I recently had a chance to catch up with John Zaffis to chat about his TV series Haunted Collector and his long history with the paranormal. In this exclusive interview, we talk about his first supernatural experience at sixteen, working alongside his uncle and aunt, Ed and Lorraine Warren, and much more!
My favorite thing to do during my downtime is to watch Haunted Collector and all the new paranormal shows on Destination America. You may remember the episodes that aired on the Syfy channel a few years ago, so I am excited to see the series on the air again along with great upcoming fall programming on the network, making this interview with Zaffis a true pleasure.
I love your passion for your work. It definitely comes through in the show and all of your investigations. I wanted to start off by finding out what you enjoy most about your work.
John Zaffis: Yeah, absolutely, I like getting involved with the people and finding out exactly what is happening. Does it have to do with the property, the home, the individuals, or a combination of everything? To me, that's always been my main goal, to find some information, to bring some type of resolution to help the people out with a piece of property that is having a major problem or a haunting. That's always been my passion and still is to this day when getting involved with anything, to try to find answers and help people.
That's amazing. You can definitely see it. I watched the show when it was on the Syfy channel and I'm really excited to see the upcoming episodes this season as well. Although the episodes are an hour long, on average, about how long do some of the investigations take you and your team to actually complete?
John Zaffis: Usually when we're filming an hour-long episode, you're looking at two weeks because it's two segments in one. What you see that ends up onscreen takes several days, lining things up, working on things, interviewing people, and spending time in the homes investigating, whether it be during the day, the afternoon, or evening—because as far as I'm concerned, paranormal activity is 24/7. It doesn't happen just in the evening. A lot goes into doing that 22-minute segment, and it could take a week of what you're seeing there, not to mention the stuff that goes on behind-the-scenes with interviewing people and lining things up. There's quite a bit that goes into it.
I'm very hands-on. I was very hands-on with talking to individuals. That's very important, whether it be someone giving me advice or trying to find out some type of information. If I have additional questions, I always get behind-the-scenes and dig in and talk to individuals.
Do you get a lot of your cases through your website and the Paranormal Research Society of New England website?
John Zaffis: Not only just through the sites that are out there. It comes through Facebook. I'm connected with a lot of different paranormal groups out there worldwide, a lot of different spiritual people. My networking over the course of the past 40 years has really grown where I deal with quite a bit. There's a lot of work that I do behind-the-scenes that I just don't ever talk about or things that don't always come to the forefront as far as investigating and getting involved with spiritual people, meaning any type of clergy, because I do work with a lot of them behind-the-scenes. My networking is always interesting and it's always intertwined. We get a big kick out of it when the phone rings at two, three, four, or five in the morning because nine out of ten times I'll say, "Oh, that's probably a telephone call from across the pond," and it usually is.
That's amazing that you work with so many different types of people. Since you had worked with your uncle on some of their cases at a very young age, you got some of that knowledge early. How was that for you?
John Zaffis: As a child I heard the ghost stories and listened to different things growing up, because Ed's mom lived with us. My mom and Ed's mom were twins. You would just hear the stories, the different adventures and everything. It wasn't until I was about 15 or 16 years old when I had an experience, and that's when I started looking at everything in a totally different light and started viewing it as, "Okay, these things do occur and they do happen." I went downstairs, told my mom about it, and she said, "What did it say? What did it do?" I said, "He just shook his head back and forth." She goes, "That was my father." I go, "Ma, how do you know it was your dad?" She goes, "Well, Johnny, you didn't know, my dad was a very stern man. He didn't say too much, but he would always shake his head back and forth."
My grandmother passed away a few days after that. That's what really piqued my interest because you'd always hear the stories about deceased loved ones coming back to help people cross over. That's when I started delving into reading different books and talking about this stuff and just stopping by and having coffee. That's what was unique, in the earlier years, sometimes I'd be going out to do something and he [Ed] would just say, "You want to take a ride with us?" Sure. You just didn't know where you were going to end up or what you were going to get involved with.
Is there anything that you do to protect yourself from getting attached to a spirit or anything demonic, because you investigate so many cases. What protection do you put in place to protect you and your team from stuff like that coming home with you?
John Zaffis: I'm Roman Catholic and I believe very strongly in the power of prayer. Now, not everybody in my group is Catholic. We have a lot of different belief systems. To me, the most important element when dealing with any of this, I tell people, "Whatever religion you practice, just make sure you call upon that," because to me, positive can always outweigh negative. It's always interesting to watch everybody. You have a few people doing prayers. You'll have other people doing protection with a light or holding their crystals. Again, it's an important element to always have a positive in your life to help protect you.
I always do things before I go on a case and when I leave a case. I even do that when I'm out on the road. If I'm out lecturing or speaking, I definitely do the same type of thing because you just never know. The key element people always need to understand, if you're going to get involved with our field, eventually things are going to happen. Things are going to occur. There's no sure way of preventing something happening or having a spirit follow you home or some type of paranormal activity. If you're going to delve into it, prepare yourself, because sooner or later, a paranormal experience is going to occur in your life.
Absolutely. You can definitely see some of that come through not just on Haunted Collector, but on some of the other ghost hunting shows as well. What has been the most challenging situation that you've encountered on a particular investigation? Have you actually been in fear for your life on an investigation during either filming the show or in your past investigations with your aunt and uncle?
John Zaffis: Both. A lot of times, when doing the paranormal research and doing an investigation, you don't know what you're going to encounter. You don't know what you're going to come up against. People have to realize that we don't know them and they don't know us. I'm talking about the people that live in the homes. Sometimes you don't know what you're going to encounter, what type of situation you're going to walk into.
There have been several different situations where I was extremely scared for us, the researchers, going into homes because we were dealing with people that, whether or not it had something to do with the paranormal, it would just reach a point where I feared somebody would end up getting hurt or things might have transpired that just weren't going to go in a good way. With that, you have to guard yourself. You have to be extremely careful because not only do you not know what you're going to be coming up against when dealing with the paranormal realm, but you also don't know what you're going to be dealing with as far as people claiming to have paranormal activity when it really isn't.
Yeah, I could see that happening a lot. I have been on your site for the Paranormal Research Society of New England and there are specific questions on there that you want readers to ask themselves, and I love that you give people that might have some concerns some ways to protect themselves. With you taking so many of these haunted items, I know there's a specific process that you have before you place it in your museum. Can you give our readers some insight into that process?
John Zaffis: Yes. There are two barns on the property where I keep a lot of the items. One barn is a very small one. There's a procedure I do over it once it [a haunted item] is brought in, with sea salt and prayers and holy water. I definitely like to let things sit for a while before I bring them into the bigger barn and put them on the shelves, just to be cautious. Also, I work with a lot of spiritual people. Now, when I say spiritual people, I not only work with priests, rabbis, and ministers—there's a tremendous amount of people, shamans, medicine men. It depends on the circumstances, what I'm tying in with that I find to be extremely important to do some type of spiritual work over the items before they are brought into the museum.
Right now, if I'm correct, the museum's currently closed just because you're doing college lectures and things like that. When people come and visit the museum, there's a sense of “is something going to follow me home here,” so the fact that you do that and take those precautions is really important and shows that you care a lot about your work.
John Zaffis: The museum is on private property, so it's difficult to do tours and things like that. Your neighbors don't want to see a bus pulling up and people piling up.
I use most of my facility, the barn here, when I work with different paranormal groups, especially those affiliated with colleges. I let them come over and do EVPs [electronic voice phenomenon] and different things of that nature. I am looking forward to, hopefully in the future, getting the museum relocated in a public setting where it can be structured. People can come into the museum and see some of the items and I can do lectures, bring in guest speakers, and do a lot of different things so that people can gain knowledge and see the items, but do not touch.
Absolutely. We do not want to touch. We do not want that coming home with us. That's amazing that you're looking into doing something like that in the future. I'd be the first person visiting when it opens. Now, you talked about letting some of the college kids come and do EVPs. That being said, there is some paranormal activity still surrounding the objects after the rituals are done.
John Zaffis: Yes. There's no 100% guarantee that the energy associated with an item is going to be totally gone after doing some binding rituals. You have a building filled with a tremendous amount of items, therefore, you're always going to have that energy within.
When people do go in and they investigate, I’ve had a lot of different groups capture photographs and EVPs down there, or have experiences or tell me something about an item they've never heard me talk about before. In that type of environment, just like a lot of the old tales that we do or the old asylums or different things of that nature, you're always going to have paranormal activity regardless of the different things that occur or happen.
You have so much experience and knowledge over the years, including working with your aunt and uncle. I know you have a couple of books out. Can we expect to see more books in the future?
John Zaffis: Yes. I have one coming out in a couple of weeks called Demon Haunted. We are working with that with Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Actually, the past couple of weeks, it's just been crazy going over the final edit of it, pulling everything together. I'm very excited about it coming out, because it covers a lot of different information and different scenarios that I've been involved with over the years. I'm very excited about that.
The other book that I've been working on is with two colleagues of mine, Debbie and Larry Elward. The three of us have been working together over the past 40 years and we've been diligently working and writing up different case stories. I'm hoping to have that one out late in the fall or early next year, and that will be entitled The Work.
You have some really good reading material coming up in my favorite time of the year, Halloween season. Haunted Collector is now on Destination America, and we have a lot of other supernatural shows on that network as well with Nick Groff, Katrina Weidman, and other paranormal investigators. Is there anything coming up for the Halloween season on Destination America that our readers can look forward to checking out?
John Zaffis: Absolutely. One of the new shows coming out is called Kindred Spirits with Amy [Bruni] and Adam [Berry] from Ghost Hunters. I'm looking forward to that. And I’m going to be in the Paranormal Lockdown Halloween Special with Nick and Katrina.
You have to remember, a lot of these people with their shows coming out, I know them personally. They're all friends. Nick and Katrina are doing their Halloween special and I jumped aboard with them in discussing a big investigation over in England at a place called the Black Monk, a house with a notoriously known haunting. The house has been vacant for quite a few years. They went over and spent over 100 hours staying in there. I've worked with them behind-the-scenes with sharing some information and helping them out to understand what they were walking into. I'm very excited about that. Being able to do a TV special with them on Destination America is going to be fantastic.
Some of the Haunted Collector episodes from Syfy haven't aired in a while and I've been watching them over and over again on Destination America. They are new to some of that channel’s audience, and it's so interesting because there's always something that you catch that you missed before.
John Zaffis: Thanks so much. It's like Haunted Collector was reborn because we've captured a new audience, a lot of new people are viewing in. Just like you said, I've heard this from many people so far. They're going, "Hey John, I’m seeing it again, and seeing it come to the forefront like this and understanding some of the different techniques and different things that you have done." It's been very exciting for all of us on Haunted Collector to get such a positive feedback and to have so many new fans watching the show.
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Haunted Collector airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on Destination America. To learn more about John Zaffis and Haunted Collector, visit:
Haunted Collector promo video from 2011:
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