American journalists trained to ignore paranormal

April 28, 6:35 PMParanormal News ExaminerRoger Marsh

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The U.S. media has been experiencing a slow shift in power and perspective - not unlike the way an ice cap melts - except the painful realities are taking place now.

The cultprit? The bloody Internet. The losers? Longtime print giants are the first to go, and right behind them are the mainstream networks. America seems to be reinventing the news.

Chicago is a good example with the all powerful Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times parent companies filing for bankruptcy recently. And who's watching the silly CNN coverage of ufology when they can watch UFO Hunters Wednesday nights on the History Channel?

Coming out of 1970s American journalism education myself, a BA in mass communicaitons from St. Bonaventure University, and an MA in journalism from Northern Illinois University, I can describe the unspoken laws of media that drew razar sharp lines between what was news and what was fiction from inside the classrooms and smoky editorial office back rooms.

Ghosts and hauntings were allowed coverage mainly during the popular Halloween season - and UFOs, Bigfoot, and other paranormal subjects were the fictional rantings of creative writers and dilusional people. And beyond that, I enjoyed an early lesson in what was news from an editor who tossed my first hand account of a very drunk President and Mrs. Ford into his garbage can.

Well, he handed me the story back, actually, so it may have well been tossed into oblivia.

"Presidents are under a lot of pressure," I was told, "and we shouldn't be be writing about how they enjoy their personal time outside the Oval Office. Why, I have a little snort myself once in a while."

"But I was there," I insisted. "They had to carry the president out the back door of a Vale, CO, restaurant in the dark and lay him into the back seat of the limo. And the First Lady staggered right behind and sat on the president's legs." This was long before there was a Betty Ford Clinic - and I had the scoop.

"Sorry," I was told. "It never happened. Now get out of here kid."

But my very first lesson in what American journalists can and cannot report was near the classroom in 1975 at St. Bonaventure University. As an undergraduate journalism student, I covered the nearby Hinsdale House exorcism carried out by a Catholic priest in the smal town of Hinsdale, NY. The series is listed above in Related Articles and will continue soon as we crunch recently received case evidence.

Image: October 31, 1975, feature story from the Bona Venture, weekly student newspaper, St. Bonaventure University.

Reading through the current stories as compared to what I was allowed to publish in a student newspaper there in the Oct. 31, 1975, edition - are like night and day. The cutting was painful and I realized that I was not allowed to participate in the story, only reporting on what witnesses told me or from material pulled from historical archives. My favorite media professor said it was for the best. The really good stuff - how the car I used in the investigation was suddenly "controlled" by an unknown force and pulled over an embankment - "didn't happen." What about how I saw the "disappearing car" that witnesses reported? "Didn't happen." What about the other oddities concerning the car that I was driving? "Get over it."

Okay, okay. What about the secret diary found hidden in the house? "Fair game." Finally, an acquired clue that mainstream coaches allowed onto the playing field.

The journalism programs then were teaching the New Journalism - boasting writers like Hunter Thompson trailing the feared Hell's Angels motorcycle club and spewing out intimate details of their criminal activities. Pushing the limits of your visual descriptions as a writer was allowed, but there were clear lines on what or how you covered something.

A few years later I found myself sitting in a real newsroom and secured permission to cover a supposedly haunted house in Altoona, PA, the Baker Mansion, a 33-room home completed in 1847 for iron baron Elias Baker. My Aug. 22, 1982, feature story in Greensburg's Tribune-Review Focus magazine was a nice piece that covered the home's colorful past and the ghostly tales.

Image: The Hinsdale House during an investigation there in 1982.

Having learned my lessons in college, I dared not bring any personal paranormal stories into the newsroom. It just wasn't done. No back room pressure. No story cutting. The material was never offered. You saved that research to tell over a weekend drink.

There were four main characters in this story - Elias Baker, his wife, and two of their four children, Sylvestor and Anna. All four of these family members eventually died in the home of natural causes - three in the same bed, and Sylvestor bought the farm on a first floor parlor room couch. I made two weekend trips to the home to research its history and interview Blair County Historical Society curators and museum staff.

My ghostly experiences there were rather limited. Anna's wedding dress she never got to wear after Daddy put an end to his family member marrying a mere iron worker, now housed in a glass case, did not dance as rumor had it.

Image: Anna's wedding dress the poor girl never got to wear.

But I did find myself locked in that same room with my tour, until, I was told, I asked the ghosts nicely to unlock the door. I asked nicely, and the door knob finally turned. Not much to report considering it was a 135-year-old piece of hardware.

Spooky coincidence

But between trip number one and trip number two, an incredible act of coincidence occurred.

One of my sisters who lived in Vermont, unaware of my spooky investigation, called to report a dream she had the night before.

I recall being dead silent as she told me this story over the telephone, not wanting to lead her along at all. She said that the dream was very vivid and clear. She saw me standing outside of a mansion with pillars and a sandstone finish. There was a large, second-story balcony on the home. She saw me go into the home, and it appeared that I "disappeared." Worried in the dream, she walked from this side of the home to the opposite side - and described how the land sloped down from one side to the other. She then went inside the home and could not find me, although she had little detail there.

Back outside again on the level land side of the home, she began walking away from the home. She said she soon crossed a one-lane gravel road, and then quickly found herself inside a stadium - surrounded by bleachers.

Still puzzled as to where I was, and still worried, she began to search for me under the bleachers. Just then, a tall, thin man dressed in 1800s garb, sporting a long white beard, approached and spoke five words - "You won't find him there."

End of dream.

I was suddenly very nervous. First, she accurately described Baker Mansion, a large home with a sandstone finish, with a distinct second-floor balcony.

Image: A 25-year-old Roger Marsh pointing out the exact spot he stood in his sister's dream to Curator Sylva Emmerson at Baker Mansion in 1982.

The land slopes dramatically from one side to the other. And if you stand on the level land side of the home, turn your back to the house, and start walking - you soon encounter a single-lane gravel road. And crossing that road, you walk directly into the local high school football stadium, complete with, yes - bleachers.

And the tall, thin man with a long white beard? Well, that was a fine description of Sylvestor.

Crap. I had to go back to this place for my second round of interviews the following weekend, I thought. The dream made me physically upset as it seemed to be a warning that something bad was going to happen to me there. I wasn't chicken, but the story put me on guard. I quickly organized a posse of people to go with me, never allowed myself to be alone at any time, especially not inside the home - finished my reporting, got out without a scratch, and turned the story in on time.

Any mention of these details in what the public read? Not on your life. I liked my job.

The changing media

It was fun listening to the Kevin Smith Show this week as he knocked CNN's coverage of UFOs. The Paradigm Research Group has been tracking media reports on UFOs over the past several years and recently reported that coverage has increased dramatically. It's not all good, and we continue to hear mention of those "little green men," despite what could be a serious piece of journalism. Here is one media review of the recent UFO hot spot activity in Pennsylvania in 2008 and how the media handled it. The old towers are falling. Americans are finding their news elsewhere. We hope something more fair and honest will emerge with paranormal coverage.

Good reporting and new voices are out there now - we just haven't gotten used to calling them mainstream yet.