..THIS INTERVIEW, via JOHN ZAFFIS's request, is PERSONALLY DEDICATED TO HIS MENTOR - ED WARREN
.."Little did I know how all the car rides to cases and you stopping by and just sitting in my office... and talking about this work was going to play out in the coming years. Ed... you opened up the doors and paved the way for so many of us today. I will always do my best to pass that knowledge on buddy".

..Zaffis: A Demonologist is a person that studies a lot of the things on the negative the fallen angels, the deities, the different religions and how these things integrate with each other and intermingle and how they affect a lot of different people that are out there that have hauntings. A Demonologist per say is just a person who studies a lot of these different things. The way I “classify” myself (and I have for many years) is I am a Paranormal Investigator/ Demonologist.

..Zaffis: Yes, you can combine them both. It’s absolutely essential to have an understanding of both within our field. Because... when you are a paranormal investigator you are going in and you are trying to figure out is there is any paranormal activity occurring. You are trying to get your case documentation, your E.V.P.’s, your trying to get your your video tape and photographs. When you are on the other end of this and a person is claiming they are being tortured, scratched, getting bit, thrown around they are claiming that they have this negative energy/demons or deities in their house, that’s when it comes into play trying to decipher what you are dealing with and how you are going to deal with this.

..When I get involved with an investigation I very seldomly and very rarely come to a conclusion immediately. That is a very difficult thing to do because there is a lot that has to go into these cases to evaluation what exactly you are dealing with.

..JRJ/Visions: Having a bloodline to the Warrens , I am sure will give you a certain perspective or belief system behind your investigative technique. Can you expand upon that?

..Zaffis: Traveling around with my uncle as much as I did with learning and understanding so much what that man had in his head. The man was like a walking encyclopedia of the paranormal/demonology. I always refer to myself as a paranormal brat. Now, when I say this, what I mean by this is that the amount of time that I spent with them driving around… going to investigations or, you know, a lot of the downtime. One thing my uncle used to do quite a bit was he would just stop by my house periodically.

..He would just sit down in my office we would just talk and talk and he would throw questions out and look to see how I respond. He would do different things and I took a tremendous amount of that for granted over the course of years. They were always there so I never viewed it from outside looking in if that makes any sense to you.

..Zaffis: You look at this and there is something here again….. That I reflect upon the past with this because when I started learning the Demonology end of it and studying it because studying it for several years before I actually got involved with it. I think that is a very key essential thing is because there is a lot of knowledge, a power in knowledge. That helps you to understand things. A time went on and I started meeting different people my uncle would introduce me to shamans, priests, ministers, and Buddhists. They would always make the same remark and I did not relate to it years ago that you have a calling getting involved with this part of the work. It is work. It goes way beyond a hobby. I would always joking say: "...well ya, tell them to lose my number".

..I would go back and forth over it and it always stuck in my mind how these spiritual people would always say John you had a calling into this and there were several different times when sitting and talking with my uncle and going back and forth and I would say to him why do people keep say to me I have a calling into doing this and he would always just smile. (John pauses for a second) He goes you will understand as you go along. I heard that for years and years and years… "you will understand as you go along". And it’s the truth. YOU KNOW, AS WE ARE YOUNG, WE LEARN. AS WE ARE GETTING OLDER WE UNDERSTAND. That’s the best phrase I have ever come up with in my life to understand as you go along with understanding this whole thing and being involved with this type of work.

..Zaffis: I would probably still be doing what I did for 30+ years. I am a mechanical engineer by trade. I mean, that’s what I did up to about 3-4 years ago. I worked full time. As things just started being more in depth my children were grown I took it that step farther and started lecturing and really coming more out with doing things, the conventions and campuses and universities and different things.

..Zaffis: To share with a lot of the other groups and to share what I’ve learned over the years because it was done with me. Information was passed down to me and I enjoyed sharing the information with a lot of the people out there, a lot of the different groups I integrate with so many paranormal groups and clergy people and so much worldwide today that I do more counseling in trying to share that information in the past 2-3 years than I thought I’d ever be doing.

..Zaffis: The key factor is that being involved in this I don’t care what your belief system is… what you call upon as long as it called upon the positive to be able to help protect yourself because within my organization alone we have different religions and belief systems and that’s very important to call upon the positive to protect yourself. I am Roman Catholic myself and I call upon the power of prayer to help protect myself.

..Now when getting involved with doing investigations and especially if you are doing something on a negative level I definitely and “very strongly” recommend that people know what they are doing, realize what they are getting themselves involved with because it is up to an individual to protect themselves. You have to call upon whatever it is you believe in to be able to help fight back. An individual cannot do that for you.

..Zaffis: ABSOLUTELY! I am a very firm believer in that and here again I am “not” interested in being a “Bible thumper” or anything like that. I am a paranormal investigator so therefore I find everything very intriguing with the different religions and cultures out there, very fascinating.

..Zaffis: It's both. (John pauses): When you are viewing this and here again I always tell anyone else in the paranormal field that as a researcher we must keep an open mind. We must go outside of our box.

..Zaffis: To be able to understand the different things that occur out there, the different things that are happening. You know over the past two to three years the equipment that has come to the forefront to be able to document these things… and we know energy cannot be destroyed. We know it can take on different forms and different perspectives but what is intriguing when you look at this going past your scientific end of this, when you deal with the energy and it has an intelligence to it and it has this momentum and it has this knowledge. This is why I think it’s so important that we have that understanding that we have to look at things from a scientific approach, but…. we are dealing with a spiritual world. So we have to keep that open mind.

..Over the course of 36 years there have been things that I have changed my mind on at looking at things and trying to understand things. Within my own organization alone the advancement and the different techniques and the different things that are brought into document things as far as you energy, you know… there is just so much, I keep an open mind with all this.

..Zaffis: NO, because here is my reasoning why... you deal with both worlds. We deal with the spiritual world and we deal with the scientific world. We set up our equipment and if we are fortunate enough… we get that repeatability. We got that documented and we have that evidence. That’s hardcore evidence and if you got it repeated… “woo woo” that’s fantastic but what does that still mean? What does that mean?

..Zaffis: That was probably 21 years ago and that’s the “Haunting in Connecticut.” The haunted funeral parlor. That was the biggest turning point in my career…

..Zaffis: Yes, but here again with that situation and when I had that encounter on the staircase, which actually it came “down” the staircase, it did not go “up” the staircase but… you know how Hollywood is. That was a big turning point. Now the fact of what transpired that night and what had happened shook me so to the bone that I made a decision that I would never do the work again. When I fled that home that night it wasn’t the fact that I feared for myself cuz I chose to do that, I chose to be in that home. That creepy thing planted in mind that it was going to go to my house where my wife and my three little kids were.

..Now… Three days later… I did go back and that wasn’t presented in the documentary, that I did return three days later cuz I knew that the exorcism was set up, it was sanctioned. Everything was ready to rock and roll.

..But… in the course of that… “I refused” to take phone calls from people. I “would not” take calls from the family that lived there; I would not talk to researchers. I wouldn’t talk to nobody. But we had a very good friend that was a clergy member at that point in time. He had called and he said: “John, we don’t know what happened… You’re not talking to anybody.” I had said to him at that point, I said: "You know what..." I explained in depth to him what I experienced… what I went through… and I said to him at that point in time: “I never wanted to have anything to do with this work ever again.” I said: “The devil can have the whole bunch of ya’s ”.

..Zaffis: Ya… and at that point he repeated back to me: “Well then… it accomplished what it set out to do.” I said: “What do you mean by that?”. He said: “You are talking about never helping people again. You are talking about not going back on the case. So then what it set out to do that night it achieved and you are going to let it win”. Well, he was right… and I had to think about that and I had to mull that over in my mind in what I experienced…. and how true to life that experience was, and I made a decision to go back.

..Zaffis: Oh no, the word Satan is thrown around so loosely. I will be perfectly honest with you… if Satan comes up you are going to see John Zaffis run! That’s the big boy and as far as I’m concerned he hasn’t surfaced as of yet.

..Zaffis: EXACTLY! There you go buddy… you got it. So you know, it was of a hierarchy that was definitely within that haunted funeral parlor absolutely! So you know there is different levels and there are a handful of cases where you can research and be involved with knowing what you are dealing with what usually your levels are, and to say in that home dealt with one of the higher ones that I dealt with that one evening, absolutely. But, was it Satan himself… No.

..Zaffis: What was done… there was a sanctioned Roman Catholic exorcism performed in that home which is very rare. That is usually reserved for people. It was done. It was performed. I was present. I will never forget it, it was 1988. It was a pretty intense situation. Nobody got thrown around. There wasn’t an extreme violence within with the physical people but there was a lot of activity, the smells were extremely foul, the building did have a tremendous amount of vibration. The building did actually shake.

..There was a little Mary statue like about 8-9 inches tall that the hands literally melted off of. That is something that I do have. Carmen Reed had given it to me three years ago. She kept it all those years and I never even knew she had it. Her and I had caught up at one point in time and she pulled it out of her purse and opened it up and I was shocked, I said: “I didn’t even knew you kept it.” She said: “I kept it all these years but it I think its time it went with you now.”

..Zaffis: Absolutely, definitely. There’s pictures on {myspace page} with Carmen and I standing in front of that statue. It's in my museum with all my other items.

..Zaffis: Well, geez… I wish it was that easy. Here again, what is fortunate in over the past several years is most people if they start hearing voices or if they have stuff going on the first thing they do is they go to Doctors now. Its now like it used to be and you know a lot of times when I am dealing with these people they have already been to Doctors, they have been to psychiatrists. Some of them could be diagnosed with some of the most wacked out things. They are on medications and nothing is working. But a lot of times when these people have gone through this already and they are able to show us documentation that cuts out a lot of the groundwork for us.

..I do have a couple of psychologists I work with. The evaluations on these things are extremely important and you have to rule out mental illness. Years ago everything was diagnosed as a person being possessed and they had a mental illness. Mental illness is a very prominent thing that is out there and it needs to be treated the proper way. All these things are ruled out before I am even going to turn around and move forward and say that this person has a good possibility of being oppressed… or being possessed.

..Zaffis: Usually when everything has been ruled out as far as mental illness. The environment has been ruled out. Here again, these are all things that are done during our investigative point when these people are in front of you they are gaining an enormous amount of strength. They have knowledge of the past, present and future about people that are with you. They are talking in languages or talking and making sounds that make absolutely no sense. They are aware of items that are blessed or holy items that have been taken out and they did not see us placing them or doing anything. This is the criteria I usually look for when we are at the tail end of an investigation to see what my next step is actually gonna be.

..Zaffis: Absolutely, exorcism is your last resort. I am very guarded with that because today unfortunately, out there in our field we have people doingexorcisms like they change underwear. It’s extremely dangerous… because the more times that its done the less effective its going to be. There is a tremendous amount of things that are done before I even consider the rite of exorcism or deliverance at that point in time.

..Zaffis: It’s probably about 50/50. Here again, it’s the same thing with me. There is several psychics within my organization. I have worked with them for years and years and if they tell me they see something or they are sensing something in an area that’s cool and that’s great and what we like to do is set up a camcorder in that area, the infrared, you know do some evps in that area, you know to see if we can validate what they are picking up in thatarea.

..Zaffis: Right, we can’t always get our documentation. You have to work openly. Like I said, here again, I’ve seen some phenonomenal information come out of some very gifted psychic people with history, with names or things they are just not gonna know that might be prevalent to the piece of property or to the family. Those are things that I take into consideration.

..Zaffis: ABSOLUTELY! Here again, energy is energy and are certain individuals are “more prone” to be able to pick up on things from the spiritual world or that whole realm where they are going to communicate with other people easier, yes, I have seen it proven out time and time and time again.

..Zaffis: The majority of the time what I have found with legitimate people in the psychic field they are usually very gifted from children on upward into teenage years into adulthood. Can you train yourself, I guess, to be able to pick up on things or open yourself back up or something like that? I have to say yes but usually, its just like with anything else I think there is certain people with a calling to do certain things that’s like psychics or paranormal investigators or people doing demonology or people getting called into the clergy field. I think certain people come into their lives predestined to do certain things and psychics fall right in there with the rest of the people.

..Zaffis: Here again, I chuckle and laugh about a lot of those different things but its not a road I would want to be down because they are tormented people…

..Zaffis: ABSOLUTELY! They hear these voices and have these communications and have it 24/7 and to be perfectly honest with you its not a road that I would want to go down.

..Zaffis: Umm… I’m very guarded is the best way I can describe this to you. In all fairness the ouiji is a board. Its used as a tool. People set it up, they get around it, they use the planchette, they move it around. Doors are being opened for communication for the spirit world and some people bring spirit in. I’ve heard of people that have used ouiji. They have never had a negative experience whatsoever, but I deal with the people that end up having a very bad problem, you know with bringing negative spirits or bringing in things that end up harassing them.

..Zaffis: It's extremely easy... but remember one thing... it's not the {ouiji board}, it’s the {people that use it}. We are the catalyst. I do not use it but I am saying the people are establishing the communication with the spirit world, therefore, you are granting them permission to enter your life once you start doing that.

..Zaffis: I have many ouijis.

..Zaffis: Ok, the way I look at this and I would like to cover a couple of topics here with our equipment, with the K2 meter what astounded me one evening was people put down four of them and all four of these K2 meters were reacting to some of the questions that the people were asking. So here again going from an engineer perspective I’m looking at this, “How can this be?” So... you know I try to keep an open mind with all the different pieces of equipment we have out there.

..One of the most controversial things that have been achieved within the paranormal realm has been very controversial so I tell everybody, "Keep an open mind and look outside your box when we deal with any types of communicatio ns". Any types of these devices that are out there where information or spirit communication is coming through. I don’t necessarily say trust everyt hin g… NO! You have to use common sense but I do feel we need to keep an open mind while trying to learn these different things that are coming abou t that are intriguing all of us with spirit communication.

..Zaffis: Ya, but what’s intriguing about that is that the ouiji board you are actually touching. The K-2 meters, the one with the switches on them, you are putting them down on the floor and they are responding you are not touching them. So here again, how do we interpret some of that.

..Zaffis: This is what I am saying… and to me… the first and most important thing I want to know and I want the answers like the rest of the world out there. We want answers to the spirit world. We want to know what is happening out there. Why are these things happening? Why are they so prominent. We are getting closer. We are getting more documentation than we ever have within our field.

..Zaffis: Well… I wish I could answer that one for ya but the key factor is what I can say with being involved in this for 36 years is that there is so much we don’t understand. There is definitely spirits out there. There is definitely energy with intelligence. There is things that occur, there are things that happen that we are all trying to figure out. That is my best, honest answer that I can give to you.

..Zaffis: Thirty six (36) years into this work and you know I have more questions now than when I started. I’m intrigued. Everything that occurs, the situations, investigations the equipment I am very intrigued by all this because that is how we are gonna learn. That’s how we advance.

..Zaffis: I'm hoping before I am out of here and I’m a ghost we get the answers... (Joe laughs hysterically) .

..Zaffis: No, I know too much. I want to cross over and left alone. I want to go onto a fluffy cloud.

..Zaffis: The key and number one way that demons make it back into affecting mortals is that people open up the doors to it. People practice a lot of things out of curiosity.

..Zaffis: Yes, Here again, do I feel that an individual that has mental illness or anything do these things can affect them and attach to them, yes, I would like to share this story with you: Many… many years back a good (priest friend) had called me and asked me to go with him to this institution where he was going to help this person and I’m like “Ok, what in the world would we he doing this for, we know this person is mental if they are in an institution". I went with him and he was doing an exorcism over (I think the girl was 15-16 years old) and well, she is thrashing and she is carrying on and she is just totally outraged. You name it and it was happening.

..We packed up and everything and we are getting ready to leave and turned and looked at the priest and I said “Why did you even do that knowing that this girl is mental. She is here for a reason and she is just gonna react?” He goes, “John… she’s been institutionalized since she was a baby. Shes been in and out of things. She’s never had exposure to things. She doesn’t integrate with people or anything.”  I tried to keep and open mind and I just went...“Well you know this is interesting.” Several weeks went by and he asked me to go back with him again and I said to myself “Uh oh we are gonna try another exorcism over this girl.”

..So we go and I am with him and we go into this big room and there is a whole bunch of people where they are playing games and she is sitting there integrating and she was playing a game board with another woman going back and forth and he was talking to her and she was responding and going back and forth and I was like “Wow that is really something..you know she is reacting with the people.” We left and on the way home he goes “Do you understand what just happened? That girl was institutionalized as a child, no exposure to religion, no exposure to anything. They couldn’t get her out of room. She wouldn’t intermingle with people or anything and he said I did those prayers over her now look at the result.” That made me open my mind up and stop and realize that there is so much we just don’t understand.

..Zaffis: Exactly... and that is what made me take another look and think about things. Here again, when someone puts you in a situation and they explain these different types of things to you and this child never had no exposure to anything, no one bothered with her, the family she wouldn’t integrate. What he did and the power of that prayer helped that child to be able to function somewhat and socialize with other people. It was just something that changed my philosophy at looking at things and we must not have a closed mind with everything that transpires in our world. There is just so much that we just don’t understand.

..Zaffis: Yes she is. I do know for a fact but she is not in the institution she was. She is in what they call one of those a half way homes where she was able to start cooking and taking care of herself and she is not 100 percent normal but she was able to be taught things after that.

..Zaffis: To be perfectly honest with you, to this day I still don’t know. That’s a good question. I really don’t know because I never asked.

..Zaffis: Yes, When you get involved in the paranormal field its very critical and very important that if you do come up against that is negative or on a demonic level please be very careful with going in there and provoking and stirring up things and then just walking away from that family. Once those doors are opened up and you are summoning something and you are bringing it forward you can’t just leave that family hanging because you don’t know what do to.

..Zaffis: It’s extremely important. If you are going to go in there and you are going to do that you better know what to do to calm those things down before you leave that house. I don’t feel that the field of Demonology, our field with over the past two or three years has exploded with people being very interested in being Demonologists and getting involved in these things. You can’t just pick up a book and read a book on Demonology and be prepared. You have to work with people within the field and you have to have an understanding and a trust with your co-members because they will turn on you when you get involved with these things.

..You have to have that sincere trust with your clergy members out there. These are key elements because you know some people will get upset with me at different locations when they call me up and say “Give me the number of the local exorcist in the area I need help.” Well... I can’t just do that. When I do something like that this clergy or these people within our demonology field the first thing we do with each other we say were you on that case? Were you involved with that case? Do you any of the hardcore facts? Do you know any of the paranormal investigators? Have you worked with them? Its just like any other field and people do get very upset with us when we don’t just hand out your local exorcist phone number.

..These are all things that I bring up that I think is important for people to understand when they decide and when they start getting involved with these negative cases. There is a lot that has to go behind the scenes There’s a lot that intermingles that people have to understand before your local clergy is just gonna jump into it.

..Zaffis: Many of times I’ve had things that have followed me. I think after a while what happens with someone that is in the field for a length of time you become very (numb) to a lot of the different things that occur a lot of the different things that happen. There is always signs that there is something possibly could be around. I don’t think twice about stopping my car or pulling it over or throwing blessed salt or holy water all over my vehicle. I don’t think twice about that and if I am working with somebody that is clergy with me. I don’t think twice about asking them to do a blessing. I would rather be safe than sorry but you know... activity to me, I would probably have to see a house levitate before it would even affect me these days. So I mean the only way I’ve ever been able to describe this (and my wife insists it’s a man thing) I can just tune everything right out.

..Zaffis: I’ve learned over the years just to block everything. When I’m done with the investigation I can walk away from that and probably in two or three days you start asking me questions about it I probably won’t remember ¾ of what transpired and we just have to go back over the documentation to see exactly what happened. I’ve often been told that me doing this is one of the best things that helps to protect me from having major major things probably occur with me because they know I don’t pay attention to it.

..Zaffis:That is continuous. That is an ongoing thing. That isn’t something that (I’m trying to think of a good way to describe it to you)… in a days time dealing with paranormal groups or dealing with a person that has a problem or getting involved with things there are days that I will just sit here and say: “Why am I even doing this?”

..Zaffis:(continued) I continuously do that especially today because our field has turned into such a nightmare I mean people just go after each other. People just rip each other apart like I’ve never seen in all of the years I’ve been involved in this work and its HARD! It’s difficult to sit and just say “Why do I do these things and why do I get involved with it.” But what I do is I go back and I reflect and I always get that certain thing that always comes back to me cuz I always used to say this to my Uncle: “I go why do you even do this?”

“ The things that we go through what we have to deal with – with families and different things like that and everything”… and he had said to me…

(John’s voice slows) I… I… get very upset cuz… (short pause) … I reflect back on this now… he looked at me and he said: “John, if you deal with four or five people in a day’s work in dealing with this stuff and your able to help one person, you accomplished something didn’t you?”

..Zaffis: I think that is what I look upon being involved with this and dealing with it today, if I dealt with a whole bunch of researchers or different people or clergy and I was able to help one or two people out of ten people I still did something that was on a good.

..Zaffis: I think that is the way I look at it. My key thing moreso over the past three or four years is that, “You know what I have a heck of a lot of knowledge piled up in this brain of mine.” I love sharing it and I love giving out the information so that other people can learn like I had the opportunities to learn.

..Zaffis: Well... here again what you have to remember is that when movies are created for the theaters or tv the key thing is what is the common thing with people? THEY LOVE TO GET SCARED. THEY LOVE TO BE SCARED! Hollywood does this and they are going to hype up each and every one of the different cases. There isn’t any case out there that hasn’t been turned into a movie where you go behind the scenes and do your research and you go I and say: “WOW... that is pretty far off from what the movie portrayed". You know its just something with a lot of us that are involved with filming that is just the way it goes. I think the closest and the most one that profoundly affected me is the EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE.

..Zaffis: With the ---Anna Louis Michael--- case with a lot of the things that occurred and a lot of the things that happened and I sat there and I watched it and you know what the kid went through, what the parents went through, what the clergy was saying and everything, man oh man, they got close to what some of the cases are like. I look at that and I understand that and I related to what I’ve seen in that movie. I was able to relate to a lot of things.

..Zaffis: I think they should have had it originally been a little boy like it was. If they kept it a little bit more proper with some of the events that happened and some of the things that transpired and me personally with any of the movies that are based off of true cases if they stuck more to the true facts and presented more of them that’s more freaking scary than anything else.

..Zaffis: Well you know, here again, too, with that movie. Did she die as a result of the exorcism? No, the poor girl’s organs were shutting down. She was starving to death. She had pneumonia. You name it. You are dealing with an old world family and they just felt she was totally 100 percent demonized. Do I feel that she belonged in a hospital? YES! That is old world thinking and that is the perspective of it.

..The one thing about THE EXORCIST .. the one thing I hope someday that the gentleman comes forth and tells his story. That is the one thing I am hoping for before he actually leaves his physical body because many people have in most recently in two documentaries we were working on, on possession they tried diligently to get him to speak publicly on what he actually went through that that movie was based off of but to this day he still won’t do it.

..Zaffis: Ok, {Shadows of the Dark}. It’s a book based on my wacked out life. It talks about me being involved with the work. The different types of cases and it has helped a lot of the researchers out there just getting a better understanding of the investigations. I have my paranormal museum here in Stratford, Conneticut with all kinds of items collected over the years from investigations that I’ve been involved with but what I would really like to do more than anything is that I would like to dedicate this article to my Uncle, my mentor.

..Zaffis: Also put in there someone that I didn’t realize how much I would miss until the day he went down and I was with him the morning he went down so…

..Zaffis: There is no question about that, and that is something that I carry with me 24/7.

..Zaffis: Absolutely... and that’s what counts.

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