Gay ghost hunter Adam Berry teams up with friend Amy Bruni to find answers for families facing paranormal problems
When Adam Berry joined the Ghost Hunters Academy reality competition show in 2010, eventually winning the competition and joining the investigation team of the SyFy hit Ghost Hunters, it gave him the chance to turn what had been “a passionate hobby” into a full-time career.
Today, that career includes Kindred Spirits, a series now in its second season on TLC, along with hosting paranormal conferences, running a musical theater in Massachusetts and working as a real estate agent specializing in haunted properties.
This week, Berry took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for Dallas Voice.
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Dallas Voice: Adam, what first prompted your interest in the paranormal? Adam Berry: I grew up in a house that had [paranormal] activity in Alabama. I have always been intrigued by “things that go bump in the night,” and [now] a passionate hobby has led to the career that I have today.
How hard — or how easy — is it to be an openly LGBT person in the world of paranormal investigations? Is the ghost hunting community relatively progressive or conservative in that respect, or is it even reasonable to make that kind of assumption? I would say it is very easy to be openly gay and do what I do. The paranormal community, and our fan base in particular, is a very diverse group of people who believe all sorts of things. If they do disagree with who I am, I don’t see much negativity to my face. I do get crazy Facebook messages and tweets from people sometimes, but at this point, who doesn’t?
I remember watching you and Amy Bruni on the Ghost Hunters programs, and how the two of you seemed to hit it off right away. Did you know each other before becoming involved in the program? What was it that drew you together as partners in investigations and what makes you a good team? What are your strengths and weaknesses as an investigator, and how do those play off Amy’s strengths and weaknesses? I was fortunate enough to be on Ghost Hunters Academy, which was a spinoff show to the SyFy original series Ghost Hunters. It was a competition reality show where they put us in the scariest places possible and then judge our investigative style and, also teach us their methodology.
I was lucky to win that competition, and I always say my price was Amy Bruni! We started working together and have been working together ever since.
We both have the same investigation style. We believe in compassion and in being as nice as we can to whatever might be there, so that we can get a better response.
We like to call ourselves paranormal psychologists to ghosts. We walk into a space and pretend like we are entering a party and nobody knows who we are, and we have to gain their trust and do whatever we can to make them comfortable with us, so that they will reach out and communicate.
We both come up with ideas, and sometimes they don’t work. Because there are only two of us, we can try a lot of different things to get the best outcome for those that were trying to help.
What is it about Kindred Spirits that sets it apart from other, similar, programs? How is your approach different from or similar to other investigators? Kindred Spirits is not your average paranormal ghost hunting show. We don’t just go into a location and have experiences, capture evidence and then tell people, “Yes, your place is haunted,” or not.
What we do is an extensive investigation that parallels an actual investigation that teams would do in the field. We use history, research, geneaology, land deeds, interviews, tons of information, facts and figures. We use that in our investigations night after night. We are able to have experiences and capture evidence one night, and the next day, based on those experiences, we can go out and do research and find the answers that we are looking for.
We are there for at least five days, in someone’s home, and not just running around an abandoned asylum or hospital. These are actual families. We have their trust, and we have to do what we can to help them. We are usually their last resort.
Now, don’t get me wrong. We do love an abandoned asylum or two every now and then. But helping families get answers that they need and helping ease their fears about the activity that’s happening is most important to us. That is what Kindred Spirits is all about.
How do you respond to the skeptics? For those people who don’t believe in ghosts, that’s totally fine. My job is not to convince someone out there that ghosts exist. Our job is to help these families in every way possible.
If someone who is skeptical ever has a paranormal experience for the first time they’re going to know it. Undoubtedly, they will realize that what just happened to them was paranormal. Will they talk their way out of it and eventually brush it off as something natural? Maybe. But for one fleeting moment they may believe in what we do.
There are people that don’t believe in it and will never believe in it, and that is totally OK with me.
In all your time as a paranormal investigator, what has been the most shocking or scariest or most convincing piece of evidence you have come across? I think “The Basement” episode in the first season of Kindred Spirits, season one, sums up a shocking experience based on the evidence that we captured there and the help that we gave to the family. That is 100 percent the reason why we do what we do.
(“The Basement,” was the fourth episode in the first season, filmed in a private home in Chelsea, Mass., where the homeowner’s mentally disabled brother was murdered in the home’s basement apartment by her other brother, who had problems with drug addiction and alcoholism.)
We never really get afraid of ghosts, because we want interaction with them. We always say we are more frightened of real life people and animals than spirits. The reality of some people is so frightening in my opinion, especially nowadays, so you can see what I mean.
Tell me a little about your husband Ben. What does he think of your work as a paranormal investigator? Is he involved at all? What kind of work does he do? Oh, and how long have you guys been married? My husband, Ben, and I have been married for five years, but we have been together for 11. He loves scary things and ghost hunting, and he is an original founding member of our paranormal team in Provincetown, Mass.
He goes with me on investigations, and we travel the country together looking for ghosts. He is totally into it.
Ben is also the artistic director of our theater company, Peregrine Theatre Ensemble, and he is extremely talented — and handsome.
I serve as the executive director [of Peregrine Theatre Ensemble, and this keeps us occupied and very busy during the summer months in Provincetown. If you are visiting in the summer, visit us at PeregrineTheatre.com to see a show.
What, if anything, would you like to mention that I haven’t asked about? Amy and I have a lot of events coming up next year, and you can visit Strange-Esapes.com for more information. Also, you can watch all of our Kindred Spirits episodes on the TLC GO App and the Destination America GO app. Look for new episodes and bonus clips on Destination America in the new year. Also follow me on Instagram @AdamBerry and FaceBook @AdamBerryFans and Twitter @AdamJBerry. You can follow Ben at @TheBennyBerry on Instagram and Twitter.
If you ever come to Dallas, I would love to meet you, maybe even have you and Amy on our internet talk show, DVtv. I would love to visit Dallas/Fort Worth area. I am really great friends with Betty Buckley. She lives in that area and has always wanted us to come visit, so maybe we will be there sooner rather than later.
Catch back-to-back episodes of Kindred Spirits tonight (Friday, Oct. 27) starting at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time. Download the TLC GO app to watch every episode of Kindred Spirits.