Addison ghost hunter: “It's like love.”
A belief in ghosts born in a friend's Elk Grove Village home was the start of a journey that brought longtime Addison and Itasca resident Greg Niecestro to a key role on Friday night's episode of the Travel Channel's “Paranormal Challenge.”
As the lead investigator of the three-man team Ghost Bros, Niecestro, 25, and his teammates will compete on the show against the ladies of Paranormal Hot Squad to collect evidence of otherworldly activity at the haunted La Purisima Mission in California.
Their four-hour, middle-of-the-night adventure was recorded in June and will be broadcast at both 8 and 10 p.m. Central Time.
“I think it's going to be a really funny episode,” said Niecestro, a graduate of Driscoll Catholic High School.
Though he can't reveal who won, his team's competitors were a trio of attractive women whose apparent strategy was to seduce ghosts into revealing themselves, he said.
Both teams' goal is to collect two pieces of audio evidence and two pieces of video evidence of ghostly activity. A panel of judges, led by host Zak Bagans, determines who did a better job.
Niecestro moved to California a few years ago to get a job in the television and film industry after majoring in production at Marquette University. He first held an office job at Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Pictures and is now trying to get a production job on a TV show.
Along the way — and what led him to “Paranormal Challenge” — he completed a documentary with his two buddies, Joe Blunschi and Trevor Ames, called “I Want (You) To Believe.”
The 90-minute film is a riff on all the “ghost shows” now on TV. Niecestro said he noticed all the people on such shows seem to buy into the paranormal. He thought it would be fun to do something similar with a total skeptic along for the ride.
“It's almost more about the battle of beliefs than the ghost itself,” he said. “But there is a ghost.”
His personal belief in the paranormal began in 2005 when a friend persuaded him to check out a bedroom in his Elk Grove Village home which he was convinced was haunted.
Niecestro said they discovered that the ghost could manifest itself by turning on the stereo. Over several weeks, they were able to ask the ghost yes or no questions, with the stereo turning on whenever the answer was yes.
While shows like “Paranormal Challenge” seek electronic evidence of hauntings, Niecestro said he's learned the initial evidence comes from a gut feeling among the experienced.
“I feel the best tool is yourself,” he said. “When you go into a place that is haunted, you can almost feel it. It's like love. You can't explain it, but once you've felt it, you know what it is.”
Catch local resident on 'Paranormal Challenge'
"Paranormal Challenge" airs at 8 p.m. tonight on the Travel Channel.