I had the pleasure to have first met Katrina Weidman in person at the historic Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania back in 2011. Before that of course I had seen her on Paranormal State and thought it was interesting she was a Bucks County native (I myself am from Bucks county and thought wow someone from my area is famous!) Upon meeting her I found her to be the nicest and coolest para-celebs I have ever met – very sweet as well as down to earth. I’ve had the pleasure to have a conversation with her about the paranormal world as well as her new show with Nick Groff only on Destination America. “Paranormal Lockdown” can be seen on Fridays, starting March 4th at 10pm Est. Now to the Q&A!
“How did Paranormal Lockdown come about?”
Katrina: “Nick Groff contacted about a new me and wanted to know if I wanted to be involved. It just took off from there, we’ve known each for years from the [paranormal] field. It was the do you want to work with me? Sure!”
“Any guests showing up on this new show?”
Katrina: “We do bring in some guests, they come in do their thing and leave but it’s mostly just Nick & I at a location for 72 hours the whole time. We don’t leave.”
“There is going to be comparisons obviously with Ghost Adventures because Nick is involved, so do you think being there for 3 days is better for capturing something on these investigations?”
Katrina: “Absolutely. I noticed that, not even doing the show, but doing this for 10 years. The longer you spend in a location the more things happen to you, because your embedding yourself in that environment. Essentially we don’t know what the paranormal is. We have a definition what a shadow person, what a ghost is, but it can turn out those things we’ve defined are inaccurate. What we do know is that people have experiences in the these environments and we don’t know why certain people have those experiences – is it the person in that environment? Is it that environment effecting other people. So what Nick and I do is go to places that are notoriously haunted and we either set up camp. A lot like camping, but scarier! And we say give us what you got! Let’s see what we capture, gather evidence, and try to figure out what this stuff is that we’ve seen. Nick and I both have experiences. He’s been doing it 15 years, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years. We’ve both have had experiences far beyond that. How can we take it to the next level? And I think the thing is we do this as paranormal investigators, and you know this as an investigator: you go in for a night, gather all this evidence and you leave. You have to come back multiple times or come back. Nick and I are like why aren’t people doing this for TV? This is what we really do.”
“You cut out all the return trips and do it all in one shot than.”
Katrina: “Right! That’s the thing that is missing. I think for whatever reason, even when I was with PRS we’d stay a couple days and investigate. It’s the same when I do events, the longer you are in a location I feel like the paranormal entities or whatever take the first night to check you out or its your energies or going into the environment changing things. The place is shaken up a bit and needs time to settle. I’ve noticed second night is always without fail if something is going to happen, it will happen on the second night.”
“It’s amazing how that organic conversation created what’s next (Paranormal Lockdown)”
Katrina: “It’s funny Nick and I say all the time I’m the little sister he never had and he’s big brother I never had. We had an instant friendship and feel we were meant to work together on this project, because where we both were in our private and professional lives – it just lined up. He (Nick) came up with the concept and contacted me. I loved it. It’s so true to what we do as investigators. I never been on a case where I just go in for a couple of hours and leave. Paranormal investigators are always shown as really exciting and it can be, like us when you get into it – it’s a long process.”
“It can be a boring process.”
Katrina: “It’s like watching paint dry at times, because it doesn’t happen like ‘ghost show me what you got’ and stuff flies off the wall. It doesn’t happen that way. I think that’s what is so good about what Nick and I are doing is we are there for so long that we almost ready at any moment for if anything decides to communicate with us. The longer we are there the better chance we have of capturing something. We have personal cameras and stationary ones. We also have 6k cameras for the crew. They are really cool, the image is much better then ones 10 years ago. Technology is catching up to what we do as investigators. All these experiences ‘OMG, I just saw a shadow’ we wouldn’t be able to capture on camera, maybe with the cameras now we can catch that stuff.
“Would you agree that your personal experiences are the best ones not captured on video or audio, etc.?”
Katrina: “Absolutely! We talk about that a lot. It’s funny because we are trying to be objective. Your body is your best instrument, and it gets good picking up on changes. Something is different also psychologically fear jumps in. I always find that is the best precursor to where you need to be in a location. You have to pay attention to your body and personal experiences at the time – that’s not scientific at all, but maybe one day that will be. We’ll be able to test that. That’s what I go off of. I don’t use equipment on investigations I find it distracts me, which is good on a lockdown.”
“Do you find going with skepticism, that people go to far in using the equipment or not?”
Katrina: “I think everything life you have to have a balance. I have my own paranormal team as well. My specialty is interviews and research – that’s where I feel I can contribute most to an investigation. One of my co-founders is an engineer so he handles all the tech stuff and I focus on research getting ready for an investigation. I think you need that balance in a team, especially a paranormal team. You should have specialists in tech, research, interviews, etc. or your be an unbalanced team and that won’t help furthering what we are trying to do in the community by not being a pseudoscience.”
“What’s your favorite place to investigate? Have you gotten there yet?”
Katrina: “Hard to say… I get so sentimental about places I’ve been, there’s always something I love about each location. Nick and I have been to some crazy scary places for Paranormal Lockdown. It truly is hard for me to say this is my #1 favorite location.
“I agree so many places have their own personality.”
Katrina: “They totally do. I love history and research. I think a place even if it doesn’t get the best evidence, I fall in love with it – the history and the story I take away from it.”
“Pennhurst is a great example of places that have their own personality.”
Katrina: “Pennhurst is cool. I told Timothy (owner) every time I come back here, I feel less and less unafraid. It’s like whatever is there remembers you, oh hey its Katrina she ok. Don’t scare her. For me I don’t always feel that way in places I’ve been too. Your right Pennhurst is a very special place, very haunted, but also almost as a person it’s charged or alive. So much energy. … As I tell people at lectures and when it gets asked paranormal experiences are a mixture of totally be scared and excitement of something that happened with not rational way to explain this. What just happened and the scarier question of what just did that because we really don’t know. It’s exciting because not everyone experiences this stuff and when you do I don’t know if beautiful is the word, since not every experience is happy or good especially when clients have demonic hauntings and I don’t want to lessen their experience since it’s a terrifying thing. It’s like exciting something that we can’t explain yet, something otherworldly just came into my world or I came into their world for a brief moment in time we made communication with each other. It totally takes you out of it, people think I don’t get scared anymore because I’ve been doing it for so long, but honestly if i’m alone or Nick isn’t by my side or anyone it creeps in. It blows your mind still even after all these years.”
“What’s you favorite experience you’ve ever had?”
Katrina: “Tune in for Paranormal Lockdown, all I can! There was some crazy stuff during our investigations. Past ones I can talk about was a residential house near Pittsburgh was personal experience nothing captured on film. Up to that point I’ve seen apparition before but it was always out the corner of your eye and could be explained away logically. This house was so boring I was in a bedroom with two other investigators and a camera operator. I looked up saw this woman’s arm reach around his back to his shoulder, with her hand touching his shoulder and it was straight on. It went from her hand to her elbow, it was a greenish grayish blueish glow you could see through almost a fog. I saw it and I remember in my head my brain doing mental gymnastics to put this together. What is this? Am I seeing this? This isn’t happening. Then it disappeared and I didn’t a big no, no in paranormal investigating by not saying anything to anyone. I literally thought I lost my mind, or hallucinated, even though I was in a haunted house looking for ghosts. I still didn’t believe what I just saw. the next night I was on sound patrol while others were inside doing the investigation making sure no noises where coming from outside had a walkie-talkie with me. I heard Shaw got touched they were somebody with us on the investigation. We had camera setup throughout the house, like 16 of them we have him sitting in same stairwell where the camera operator was the night before. His shoulder just goes down and he freaks out. We asked him what happened he said it felt like a woman just pushed down on his shoulder, for me that was totally confirmation that what i saw was real. I didn’t tell anyone, and here is somebody having this experience of what I saw last night. That is probably my favorite experience. Apparitions don’t happen all the time, something that people don’t realize. It’s really rare.”
“Can you sum up Paranormal Lockdown Experiences?”
Katrina: “The stuff I’ve experienced on Paranormal Lockdown has been the most intense experiences I’ve had, and some of the stuff I’ve never saw before. Ever in my 10 year career.”
I’d like to thank Katrina for her time, and as a reader if there is someone else that you want us to interview let us know!
Paranormal Lockdown” can be seen on Fridays, starting March 4th at 10 pm Est. on Destination America! For more information visit: www.destinationamerica.com!
Are they a couple
No, nicks married with 1 or 2 kids, and I’m not sure if Katrina is single or not
Love the show Paranormal Lockdown, seems on the level, they also use Steve Huff’ s wonder box, which is an amazing piece of equipment Steve makes by hand…i didn’t know Katrina is a Bucks chick..i grew up right outside Bucks county, in S Chester County, in fact, I went to school with a John Fowler, (The article was posted by a John Fowler)interesting😉
What do they eat?
You guys rock the show
Have you two experts ever considered investigating Shawnee Amusement Park, now abandoned for years, in Princeton, West Virginia. The land as well as the park has a super bloody past. Though I have not been there personally, though I hope too, is quite intriguing.