I can recall the first house that I remember, in Bluff City, Tennessee.

That house was still the most active house I have ever been in, and even at that age, four or five years old, the memories have not faded.

Everything paranormal happened in the house, from apparitions, to psychokinetic phenomena. I also remember we were very glad to move out of the home.

Once we moved away, we learned that an older lady had been mugged and shot and killed in her own front yard. We presumed that’s who it was.

When I turned eight, we moved to Virginia to seek more stable financial means for my then step-father Paul as a brick mason. We moved into an older mobile home in the center of a clearing in the woods, owned by Mr. Calahan, my step-father's old boss, rent free on the condition we help watch his cow's. The home was luckily activity free, but the land itself was steeped in what felt like a strange energy,

Encounters on the property and the surrounding cattle fields were common.

One evening, some cattle escaped their enclosure's and had made off into the surround woods. Now, please keep in mind, these are not backyard woods. This was serious Virginia mountain territory, not another house for miles.

After tracking them down, we found them next to a nearby stream, drinking as if nothing had happened. We set about repairing the fence and rounding up the cows. This took longer than we expected because the cows had made up their mind they didn't want to go back in.

During this entire escape, my step-father and my mother, Tamera, finally manages to wrangle all the cows back into the fence and close it off. How the fence had been torn we had no idea. But now that I look back on it, I may have an idea.

As we were getting ready to drive over the fields and back to the house, my mother noticed a pair of glowing, not reflective, actually glowing, red eyes hovering in the woods just across the stream a few feet from the fence line.

Thinking it was a wildcat, my stepfather took his rod, a big heavy staff-like piece of metal, and went over the fence to chase it off.

As he got closer however, he changed his mind rather quickly, because the two eyes suddenly became five pairs of glowing hellish eyes, staring him down.

They hovered momentarily, seeming to watch him and size him up.

Then slowly, they seemed to blink and disappear without a sound, despite the fact that the ground was covered in dry leaves.

Needless to say, we hurried back to the house.

My most profound experience in the paranormal, and what caused me to want to investigate and study this field, occurred just over a year later in 1996, when I was nine.

At that time, I had no idea what a psychic experience was, nor did I comprehend the effects of one.

I became a fast learner.

One evening, and I remember the date, July 4, 1996, I was asleep and I began to dream. The dream began rather silly, like most dreams do. Then the tone and feel of the dream shifted, into one so real, I thought I must surely be awake.

I was at a funeral, and it was raining, not hard, but misting just enough to soak you. I knew the people at the funeral. A casket was being lowered in the ground by two somber men I did not recognize.

On the front row, mourning, was my aunt and my mother. Standing off to the side, were my cousins and my sister. Curious, I did not see myself. By this point, I knew somehow that I was dreaming, and I began to get conscious control of my dreaming self. I to this day have never been able to do so again. I walked up under the blue tent and looked at the casket. It was silvery gray, a very beautiful piece, and it was closed.

The moment I stepped onto the Astroturf and peered down at it, the lid unlatched and the lid opened itself.

Laying inside, was my grandmother, Dorothy, to whom I was particularly close.

She did not get up or move, she seemed quite peaceful as all the deceased usually appear. The lid slammed shut and they began to raise the coffin up, and when it reached ground level, they picked it up and began to carry it across the church parking lot and to a waiting white hearse with its door open.

By this point I was in panic mode, not caring I was still dreaming, I ran to follow them and then when they got to the hearse, they put the casket inside and beckoned me to join it. Naturally, I refused, being quite scared and in shock at the idea my grandmother was dead. I looked at my family surrounding me, and they all seemed to ignore me, like I wasn’t there.

Then the pallbearer grabbed me and put me into the hearse, next to the casket and shut the door, locking me in with my grandmother.

I could actually feel the weight of the casket and the pain as the rails of the casket slide actually dug into my back. Outside the hearse, fireworks began to be set off.

That wasn't the worst part as I soon to find out. I found out that I could not wake up, no matter how hard I tried, or fought, I was locked in this dream, unable to escape.

Finally, something snapped, and I did wake up, and believe me, I was screaming my head off.

I made my mom call down that night to the nursing home where my grandmother was at and check on her.
She was fine and healthy as a mule, not to mention as stubborn.

For the next little while, being the rest of the year, I calmed down somewhat and I didn't dream like that again, but the memories of the dream clung to me like an oil, and would not wash away. I told everyone that something was going to happen, I pleaded with them to listen to me and no one did.

A year later, my grandmother passed away on July 4th, 1997. I then realized the significance of the fireworks in the dream. She loved fireworks and I was devastated she would never see them again.

After her funeral, I became depressed. I didn’t know what depression was at the time, but I knew I didn't want to eat, I didn't want anyone to touch me, I hated myself on every possible level because as it turned out, it wasn't old age that took her from this world. We later found out after an inquiry, that it was hospital neglect.

In short, I felt I had caused her to die and in a short time, I became suicidal.

I was in that state for the next seven years, never being happy, and being treated for depression and on many medicines. Nothing worked.

In 2003, I was a sophomore in high school.

Something changed that year.

I'm normally a shy quiet person, especially in front of crowds. For some reason, I began to become interested in theatre, even though I was petrified to be on stage.

I took a terrible risk, at least to me, and tried out for the drama competition team.

I was stunned when I made it. This actually turned out to be my saving grace because one afternoon, my cousin, the director of the program ( I was chosen to be in the program by someone else because she felt it unfair for her to decide. She allowed another theatre director to make the choice.) and I started talking and some how we got the subject of the paranormal and the psychic.

I then learned something about her I never knew before.

She had dreams and feelings too. Impressions and precognitive intuitions and had for years. She helped me understand that I wasn't responsible, and that it was a gift that some people in my family had.

I was stunned. Why had no one bothered to explain this to me? Why had they not told me? Even attempted to tell me?

Quite suddenly, my depression went away and I no longer needed the medications or the visits to the therapist. In fact, my entire life turned around and began to improve because someone took the time to care and explain.

That year, my interest in all things paranormal grew by leaps and bounds. By that summer, I had found others who were seriously interested in the field, and we formed our own amateur research team. Our number grew and all through High School we investigated, documented, changed and learned. We got our first case at the Deery Inn, a historical landmark building in Blountville, Tennessee. It was one of the most active cased I remember, spanning 300 years of history and activity.

Soon after, we all graduated and went our separate ways. With new faces and know properly equipped and trained to investigate the paranormal as professional researchers, my new team renamed ourselves as Southern States Paranormal Research Society. We began taking cases professionally for the next four years, including local hunts, private residences, public buildings and even a meeting lodge for the American Legion!

In 2004, we joined with Infinity Paranormal, and I met Carie Conormon, who at the time was a complete stranger and a founder and creator of the Infinity Paranormal Network and the Para-Investigators Online Assistance Program. I was seventeen when she took me under her wing and trained me as an Operator for the chat-room client we use to assist her guests. She soon became like a blood relative to me and she has earned my loyalty over the years by showing herself to be a professional, experienced and loving caring person, as well a researcher.

With her help, my team grew even more and to this day, I support the POPAP program and my team is still an Infinity Paranormal Network member, which is proudly one of the largest and most professional paranormal communities in the world with over 300 groups in this country alone and a few in the United Kingdom.

I soon became Co-Administrator of the POPAP Project, along with my other Administrators Paula, Jackie and Darrel.

Now, as a fully functional and experienced paranormal investigation and research team, my goals are to never let anyone go through what I did alone again, and to always be there to help and to lend a shoulder or an ear, because living in fear, is no way to live and I want people to know that there is someone out there who will listen to them and who will help them.

I have tried to instill this belief system in my team members, and they have never let me down once. I am proud to know them all, and as far as I am concerned, they are the best of the best.

Thank you guys for a wonderful, wonderful experience in this field and I hope we are a team for the rest of our time on this Earth.

You make it worth it.

---Anthony Milhorn, 2007.