and along the walls are what we call postmortem portraits,” Zeman said. 

If a child died at a young age, before their parents were able to get them photographed, they would have a painting done instead. These paintings were hung in a mourning family’s parlor and often had ominous symbols indicating the child was dead or how they died. 

“We’re hoping to use the white noise between stations to catch a ghostly voice,” Corbett said. 

The BPI employed the Estes Method, using a SB7 “spirit box,” which sweeps rapidly through radio frequencies. 

“It’s like spinning a radio dial up and down. So it’s sweeping so fast that it’s going to be unusual for you to get a whole word or a sentence,” Corbett said. 

While BPI Investigator Brianne “Bree” Hantzis listens to the spirit box with over-ear headphones, other members of the group ask questions to try to break the ice with a lingering spirit. Hantzis sits on the floor, intently listening for any messages from beyond. 

“If we ask them something and she gives us an answer that makes sense, then we know it probably came from somewhere else,” Hantzis said.  

“Are there spirits in the room with us? Can you give me a name?” Corbett said. 

“Female voice, ‘Annie,’” Hantzis said. 

“Thank you. All right, we asked for a name, and she gave us a name. That’s wonderful, Annie. It’s nice to meet you,” Corbett said. 

Hantzis said she also heard a male voice say “Go away,” to which Corbett assured that they would leave soon but had gotten permission to be there. 

“Annie, are you still here? Bree is the one sitting on the floor listening to the device that helps us–”

“I just had a female voice say, ‘Hey Bree,’” Hantzis said.

“No kidding. Are you serious?” Corbett said. “Oh, that’s really good – thanks so much, Annie, that’s excellent.” 

Corbett smiled as he scanned the room with his thermal camera. 

“We do love what we do. It’s what we’re addicted to — it’s fun,” Corbett said. 

Corbett was originally brought into the group by founder Tom Elliott, who started BPI in 2006. Since Corbett stepped down as lead investigator in 2023, Laura Giuliano has been leading the crew of about a dozen investigators. 

Hantzis brought her sister, Arlyssa LaPorte, along for the investigation, who is on the fence about the supernatural but loves reading about history and historical sites. Both sisters have a background in science – Hantzis has a degree in marine biology and works in biotechnology, and LaPorte is a biotechnology teacher at Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School. 

“From a science standpoint, how do we capture that? It’s all about data,” Hantzis said. “If you can go back to the same locations over and over and over and over again and layer it with as many different cameras and capture as much evidence as you can — all those bits of evidence can be aggregated into a set of data that you can look at and try to look for trends.”

BPI returned to the Lee Mansion for a fourth time May 17 for a public event, where they showed a slideshow, took people around the mansion, trained them to use their ghost detection gadgets and raised funds for historical preservation. 

“Believe it or not, I started out not being a believer when I was young. I didn’t think ghosts were real,” Corbett said. “Now, I would say trust your senses, because we’ve got enough real evidence to convince me that they’re certainly out there, and they’re everywhere too.” 

In the final Estes session, Corbett asked, “Do you want us to come back again?” and with no answer heard, the BPI team packed up its gear. Upon reviewing the footage, just after Corbett’s question, a faint EVP captured on a recorder whispered, “No.”