My original plan was to do this blog as a video, but after three takes, I decided against it. I can’t seem to describe part of it without tears welling in my eyes and showing emotion to a bunch of strangers makes me very uncomfortable. So I’m going to do this the old-fashioned way. I had four goals with this field trip.

1.) Have fun with Wendy.
2.) Learn, learn, learn!
3.) Don’t say anything stupid in front of Ryan Buell.
4.) Don’t tell anybody I come from a lineage of mediums.

It was kind of a running joke for about a week before this field trip that Wendy was going to have to hook up an IV drip of Xanax to me on our drive to Gettysburg because of my nerves. New situations full of new people are very nerve-racking for me. I tend to have it in my head that all new people will see the wheelchair and treat me like a 5-year-old rather than a 29-year-old strong, capable woman who has been immersed in paranormal and historical research since my early teens. It happens all the time – people in airports, waitresses, shop clerks, etc., all assume I’m a child because I need a little extra help getting around. I don’t encounter other people in wheelchairs doing paranormal investigation and research work, so I didn’t know what PRS was going to think of me. Has there ever been a wheelchair on a field trip? I didn’t know. That made me nervous.

Wendy and I got into Gettysburg on Thursday night and we had to drive through part of the battlefield to get to the hotel (practically all the way in York – way to put us in the boonies, PRS!). I was telling her about different park service rules and she looked to her left and saw a shadow figure of a soldier in the field. Things were going to be interesting, I decided, if we hadn’t even got to the hotel and already saw things. People have been asking how my ankle was injured. My injury happened because Wendy was tired and we accepted help from someone in the parking lot of the hotel for getting me in the wheelchair, who turned out to be another field tripper. Accepting help is not new to me but this girl didn’t wait for instructions like everyone else does, though she was nice as could be. She pushed me up in the chair by my feet, which is the worst possible thing to do with my type of disability, and presto! Severely sprained ankle. I still can’t bear weight on it. Something in my head said, “This is just a challenge. Don’t let it ruin your weekend,” so I decided to fight my way through it rather than quit. I also decided I wasn’t going to tell people if I could help it because it’s very important to me to simply do my job as an investigator and researcher without added drama.

The next morning was the first day of activities and I was in a lot of pain, so I didn’t put much effort into how I looked for registration. We stood in line for a while and this was when I noticed that a lot of people already knew each other. I’m pretty shy and it takes a lot to get me into a conversation. They were talking about previous field trips and I did start to wonder if I was going to be the outsider the whole weekend. You’re going to laugh at me for this part and that’s okay because I laugh at me too. I was just starting to relax a bit in line when a flash of Sergey darted in front of me. Then a much darker flash of a man darted in front of me and I realized it was Ryan. As he walked by, the breath in my lungs went with him, as did the intelligible speech part of my brain. Wendy knew something happened because my eyes were huge and I wasn’t acting right but did she recognize Ryan? No. It was like one of those, “What’s that, Lassie? Ryan Buell’s standing over there?” moments because I couldn’t say it out loud. I knew I was in trouble because I couldn’t even say hi as he walked by like everybody else said hi. I’ll give you a second to point and laugh. I find it fairly ridiculous myself, haha.

After registration, we were to go into a conference room for breakfast and Paranormal Jeopardy as a break-the-ice getting to know each other game. Wendy and I were invited by Adam Sedlock to join his table, who works with PRS quite a bit. He’s been on Paranormal State a few times as an outside consultant because he’s a clinical psychologist. He’s an extremely intelligent, friendly man, who recognized that I was very shy, saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you talking.” We talked about the fact that I’m an author, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Sergey put his coat on the chair next to me. Something inside of me started to freeze up because wherever Sergey is, Ryan is not too far behind. Sergey introduced himself and asked me where I was from – usual chitchat. Then Ryan sat down two chairs away from me with a plate full of bacon, sausage and an egg. I mean full as in a mound fit for two or three meals, which I would have found amusing if I wasn’t silently cursing the universe for sitting me so close to the one who intimidates me as much as I respect him. I don’t think I said a word for the entire meal. Paranormal Jeopardy was fun. Each table played as a team against every other table and my table elected me as the spokesperson to answer the questions. I knew most of the game questions and I brought my table to first place because most of the questions were related to Gettysburg. When I answered a thousand point question about the 20th Maine seeing George Washington’s ghost, Ryan’s eyebrows went up, he said, “Wow…” and the other tables lightly applauded me. I blushed and wanted to crawl under the table. We didn’t win the game, though, because the double jeopardy question was something about paranormal history that I didn’t know. Up until then, we were way ahead of the other tables. Ryan’s childhood friend, Chris, said, “I’m glad somebody besides me knew those history questions,” and Ryan added, “I know, I expected y’all to jump on the paranormal questions more.” I hoped I made a good impression.

The game ended and I decided to wait for the mass exodus to subside before I went to Eilfie’s lecture on historical research, so I stood there by my table and I could see Ryan looking at me as he was putting on his coat. If I had been by myself, I would have bolted, but I couldn’t leave Wendy there. My brain thankfully went into autopilot as he said, “Hey darlin’, I don’t think we’ve met before.” I have no idea what my autopilot brain replied but I said my name in there somewhere because he said, “Oh yeah, I know you from Twitter,” and I don’t remember what I said to that either. We walked out together and he asked me about being a Civil War reenactor. He was very absorbed in Penn State that day and struck me as a bit agitated about it, so I wasn’t expecting him to talk to me at all. I don’t know if he does it on purpose but there is a bulletproof wall of energy around him (I’m speaking from my perspective as an empath) and if he doesn’t want someone to know something, they will never know. I’m used to knowing a lot more about people and knowing if they’re safe or not based on my intuition, empathic abilities, being a medium, etc. I can’t read Ryan at all except broad empathic emotion signals and that might be why he is so blatantly intimidating to me but intriguing at the same time. Sometimes that happens. An intuitive claiming there is nobody they can’t read is not being honest.

My ankle was in serious trouble about three quarters of the way through Eilfie’s lecture, so I sneaked out early, disappointed that I couldn’t tough it out for Ryan’s lecture. You know my ankle was killing me if I couldn’t be tough and have an hour-long stream of Ryan’s knowledge to absorb in person. I took my painkillers and went to bed until dinner instead. At dinner that night, we had a very nice buffet by candlelight. I was invited to sit with Adam, his wife, and this guy who I think was called Michael, who I believe Ryan later said was his business partner. He’s also a psychiatrist, I believe. If I’m wrong, someone correct me. I decided that because Ryan was nowhere to be found, I could eat like a little piggy, so I loaded my plate with ribs, corn on the cob, cornbread, etc. Just when I was starting to relax, guess who showed up at my table with another giant plate? I was so screwed. How do you eat ribs like a lady?! I was about to pry my mouth open and force myself to say hello when he crossed himself, bowed his head, closed his eyes and said grace to himself. I suddenly felt like a barbarian sitting there shoveling ribs into my face while Ryan wouldn’t even touch his food without giving thanks. Don’t worry – I’m laughing at myself too. Luckily, by the end of dinner, I really was starting to relax and Sergey asked me what I was doing that night. I was supposed to do an investigation at the orphanage but I wasn’t sure if my ankle was going to survive the night, to which Sergey seemed understanding. Of course, I didn’t mean to let the cat out of the bag. There went my tough I’m-keeping-up-with-PRS exterior! I distinctly remember that Ryan wasn’t there, otherwise I wouldn’t have said it. I was not interested in being that delicate girl that everyone has to look after and I was not going around saying, “Hey everybody! My ankle is busted!” They did some auctions after dinner of time with different PRS members and Wendy and I tried but someone paid $950 for a dead time with Ryan and Sergey. $950!

The next day, nothing started until after noon because we all know that paranormal investigators are not morning people. We all were grateful for the chance to sleep and I wasn’t in a big hurry because Ryan had gone back to Penn State for media coverage on the football game. He was supposed to be back after the game but got caught in traffic, so we didn’t see him until that night. I went to Sergey’s lecture on I Ching (spelling) and I stayed after to work with it in private. He wanted to know the question I asked but I wasn’t really prepared to be open about myself so I evaded it. I was asking about writing another reincarnation book, Sergey. There you go.

Then we went to a panel discussion about 2012 prophecies, which was really interesting. Ryan still hadn’t returned but Heather, Katrina, Sergey, Eilfie, Adam, and Chris were on the panel. At the end, literally the very last question, someone said, “Is it true that people with special needs are more spiritually sensitive?” PRS weren’t really sure but something in my head said, “You know the answer to that question.” Before I knew it, my mouth opened and I said, “Yes. Yes, we are.” Then I started internally freaking out because I opened my mouth in front of a hundred people and PRS was all looking at me like they waited for me to elaborate. The logical, secretive part of my brain was yelling, “What are you doing telling these people you’re a medium?!” but my mouth was moving and I was telling them about it. I kind of laughed at myself and said, “I can’t even believe I’m saying this out loud because I wasn’t going to come out about it to anybody here this weekend.” Sergey nodded and smiled at me and said, “Thank you for sharing it with us.” I smiled and made the joke, “It’s probably because Ryan’s not here that I could say it,” and that got everybody laughing in the conference room.

That night, I loaded up on painkillers and decided to go into town. I took Wendy and another girl to O’Roarke’s (this Irish girl loves Irish food) for dinner and then we were supposed to go to the Farnsworth house for a reenactment of a Victorian seance. The problem was they canceled all of the PRS seances and there were all kinds of rumors flying around. Ryan told us why they were canceled and I think it’s ridiculous but I’m not going to put the Farnsworth house on blast here in my blog. They know what went down. I was with Kathy, Adam’s wife, at the time and we decided to do the mature Farnsworth ghost tour since we were already there. Half a dozen men in Civil War uniforms carried my chair down to the basement where they told ghost stories and such. It was very entertaining but there were real entities all over the house and not too many were happy. At one point, the storyteller opened a door in the basement and something came straight at me as if it was testing how easy it would be to scare me. Someone actually got a photo of a white streak coming right at me from the door at the time that I verbalized my perimeter being tested by this entity. A medium saying, “Something came at me,” is rather subjective and I wouldn’t really count it as hard evidence (and I AM the medium) but the simultaneous photograph backing up my claim was rather interesting, especially since I wasn’t told until after we were outside again.

Then we headed over to the Jennie Wade house where Heather was conducting a dead time. Adam and a few people lifted my chair up the front steps and I actually got to do a dead time PRS style! After a little while, they used me a little bit like they use Chip Coffey or Michelle Belanger. Once I was allowed to do my job, I started feeling better and like I was making a worthwhile contribution. I was able to help Jennie clear up the Ghost Adventures EVP that said she was pregnant as well. Heather asked if Jennie was pregnant (general question for EVP) and Jennie was behind me (other people felt the cold spot too) saying, “I was not pregnant,” over and over again. I said nothing because I was not there as any PRS medium. Heather eventually asked if anyone was getting psychic impressions, so I spoke up and relayed Jennie’s message. The thing is Jennie is not the only female of child bearing age who has lived in that house for the last 150+ years, but she’s famous, so people jump to that conclusion from one EVP. One EVP is not conclusive. Being amongst PRS members had me a little nervous – Adam the head doctor observed me closely – but I did my job and we had a lot of activity. The soldiers were walking around upstairs and we were getting intelligent responses with knocking and such. As soon as we got outside, Heather ran up to me and said, “Hey Jessica, did you experience anything else tonight?” I know it’s not much but I deeply respect PRS and their methodology, so if they are asking me what I experienced on a psychic level, then I must have earned at least some respect. I only wish Ryan could have seen me in action. His people did though and that counts.

I went back to the hotel and to bed after that because I had been up for hours and my ankle was no bueno. The next day was my extended session with Ryan after we shaved his head for charity. Let’s go to YouTube for that one (not my video).

Before we went to the extended session, we stepped outside and found Sergey with Xander (his and Ryan’s dog if you’re unaware). Xander came right over to me and sniffed my clothes and put his head in my lap. Apparently animals are the way to Sergey’s little Russian heart because I was his buddy after telling him about how I rescued my dog who was thrown away with a broken leg at eight weeks old. He told me that Ryan’s spot had been moved to a wheelchair accessible pub for the extended experience but Ryan hadn’t told him where yet, so we stood around playing with Xander for a while (Buell Standard Time affords a lot of standing around). I’m in love with that dog. I want Xander to have a play date with my Daisy.

Anyway, I was in Ryan’s first extended experience group. There were about eight of us, I think. Buell Standard Time meant it took him 45 minutes to make a 4 minute drive. He finally joined us in the pub attached to the Farnsworth house and of course I started freezing up as soon as I saw him. I envied the other girls who could giggle, titter and chatter aimlessly, not that I find giggling and tittering that attractive. I tend to want to hide. He doesn’t seem to allow me to hide though. Before his butt hit the chair, he looked at me and said, “How are you doing? How is your ankle?” It threw me off guard because he didn’t even say hello to the other people and I hadn’t told him about my injury. I had gone to great lengths to hide it from him. Since then, I narrowed the squealer down to Sergey. I think it was Sergey but it might have been Adam too. I sputtered out something about how I’m okay, my ankle is bad, but I’m okay. In my head I was like, please please pleeeease don’t start feeling sorry for me. Pity does not equal respect.

Basically Ryan wanted to go around the table and ask about people’s religious backgrounds and see how it affected their views on the paranormal. Each person talked about being Catholic or Christian just like Ryan and nobody had my background at all. Even amongst paranormal enthusiasts, I felt like an outsider. So he looked at me when it was my turn and my brain kicked into autopilot. When my heart is at risk of getting hurt, my brain takes over to protect it. I briefly said (paraphrasing because I don’t remember the words), “I’m a little different than everybody else here. I was raised without a strict religious background. I come from a family of mediums [insert panic here] and my mother never told me anything about God, goddesses, ghosts, or whatever because she wanted me to figure it out on my own. My grandmother was afraid I was going to hell so she took me to church for a while.” He usually moved on to the next person after that much time, so I went quiet, but he looked up at me from his meatloaf and started pushing me with questions. The entire conversation was too lengthy to write and I don’t feel right about making it public.

I will say this – it only took him about thirty seconds to find my feeling (there is a running joke with my best friend that I have one feeling and I keep it locked in a box) and he kept poking at it until it broke. I don’t know if it’s his journalism background or what but he saw right through my attempts at glossing over his questions and he pushed me to get to the center of my feelings of rejection by the people closest to me. He pried the reincarnation stuff out of me and that was something I wasn’t going to talk about either because within the current state of the paranormal community, reincarnation strikes me as a fringe topic. It’s too deep. People don’t want to go there much of the time. At one point, I was getting a bit upset by being pushed (he was not being mean – he was just trying to understand me and he related to everything I said) and I said something to the effect of, “This is painfully difficult for me to talk about in the open – there’s a difference between the safety of the internet and face-to-face strangers.” I will never forget the look on Ryan’s face. His eyes lifted from his meatloaf and he said, “You have a family now.” I didn’t know what to say, so I just smiled the tiniest bit and dropped my eyes because he got to me and I didn’t want to be emotional. Then he thought about it while he chewed a bite and (manners!) wiped his mouth and said, “I want you to be prepared for rejection though.” I agreed, and mercifully, he released me from this I’M POKING JESSICA’S LITTLE FEELING! conversation.

I was left extremely drained by having that conversation with Ryan in front of everyone, so I decided to go walk through the silence of the cemetery to really collect myself. I couldn’t even record the conversation in its entirety here because Ryan’s questions were so direct to exactly what I was feeling that they were like taking bullets and I was just trying to survive him. He doesn’t know me and we barely said hello a few days before, yet he found my solitary little feeling like a bloodhound and went for it. He’s either seriously empathic, or he knows more about me than I think, or he’s the best damn journalist in the history of journalism. I was completely taken aback and I still haven’t fully processed it. I keep my feelings locked away in a box. Getting me to say what I feel is something my own family can’t seem to do. My instinct is to run away and hide when people figure me out, so where did I end up? I ran away from Ryan for the cemetery as soon as we were released and skipped Eilfie’s extended experience. Nothing against Eilfie. She probably understands the need to stay closed up too. Don’t get me wrong – Ryan pushing me probably needed to happen and I don’t look at it negatively. I only hope he was able to understand me a little better and, dare I say, respect me a little more. Or maybe be a bit intrigued by me. After it was over, some of those feelings of intimidation I have toward him went away.

It took about a half hour of being quiet in the cemetery for me to want to face people again, so we decided to go back to O’Roarke’s for dinner. Katrina and Heather were there and we joined them. Immediately Katrina said, “I heard you’re an author. What do you write?” My head wondered, “….What the hell…. I just left Ryan a half hour ago and Katrina already knows I’m an author….” The only other person I told was Adam and I hadn’t seen him all day. How did she know? Talking to Katrina and Heather was far more relaxing for me. Ryan had already ripped off the Band-Aid, I guess, so I found it easier to talk to them about different causes for hauntings in Gettysburg and such.

We had some free time to walk around town before the ghost stories at the Tillie Pierce house. When we got there, Sergey and Ryan had just gotten there too and people were telling them I needed help up the front steps. So here come these two and Ryan smiles and me with a bad Russian accent, “We are two strong, strapping men!” The closer Ryan gets, the redder I get. It’s comedy for me by this point, the dumb way I get shy. Sergey is a strong guy for his size! The Civil War soldiers were struggling earlier in the night but Sergey didn’t appear to struggle at all. He grabbed the front of my chair and I never touched the porch because he and whoever was behind me carried the chair all the way in the house! Ryan followed but didn’t lift anything. He owes me on the next field trip. Once we got inside and started telling stories, Sergey asked what our phobias were and it got to my turn. “Staircases,” I said, making everybody crack up and Sergey was especially tickled by it.

We went outside afterward and Sergey kept asking me if I was coming to O’Roarke’s for drinks. Of course I was. We went ahead of them but eventually I heard Ryan’s voice behind me, so we stopped to take some pictures. As we kind of all walked over to the pub together, immediately Ryan got swallowed by a swarm of people. I watched him walk around a lot and I remembered John Lennon once saying, “If you run, you’re in trouble. If you stop moving, you’re in trouble. But if you keep moving slowly, the crowds won’t be too bad.” I think that’s what Ryan was doing. Sergey hung around my table a lot but we didn’t talk much since it was so loud.

I got very tired very quick and I knew it was time to go. Sergey saw me putting on my coat and asked if I was leaving. I said yes and he gave me a hug. I said, “I wanted to thank you and Ryan for being so accepting and kind to me.” I started getting choked up and I’m pretty sure he saw it despite my attempt to stifle it. He put his hand on his heart and I said, “I’m just very grateful for this and you both.” That’s all I could say because that little Russian was not going to make me cry before Ryan came by (he was watching from his conversation about three feet away). Sergey said, “Did you have fun?” I said I did and he hugged me again. He said goodbye, pointed at Ryan and said, “Get Ryan when he’s done,” and he disappeared into the crowd.

Ryan soon turned to me and said, “Are you leaving?” I said yes and he asked some questions about where I lived, how I was getting home, etc. I knew from other people’s experiences that Ryan is not very huggy or affectionate but all the sudden he bent down, wrapped his arms around me and smooshed his face to my face. I told him what I told Sergey about being thankful for acceptance and he said, “We’re all cut from the same cloth so remember that you have friends here.” I nodded and he touched my shoulder and said, “Please keep in touch, okay?” I said I would and more people started swarming so he moved on.

Tears rolled down my face all the way back to the car, totally against my will. I don’t cry. The sensation of being among “my own kind” as I call it was new to me and made me fully realize how I have been carrying on in my work largely on my own. I am a strong woman because I have had to be my entire life. I have some people who really understand me but not many, all in other states, and almost none at all here in Georgia. Above that, I honestly have a lot of respect for PRS and Ryan in particular, so I was afraid of going there and finding out my respect was unfounded. However, it was well deserved. Adam’s wife kind of poked fun at me for having a thing for Ryan, which is funny, sure, but my thing for Ryan is based in the highest level of respect and recognizing someone who approaches these things in the same way I do. The majority of men don’t have a clue what I’m talking about when I start exploring my theories on paranormal activity, reincarnation, historical research, etc., so I tend to feel very un-date-able. I quit trying a long time ago. So I think it’s okay to have a thing for Ryan because I see my equal in him and I don’t see it in other men. As long as I stay professional, which I do, it’s fine. Go ahead, make fun of me all you want, Kathy!

If you have never been on a PRS field trip, I highly recommend it. The lectures are more advanced for seasoned investigators and everything is balanced with relaxed socializing. PRS members are all friendly and easygoing too. I did not pick up on any deceitful intentions in any of them. It’s well worth the money and travel, in my opinion.