Banff Springs a Paranormal State

Banff Springs a Paranormal State
June 15, 2010
y LISA WILTON
CALGARY SUN

BANFF - Like any grand, old hotel, the Fairmont Banff Springs has collected a few ghost stories over the years.

The most common ghostly appearance - or at least the most repeated story - is that of a young bride who appears on the steps of the main foyer or in the ballroom.

Legend has it the woman’s gown caught on fire after coming in contact with some candles on the stairs, and in a panic she fell.

But that oft-told tale might change after this week.

“Her dress didn’t actually catch on fire,” says Chip Coffey, who took a ghost tour of the hotel with TV executives and organizers of the Banff World Television Festival on Sunday night.

And how would he know? Simple really - He had a quick chat with her.

Coffey is the Atlanta-based psychic who can be seen on A&E’s supernatural series Paranormal State and Psychic Kids, and is a featured guest at the 2010 Banff TV Fest and nextMEDIA conference, which wraps up Wednesday.

“She said she was being overly careful because of the candles on the stairs and she overcompensated and tripped down the stairs.”

Coffey says the spirit also told him her name was Christina and she was pregnant when she died.

“Because it’s more acceptable now she felt she could say it. She wants to let people know that there were two people that died that night.”

The 55-year-old medium spent more than an hour wandering the halls of the Banff Springs and says he was happy with the amount of paranormal activity the group encountered.

“I had (the ghosts) turn a Maglite flashlight on and off,” he says.

“Several spirits made themselves known. We actually communicated with the bride and the bell boy and a little boy has been following me around. He’s been turning lights on and just letting me know he’s there.”

Coffey has been dealing with the paranormal since he was 10 years old, when his family moved into a haunted house in Upstate New York.

“Nothing bad happened, just some weird stuff,” he recalls.

“Things moving, people walking, the piano playing by itself, things levitating. That’s pretty spooky stuff for a kid.”

Those creepy childhood experiences have helped him relate to the subjects of Psychic Kids, which is in its third season. During the show, Coffey and other counsellors try to help children deal with their psychic abilities.

The show has been accused of exploiting the subjects’ emotional turmoil for the sake of good television. But Coffey fires back that all the children featured on Psychic Kids are doing much better thanks to the show.

“Their parents seek us out with nowhere else to go,” he says. “We do a very extensive screening process on these children. We’re trying to help these kids. If being on television means they’re exploited, I guess they’re exploited. But in the long run every one of those kids are left in a better place than when they first came to me.”

Coffey’s career as a medium began nine years ago when he says the dead brother of one of his travel agency co-workers started speaking to him.

“I thought I was going insane,” he says. “But my co-worker was validating everything the voice was telling me.”

Coffey considers himself a healthy skeptic, but even so, he has no time for paranormal bashers.

“There’s nothing fake or phony. I’ve never been asked to fake anything or redo anything or stage anything,” he says of his work on Paranormal State.

“Some people are are still going to be bashers or skeptics and I’ll still be doing what I’m doing. So I don’t even bother getting into counterproductive debating.”
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