INTERVIEW: Amy Bruni, Adam Berry on their new ghostly adventures

Photo: Kindred Spirits stars, from left, Chip Coffey, Adam Berry and Amy Bruni. Photo courtesy of Travel Channel / Provided by press site with permission.

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Kindred Spirits is back with all-new episodes, beginning Friday, Jan. 20 at 9 p.m. on Travel Channel and streaming on discovery+. The paranormal-minded show follows the ghostly adventures of Amy Bruni, Adam Berry and medium Chip Coffey as they investigate a host of purportedly haunted locations. This season, they examine everything from a museum in Palmyra, New York, to a home in Pittsburgh. The season premiere showcases a property in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, that supposedly has a dreadful history.

Kindred Spirits has always been different than other ghostly shows. For starters, this is not a scare-fest, nor is it a show that is definitively trying to prove the existence of the spirit world. Bruni, Berry and Coffey are already convinced, even though there are audience members who are more skeptical. What the team on Kindred Spirits is after is more empathetic. Their style of paranormal investigation is rooted in research and eventually closure for the “spirits.”

“We always think we’re going to know exactly how we’ll tackle it or come up with a game plan, and we’ll tour with the client,” Bruni said about day one of any investigation. “We’ll look at all of the reports that have supposedly happened, look at the history, plan our investigation accordingly, and then the ghosts always just change everything on night one. Without fail, we end up having to do a 180 or completely rethink how we’re handling things, but we always try our best to get it right on night one.”

Berry said that the first night in a new location is like a litmus test. They immerse themselves in the environment, taking into consideration the many claims about the property, and they await the activity to surface.

“We go in just to see what happens because usually there’s so many claims and so much activity,” Berry said. “[Amy] and I are like, OK, well, let’s just go in and see. Usually based on that, it points us in some sort of direction for day two, and then you rinse and repeat every single day until you find the solution.”

Many of the locations on Kindred Spirits have already been investigated by other paranormal teams, or sometimes by Bruni, Berry and Coffey on a previous season. The fact that seemingly every location in the United States has already been given the once-over by the endless number of paranormal teams that are out there doesn’t bother the Kindred Spirits trio. Their style is unique, and each night can be vastly different.

“We really enjoy going into places that have been investigated a lot,” Bruni said. “We kind of like to give it the Kindred Spirits treatment, and a lot of the people who run those locations, they also want us to come in because they just want to see what happens with our style of investigating, which just tends to be a lot more empathetic, a lot more emotional. Not that other investigators aren’t those things, but we’re there for multiple days. And it’s very intense, and so we do have to throw all of our preconceived notions out the door. Some of the times we have been there already. Other times good friends of ours have investigated and had results, or we’ve seen shows that have been there. But we always like to start with a clean slate and treat it like we are the first investigators to walk in the door.”

Berry added: “The thing is every time you go in, you have no idea who you’re going to encounter, so another group or team can go in and they get the spirit of a little child. But when we go in, that little child is nowhere to be found, and we get the spirit of somebody else. I think every time we go into a space, there is somebody there that’s going to reach out to us, and it could be completely different than anyone else that we talked to.”

Several of the locations featured on the reality series have tragic pasts. There are episodes of death, murder, neglect, abuse and torture within some of these walls. Bruni and Berry don’t necessarily believe that an unfortunate past leads to heightened paranormal activity in the present. For them, it’s all about those spirits.

“I would say that we try not to define these locations based on the tragedies that have happened within them,” Bruni said. “The strength of the haunting really more has to do with the spirits themselves and how motivated they are to make themselves known or get some sort of message across, and that’s why you can have hauntings in places where terrible things happened. But then you can walk into a little suburban house, and that haunting might seem 10 times worse, and there’s no history of anything terrible happening there. It really just depends on the spirits themselves and what they’re trying to get across. That’s why we always say never judge a book by its cover, but along those same lines, some of these places we don’t want them to be defined by the horrible things. So we try not to focus on that a lot, and a lot of times we’ll get more responses when we talk about what everyday life was like or talk about happy moments or bring up certain employees or people from the past who are well liked and well loved. If you’re in that situation, you’re not going to want to sit there and relive the terrible things that happened all the time, so that can be triggering information, too. You’re just going to have to put it all together and use your best judgment.”

Berry also keeps in mind how quickly their mission can become overwhelming. He and the team need to keep the difficult history in one part of their brain and not necessarily have it take over the entire investigation. These subject matters can get heavy — fast.

“When we go into these crazy places where a lot of bad things have happened, as investigators we sort of have to put that into the back of our mind a little bit because it can get overwhelming,” he said. “There were a lot of times this season, especially in the first episode, you just think about how these people were treated. They had nowhere else to go and how awful their conditions were. That can take a toll on you as an investigator. It makes you sad. It gives you ideas about who you might be talking to. You sort of have to pull yourself up and understand that if they’re still there, they need help, and we’re going to try to make that happen because it can be pretty intense.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Kindred Spirits, featuring Amy Bruni, Adam Berry and Chip Coffey, returns Friday, Jan. 20 at 9 p.m. on Travel Channel. The show streams on discovery+. Click here for more information.