Q: What inspired you?
A: I feel very fortunate, with some years hosting radio shows and being at paranormal conventions and events, to have met what I feel are the greatest minds and talents of the paranormal and metaphysical realms. I feel that many if not most of them come into the realm from a place of fear, where something grabbed them or called out their name and aroused their greatest curiosities. My beginning was quite different, as my earliest experiences were from people I knew well and loved, and I feel that my earliest experiences came instead from a place of love, and yet I am just as motivated to find answers to afterlife sciences, yet rather than a quest for evidence, it is more about the opportunity to communicate.
My first experience came in 1979, right around the time of my 21st Birthday. My very best friend, who lived next door to me all while growing up since we both were two years old, was involved in a horrific accident. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit him while he was on a motorcycle, and he hit the car head first. He was brain-dead once at the hospital, and his prognosis was grim at best. My first encounter with death, yet he was not dead, kept alive artificially with breathing apparatus’’ until his parents had to make a horrid cross-country trip to unplug him. Meanwhile I was trying to process all this, made any grieving more difficult since my dearest friend was not dead. One night I went out to a swingset in my parent’s back yard, with some beers and a determination to figure how to process all this. It was rather peaceful on a warm summer night, yet right around midnight into my Birthday proper, something ‘changed’ with the swing next to me. It’s very hard to describe, but it seemed there was something…some kind of energy on that swing next to me…not that I saw it or heard it, but knew something was there as surely as if I had. Turns out, it was my friend! I had conversations with him, in my mind, since I heard about his accident, but in those conversations it was my inner dialogue that spoke for him. Yet here, what this ‘energy’ said was beyond my wildest imaginings, and something my inner voice would never have considered. My friend said he came to visit on my Birthday and beyond that, said he wanted to ‘give up’ and came for my blessing. Give up? What do you mean…give up, is what I asked in return. He said he could not move, eat, bathe, or do anything for himself…he no longer had that option, because he was brain-dead. At best, he was doomed to be a vegetable, and others would have to do everything for him. He always was very independent, it was his nature to be so, and refused to live in such undignified manner, and he wanted out, and came for my blessing. I tried to talk him out of it…stronger survive, I said…hang in there, Doctors may find a way to fix him, I said. He stood his ground, though, and made some convincing arguments until it finally made sense to me that perhaps, in his case, there are worse things than death, and I caved in, agreed with him, and gave my blessing. I told him I was moved, I was touched, that of all people, he came to me for such blessing, and once granted, he thanked me. I told him I hoped he might visit me…after…and he said he would try. After that, he was gone, and the ‘energy’ on that swing was no more. About ten minutes later, by now around 3am, my Mother came outside to the swingset to tell me that my friend’s parents had just called to tell us they pulled the plug on him about ten minutes ago and wanted us to be the first to know. At that point, I realized quite plainly that I had spoken to my best friend, my first soulmate in life, right at the moment of his death. That changed my outlook on death and the potential for afterlife forever. Happy Birthday to me. I had also had a visit from my Wife’s Father a year after his passing, a story perhaps for another day, and my friend has also visited a few times, and I have spend the better part of my full adulthood in search of answers, considering paranormal, spirituality, parapsychology, metaphysics, quantum physics and other realms that consider these quandaries, really ever since that defining moment. perhaps for another day, and my friend has also visited a few times, and I have spend the better part of my full adulthood in search of answers, considering paranormal, spirituality, parapsychology, metaphysics, quantum physics and other realms that consider these quandaries, really ever since that defining moment.
Q: What are your aims?
A: Through the years I have developed a distinct platform, especially nowadays where it is not so taboo to talk freely about ‘ghosts’ or communicating with the dead, and it has everything to do with being brought into the realm in a fashion more ‘love-based’ than fear-based’. Especially considering media, where television shows are practically horror movies guised as research or documentary shows. It appears as though evil is afoot whenever something unseen is making noises or moving things about a house, and there is even taunting potential spirit activity to gain evidence for the studio audience, and I vehemently disagree with such methods and aim to change the way we approach these energies. I think if there are spirit energies, even ones thought malevolent, then perhaps we should consider them as people, who lived lives, gained wisdom, and are worthy of respect rather than fear or eradication. I understand the reasoning behind all this…we tend to fear the unknown, and even look for thrills, and there are many faiths that see any attempt to communicate with these types of things as sinful. Yet I have spent decades researching and investigating the paranormal. I had some years attuned as a spirit medium with remarkable success, and I look to theoretical physics as well. I have never had a negative encounter or got scratched or pushed; never had an EVP that was negative or threatening, I have helped people besieged by the poison of deep grief and even helped spirit energies cross over or relay messages to loved ones. I have seen love in them, or felt their pain; I have considered some things more residual than in spirit; I have considered that there may be times the person’s personality or history splits…where the pain is in one area and the grace in another, and have seen instances where the living are creating the chaos of items moving about a room on their own. There are so many different situations, and each different, often leading to more questions than answers. One thing rings out, and that is that the dead don’t suddenly change into some evil and monstrous beings or develop otherworldly psychic powers just because the living body is out of the equation. Like anyone else, they hope to be heard, considered, respected…sometimes they don’t know they’re dead…but we all long to belong. I distinctly believe that every single person is a story, and when you take the time to learn that story, it is always fascinating. The more you learn these stories, the more you know about people, dead or alive, and after a long time looking toward afterlife communication and speaking with so many other enthusiasts, eventually you come to believe that some things are true whether we believe in them or not. My platform is, basically, that ‘ghosts’ are people too…if they are ‘ghosts’ in the first place. I see people who honor the history of a property thought ‘haunted’, and sometimes there is a distinct love and honor there, which is great…and sometimes they are basically treating the dead like pets or flaunting the tragedy the occurred there and sometimes that is unconscionable disrespect …and yet they wonder why so much negative activity occurs. Sometimes I see people who feed the bad…and once someone tells you they ‘have a bad feeling about a certain room’ or they think a ghost is active, it sends all others into expectation mode, and they begin to blame all sorts of natural activity to the ghost they now expect or the ‘bad feeling’ has to come to fruition somehow, and it becomes our expectation to see bad where there may be none in the first place. So many times I have been on investigations where people get ‘scratched’ in front of us or expect all this nasty stuff, and often the ‘scratch’ comes from engaging in something and forgetting or ignoring it, and rather than malice, it’s the kind of thing where they want the attention back and it’s incidental and not malicious at all…sometimes people create the ‘scratch’ themselves for attention. Again, everything’s a situation on these investigations, if there is anything there at all. It may also be inter-dimensional, or even a time-warp that brings us these energies…the Einstein ‘space-time’ thing…and look…I do not claim to be an expert in this…no one is, really…as we still have no proof of any of this. But if I can impact anything within these realms, I hope to show a kinder side of afterlife science, where if we think on paranormal activity stemming from people and not some demon, we have a wonderful chance to embrace a kinder side of the realm, and that is my greatest motivation here. We need more ‘nice’ in life, and it can bring some amazing potential when we bring more ‘nice’ to afterlife science as well, and there aren’t many folks actively considering that, so I will.
Q: What plans do you have for the future?
A: I have a lot of things going on, thanks mainly to the radio shows. They’ve led to more shows, guest appearances, lectures, I have a book out that’s published and writing more, I’ve had acting roles in film and have been a part of documentaries on internet and in film, I make appearances at Paracons. I’ve had the tremendous fortune to meet my heroes, and many are personal friends now. I have some offers in the air, to appear in Documentaries, write for a magazine, more acting roles, another book in the works; I do Tarot readings, and have some nationally known psychics I’ve read for who loved my approach. It is magical. For the radio, I am not aiming for fame…I am aiming to be the person these friends and talents come to when they want something promoted, or to be featured in the kindest light, and I hope to ask the deeper questions…I don’t want a million listeners…I want my heroes to think of me when they have something special to them, and I hope to pay goodness forward. All else will follow from there. Of all things, though, I get the most pleasure and value from lecturing. I want to do more of that. I have a lecture platform entitled “Ghosts Are People Too: The Kinder Side of Afterlife Science” and it has been wonderfully received. My book that is currently out is called “Even the Dead Won’t Tell You the Truth” from Rowe Publishing, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the Rowe Publishing website of rowepub.com. The book is a fictional work based on personal truths, and is a murder mystery where the main character talks to the dead as a living. His best friend is charged with murder, the victim known to them both. The friend is not into the ‘talking to the dead’ stuff, but with evidence circumstantial and damning and piling up, he asks our medium to communicate with the murder victim to find a way to clear his name. It has a lot of first-person perspective from the eyes of a medium and is as informative as it is a really good mystery, and the book has done well. I am working on a new book that may be a sequel, but adds some science-fiction to the mix, and will still delve into first-person metaphysics. I am also more active in UFOlogy and have a few prospects there…and sometimes the world of physics and the quantum world helps to find potential answers to a lot of paranormal-type things, and I’m in. Most of all, in any and all of this, the platform is about ‘nice’, it is about a kinder approach along with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. My current radio show is called “Beyond the Norm with Chip Reichenthal” and is on A1B Radio Monday nights at 9 pm Eastern US time on www.MyA1B.com and I will be doing lecture tours in 2015 with another Rowe Publishing Author, Mark Keyes, who inspired a character in my book. He is a State Police Detective who works malevolent hauntings in his spare time with some other law enforcement officers, and wrote a marvelous book called “Chasing Shadows”, a non-fiction that is truly the best book I’ve ever read on the paranormal, and he also embraces a kinder look at afterlife, and together we will be bringing the ‘nice’ forward. It seems more opportunities are coming my way all the time now, and I am still open to lecture dates or doing readings and other engagements. I hope to accomplish what my greatest hero if life has…my Dad…who ultimately is a ‘nice guy’ who finished first, and that is my ultimate goal.
