Paranormal Author Interview
Footprints in the Snow author Dr. J. Lee Choron
An interview with Dr. J. Lee Choron, author of "Footprints in the Snow": Tales of Haunted Russia, a book about documented cases of paranormal activity in Russia.
LH: As a journalist and writer living in Russia, what led you to move to Russia and why have you stayed there for over 16 years now?
JC: Lisa, it's been almost 19 years now. It will be 19 in November. Actually when I first came here I had no intention of staying as long as I have. I was born and raised in East Texas and grew up in a little town called Center which is the county seat of Shelby County. I went into the military when I graduated from high school and served in Vietnam. I was wounded and have a medical retirement. Once out of the military I went back to college and eventually wound up working for the Eastman Kodak Company Overseas Division. Since I learned to speak Russian in the service, when they were looking for people to come here and open up the business when Gorbachev opened up the market, I was one of the ones chosen to come. There were only five of us at first. Honestly though, I never thought that my "temporary assignment" would turn into Gilligan's "three hour tour". I suppose the main reason that I'm still here is because I honestly love Russia. The last time I was in the States was in 1996.
LH: Dr. Choron, you have been studying the paranormal for over 20 years now. Is there a specific event that you can recall which prompted your interest in this field?
JC: Not really. There wasn't a single incident. It's cumulative. When you are around a phenomenon all your life and come to accept it as real you simply have to know the "how" and "why" of it all. That's how I became involved in investigation of the paranormal. I am what is called a "natural sensitive". There has not been a single time in my life that I have not been aware of the presence of spirit entities (I hate the word "ghost"). It is a gift that runs in the male line of my family. To an extent I can communicate with these entities, if they are willing to communicate. I am not a "psychic" and cannot initiate such communication on my own -- in most cases. Because of this I have always been interested in the paranormal.
LH: For your book, "Footprints in the Snow", you investigated and documented actual cases of paranormal activity for which you state you have "verifiable accounts". What methods did you use to verify and document the reported activity?
JC: In most of the cases I actually interviewed participants and those involved in the cases. In the cases of older incidents I used police, military, medical and security agency documents and conducted (with our local paranormal investigation group) on-site analysis of the locations. In the case of photographic, video or digital evidence I submitted the actual evidence to four separate laboratories in order to verify the authenticity of the material. Our local paranormal investigative group "Angels of the Battlefield" is primarily military, police and professional people like me -- I'm actually trained as an optical engineer -- and we have access to some extremely high-technology equipment such as V and VI generation passive night optics and passive optic digital video, remote temperature sensors and a wide variety of cameras in both digital and film format as well as several different types of voice recorder. We do a fairly thorough investigation when we go out to a site We also use complete and thorough documentation with witness reports and incident reports similar to those used by police and other investigative agencies. Everything is documented.
LH: Since the cases you highlight in your book were not in the public eye and were virtually unknown to anyone, how did you find out about them?
JC: Well, they're not in the public eye "over there". They're fairly well known locally. We get the majority of our leads from local people. A surprising number of our leads come from police, medical and fire officials. I'll get into it in a bit more detail later, but the attitude toward investigating the paranormal over here is quite different from that which is seen in the west.
See the second part of this interview when Dr. Choron and I discuss the differences between paranormal views and investigations between the United States & Russia.
Sources:
Dr. James L. Choron, Author of "Footprints in the Snow:Tales of Haunted Russia"
