By Vivian Ramirez
Alternate realities, extraterrestrial channels, and conversations with ghosts were hot topics at the First Annual East Los Angeles Paranormal Conference at East Los Angeles College last Thursday.
The event, sponsored by the Psychology Club, hosted 11 paranormal organizations and vendors from Southern California. “This convention is to bring awareness to paranormal phenomenon and help families suffering from paranormal activity,” Juan Martinez, Psychology Club member, said. “Parapsychology is recognized as a legitimate branch of psychology,” Martinez said.
Parapsychology is the study of the paranormal, which includes telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. Portal Ascension, an organization currently on tour in the West Coast, offered students the tools to meditate through vibration and sound.
Handfuls of students crowded around their booth to hold one of their many Tibetan singing bowls, small brass bowls that produce low hums with a handheld wooden striker. Brad Johnson, extraterrestrial channeler and member of Portal to Ascension, explained that the vibration travels from the bowl into the receiver’s hand and produces a kind of therapy.
“The bowls are calibrated to the seven Chakra centers of the body and can be used to alleviate tension, headaches, and help your immune system,” Johnson said. “The universe is frequency. Currents travel through the body like a river and sometimes there’s junk blocking up the stream. That is why we use vibration and sound,” he said. Tuning forks were also struck on tables and personalized, individual sessions were offered to students.
Johnson also has the ability to communicate with a being named Adronis, who lives in another state of awareness. He uses his ability as a personal mentorship for guiding his life in the right direction, as well as other people. “These are only tools to help people reach a higher state of consciousness. The goal is to rejuvenate your state and become self-empowered,” Johnson said.
The North Orange County Paranormal Society (NOPS) displayed tools that are heavily science-based. Their booth resembled a secret agent’s arsenal, featuring infrared cameras, thermal lasers, static pods, and a baby doll with recording devices secretly placed inside its ears.
Their tools are used to record paranormal phenomena through private investigations at home, and abandoned hospitals and prisons. “We have all these tools out here to educate the public,” Jim Van Eeckhoutte said. “Anyone can pick up these tools and learn more about what we do,” he said.
Van Eeckhoutte, a web designer by day and paranormal investigator by night, has appeared on the Bio Channel’s “Celebrity Ghost Hunt and “The Dead Files: Alcatraz” on the Travel Channel. Other NOPS investigators educated students on their Electromagnetic Detectors with thermal probes, used to detect foreign presences and find cold spots.
A bottle of Johnson’s Baby Powder also sat on NOPS’s display, an unlikely yet extremely practical tool to detect ghost footsteps. The Lakewood-based group, 3 AM Paranormal, had some of its most useful ghost hunting tools for sale. Their best-selling item is the Monofied Radio, commonly referred to as ghost boxes, a radio-like mechanism that never stops on one particular station and is used to communicate with spirits and ghosts.