Paul Callan

This casefile was compiled by Alva Keel through witness interviews and interviews with Mr. Callan.

See casefile Tommy F. for preliminary information regarding this file.

      During the case of Tommy Ferguson, Mr. Callan had a conversation with Tommy about darkness. In school, the boy had been told that darkness was simply the absence of light. The child did not agree; he believed that "The Dark was its own thing" - that it had the will to want for itself, and could carry out the necessary actions to get what it wanted. This conversation proved to be significant in future cases.
      During the Case of Flight Classified, one of the things "Phil" said in Aramaic was, "The Dark is its own thing. Tell Paul."
      Something beyond our earthly realm obviously wants to send a message to Mr. Callan about the existence of "The Darkness," which most likely can be interpreted as Evil on the whole.
      Approximately three months after the death of Tommy Ferguson, Mr. Callan saw him again. It was a night in late April, 2003, as he sat at a desk in his apartment, that the front door opened without his knowing.
      Sensing a presence in the room, Mr. Callan turned to see Tommy standing there, staring at him. He did not look the same as he had in the vision Mr. Callan had of him at his funeral. This time, the boy was beginning to look weary and a bit discolored around the eyes. Tommy said the following to Mr. Callan: "Help us. It's real."
      When asked if he was referring to "The Darkness," Tommy nodded, and replied, "It wants." Mr. Callan prompted him further to find out what "The Darkness" wants.
      "Everything," Tommy claimed.
      When Mr. Callan turned to question the spectre further, the child was gone, although the door to Mr. Callan's apartment did suddenly slam closed again.
      Shortly before the events of the Larry K. case, Mr. Callan had an MRI performed because he was concerned that perhaps a brain tumour could be the cause of the strange things he'd been seeing since his car wreck. All of his medical tests came out clear, clean bill of health.
      It was during the Kittredge case that he had another significant dream on this subject. Mr. Callan dreamed he and I were talking in a diner about how a person could be making strange things happen around them without even knowing it (as in the events surrounding the Kittredge case). He thought perhaps he himself might be inducing the odd events around him, such as Tommy Ferguson's visits. My dream self replied that Mr. Callan wanted things this way because he didn't want to be a medium; the label and experiences weighed on his mind quite heavily. Continuing, I told him that no one is innocent, and that he should take a look around. Within seconds, the diner grew dark, devoid of any other people except Mr. Callan and a man sitting at a far booth. He came up behind the man and touched his shoulder. As the man turned around, Mr. Callan saw that the man was himself. The Paul Callan sitting in the booth was maimed and bloody; Mr. Callan felt that his condition represented how he must've looked after the train accident. The sight of himself in this state startled him awake.
      During the case of Baby M, Mr. Callan had several more visions of Tommy. He came into my office one day to tell me that he felt he was being haunted by the child. He'd had the vision of Tommy at his funeral, then again a few months later, and finally, he had seen him four times in a span of two weeks. Every time, Tommy looked more haggard than he ever had, with deeply sunken eyes, pale skin, and purple lips. Mr. Callan feared the boy may be in some kind of spiritual trouble. I tried to calm his anguish by telling him that communication between the living and the dead is complicated; it must pass through various dimensions and states of consciousness before it reaches the living, and so, it often comes out distorted. Still, Mr. Callan felt troubled by these visions; he thought Tommy must have something to tell him.
      Within days, Mr. Callan took a friend's child to the park; we will call this child Baby M to protect his and his mother's privacy. They were playing with a toy boat in the creek when a homeless man asked Mr. Callan for change. He gave him a dollar, then turned to look at a plaque near some plants - these plants were identified as Saint Andrew's Cross. Next, he saw a man sitting on a bench with a fishing pole. Finally, Mr. Callan observed a boy take off his red T-shirt and toss it into the creek, where it floated. Everything Jason Herlock (see Baby M file for full details) had said had come true. Looking across the water, Mr. Callan spotted Tommy once again, just standing and staring at him sadly. When he turned to attend to Baby M again, the child was gone.
      I was allowed a conference with Jason Herlock, at which he admitted to me that he was a fraud, that he simply fished for responses, like we thought. He claimed nothing like what had happened when he touched Mr. Callan had ever happened to him before. I asked him if he could do this again, to see if he would pick up any new information about Baby M, but he at first refused. Mr. Herlock said that he had felt such anguish when he touched Mr. Callan's shoulder that he did not know how Mr. Callan was "walking around with that kind of pain" because it felt like the agony of all the world. He feared that if he returned to that level of pain, it would kill him.
      In the meantime, the police received a lead by taking a man's fingerprints off a trashcan. This man turned out to be a paroled sex offender, and the homeless man that Mr. Callan had seen. It was possible that he had taken Baby M. The thought that a child molester had kidnapped this child worried Mr. Callan to the point that he was willing to do just about anything to find him. He took it upon himself to spread out a white sheet and cut his hand open, bleeding onto it, to see if his blood would spell anything. (See Hemography.) Perhaps it would provide a clue. I walked in on him performing this experiment, but the blood did not spell any words.
      Afterwards, Mr. Callan finally told me about the other three possible "God is Nowhere" people (see file G., Chad). He surmised that maybe one of these people had taken Baby M to hurt him. I thought this was far fetched from the start. One thing was true, though - Tommy had also been there, when the child was taken. Maybe Tommy had been trying to warn him.
      Mr. Herlock finally agreed to see us, and to touch Mr. Callan again. He experienced another dramatic reaction, almost collapsing once more, but was able to get his bearings and tell us what he had seen. He had beheld a vision of Mr. Callan lying in a bathtub full of icy water. This reminded Mr. Callan of an experiment he'd seen performed years before while in seminary where an associate achieved an altered state of existence through lowering the body temperature and using certain drugs. He felt that if he also achieved this altered state, he could speak directly to Tommy and ask him what he knew.
      The police found the homeless man, searched him, and discovered that he did not have Baby M. We were losing hope that the child would be recovered alive unless we tried something drastic.
      We recreated the details from Mr. Callan's seminary experience exactly, and Mr. Callan was able to reach this altered state of existence. He saw Tommy there. Tommy told him that he was not haunting Mr. Callan, that he indeed wanted to move on, but Mr. Callan had been holding onto him so tenaciously that he could not leave the mortal plain. In effect, Mr. Callan was haunting him. After promising that he would work on letting Tommy go, Mr. Callan asked what the boy knew about the disappearance of Baby M. Tommy said that Baby M had not been taken by a sex offender, but by a sad woman who had also lost a child she cared about, like Mr. Callan had lost him.
      Other, more personal things Tommy said to Mr. Callan include that he was not supposed to be there, in this altered state, because it wasn't "safe." The child remarked that something in the shadows wanted Mr. Callan. He should get out. Finally, Tommy assured Mr. Callan that he didn't kill him - he had wanted to help him, and that something had told him to do it. When asked what had told Tommy to save Mr. Callan, if it was good or if it was The Darkness, the boy replied, "I don't know what those words mean anymore." Tommy made it known that Mr. Callan would not see him again, and blended into the shadows of the room with Mr. Callan's "good-bye" following him into the abyss.
      This file is continuously being updated.

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