PART II: Paranormal investigator John Zaffis talks about his most horrific case ever

Haunted Collector, Syfy’s hit reality series, follows the often scary adventures of paranormal expert John Zaffis and his motley crew of investigators, including two of his children. He’s a man well-known in the circles of ghosts, hauntings, possessions and the downright bizarre, and now he’s become a TV personality on a mission: To find questionable artifacts in people’s homes and calm the nerves of the absolutely terrified.

The nephew of famed paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, Zaffis has been interested in the supernatural almost his entire life. In a revealing interview with Hollywood Soapbox, he talks about the upcoming season of Haunted Collector, plus some of his more memorable cases on the road.

Here’s Part II of our discussion (read Part I here). Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

Do you take artifacts you pick up on the road back to your museum?

Yes, there are items from the cases that are removed. … Usually when you deal with a haunting, most people do not want to keep anything in there that’s going to be keeping the activity going. They would just like the item removed. So therefore it is removed. There have been a couple of cases from the TV show where the items were returned to the people.

They’re brought back to the museum. It’s a barn that’s on my property, and all of the things that I do put in there, there are bindings, there are prayers and special things that are done over them by a lot of different spiritual people before I put them in there — hopefully to actually contain that energy that’s with them.

Is that museum open to the public?

It’s a private museum. I do not have it opened up to the public. It’s in a residential area. But every once in a while, I do work with little groups and do bring them in for little tours and things like that. I work with a lot of colleges and universities up here in the New England area, where I let the kids come in that have paranormal groups on campuses and teach them and train them on how to do different things.

Maybe somewhere down the road the museum we will be open to the public. There is a big demand for people wanting to see items. Maybe somewhere down the road I will end up relocating it.

Do you travel far to find cases?

There’s not really any restriction … the United States, Canada, England, Scotland.

Would you be open to another season?

It’s a lot of work. There’s a lot that goes into a TV show, and you’re on the road for months and months. It’s just something that I would really have to take a step back and look at and see what the future even holds as far as anything goes, whether our ratings are good or they’re average or whatever. We all have our priorities in life.

Is there one investigation in your career that is the most memorable?

Absolutely. That would the haunting in Connecticut. That was 24 years ago, and again it was one of the most horrific, intense investigations. It affected all the clergy, all the researchers, the family members. There wasn’t anybody that didn’t walk away from the haunting of Connecticut that wasn’t personally affected.

What was your inclusion in the investigation?

I was involved in that for 9-and-a-half weeks. I was brought in by Ed and Lorraine Warren to investigate that. And the conclusion basically was the experiences that happened in there. Again, maybe take that step back and realize, when people have these personal experiences and other people witness them or experience them, that’s solidifying to an individual that they’re not crazy, that these things are occurring and happening. Once that’s verified, you look at things differently. Like I said, that probably was one of my most horrific in the category of that type of haunting. It will probably always stay with me the rest of my life.

What can viewers expect in this next season?

The investigations, the majority of them are brand-new locations for going on TV, intermingling with businesses and residential areas and trying to solve some of the things we uncover, the things we find out. And some of the solutions trying to help them to move forward, I think people will find it very intriguing, because one of the key factors that I strive very high for, as far as the TV show, people get information from it and they can get an understanding of some of these things that you just don’t see in the other shows.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Haunted Collector airs on the Syfy network on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Click here for more information.