INTERVIEW: ‘Kindred Spirits’ team brings compassion to paranormal investigating

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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What sets apart Kindred Spirits, the hit paranormal investigation show on Travel Channel, is that the team of Amy Bruni, Adam Berry and Chip Coffey have a great deal of compassion for the “ghosts” they go searching for. Whereas other reality series are caught up in so-called demon hunting, this trio tries to turn their investigations into history lessons that attempt to understand, and even sympathize, with the lives that were lost at a particular property.

Kindred Spirits is back with new episodes Saturday, Dec. 18 at 10 p.m. The season premiere finds the team heading to an old Masonic temple in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and what they find is truly surprising, with the network even suggesting they may have unearthed a cold case murder.

“We had to call the police for the first time ever on a case because there may or may not have been human remains in the basement, so people will have to watch to find out what happened exactly,” Bruni said. “But it was quite a sequence of events that I don’t think anybody expected.” (Spoiler alert: Here is Bruni’s recent tweet about the episode.)

Berry said the old temple has a lot of history, and to help them better understand its roots, they called in a mutual friend who knows about the Freemasons, an old fraternal organization that some say has a secret history.

“There was a point where this building was used as a Masonic temple,” Berry said. “And what better way to interact with any spirits that might have been around when it was operating as such then bring in a friend of ours, but we weren’t allowed to use audio on him because he went up to where the temple was and said some things that we’re not supposed to know, secret things, to get reactions. I thought that was a pretty cool thing to do in that building for sure.”

Bruni said many of the hauntings that they look into are energy-based, and it is her belief that a building’s history can feed that energy. So the fact that the Freemasons used this temple was interesting to her, and she wondered whether some of the rituals and ceremonies the group conducted could have led to present-day paranormal activity.

“They put a lot of thought and feeling and spirituality and belief into those ceremonies, and that kind of charges the building,” she said. “There’s no negative connotations of being a Freemason. I think there’s a lot of mystery there. People wonder about it a lot, but that alone we think definitely affects a building and what kind of activity takes place there later, even 100 years later.”

Kindred Spirits usually focuses their investigations on the Northeast. There’s a lot of history in that part of the country and no shortage of ghostly tales. Plus, Bruni and Berry are residents of the area. Coffey, a psychic medium, is the only one not from New England.

“I am not based in the Northeast like Amy and Adam are,” Coffey said. “They’re both in the New England area, and I’m actually in the South. I live in the Atlanta area. … There’s a lot of haunted places in the Northeast, particularly places that we’ve been to as investigators, and it’s kind of a hot spot. So many places are haunted in the Northeast.”

Bruni said their focus on the region is also one of practicality. After all, the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging.

“Why we’ve done so many Northeast cases the last couple seasons is just because of COVID and travel,” Bruni said. “We’re here, and we’re close by. And so with our small crew and everything, it was a lot easier to load everybody up in cars rather than try to fly anywhere. And so it’s been nice as far as travel for us, but I think we’re ready. We’ve started branching out a lot more this season, getting out of the Northeast a little bit more, which is nice.”

Other investigations on this upcoming season include a home in Guilderland, New York; an 1850s manor in Upper Marlboro, Maryland; a tiny house in Newburgh, New York; and a century-old home in Little Rock, Arkansas. Plus there are episodes based in Vermont, New Jersey, Arkansas and Wisconsin.

“We have encountered spirits and ghosts that are hundreds of years old, but also a few decades,” Berry said. “So we’ve seen the gamut, but I think there is something unique about the New England area — it being as old as it is, and the stories that have come out of it. It’s the perfect place to be during the fall. I’m just going to throw that out there. It’s just magical, and everyone is into ghosts and spooky things. Welcome to our world.”

Bruni recognizes that her compassionate method of paranormal investigation has gained more followers, but in the early years, when she and Berry were pitching the network on Kindred Spirits, there was some skepticism on whether a lack of “evil” could bring in the viewers.

“It’s so funny to watch how things progressed over the years,” she said. “When Adam and I first pitched this show, gosh, five or six years ago, it was almost hard for people to fathom that we wanted to make a show about ghosts that everything wasn’t a demon. We wanted to explore the human aspects of spirits and humanize them, and I’m not going to lie, there was some pushback here and there for a couple seasons. ‘It’s got to be scarier,’ but Adam and I stuck to our guns. And now not only has the show changed, and people love that part of it, but a lot of the paranormal field and a lot of other shows have started tracking that way. I’m not going to say it’s just because of us. I just think it has been this natural evolution of the paranormal field. It’s been really great to watch that happen, and it’s wonderful that we’re all on the same page with that. Before we were outliers and having to plead our case, and now it’s interesting to see so many people have taken on that same thought process.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Kindred Spirits, featuring Amy Bruni, Adam Berry and Chip Coffey, returns Saturday, Dec. 18 at 10 p.m. to Travel Channel. Click here for more information.