By Connie Adair

Nadine Mercey

Nadine Mercey walked into a house in downtown Toronto and immediately knew she was not alone. Taking a deep breath, she moved farther into the house, goose bumps on her arms and a chill running down her spine. She closed her eyes, sensing the presence of four spirits – two elderly gentlemen, one woman and an animal. This was a haunted house.

It would be enough to send most people running, but for this real estate broker, paranormal experiences are a way of life. Mercey, a psychic and spiritual healer, deals with spirits on a regular basis when she visits homes at the invitation of concerned or curious homeowners. She also guides her clients in their real estate transactions, crediting her successful 20 years in real estate to her “intuition.”

First selling residential real estate, and now selling strictly raw land, Mercey, of Royal LePage State Realty in Ancaster, Ont., is spreading her wings again, putting her psychic abilities to work on a new television series, Paranormal Home Inspection. The half-hour docu-drama investigates private homes in which owners have noticed suspicious activity.

In each episode, a team of experts is dispatched to a house to investigate. Mercey and paranormal investigator Michelle McKay of Cold Spot Paranormal Research independently check each house for otherworldly characters, while certified home inspector Brian Daley aims to debunk any unusual goings on with reasonable explanations.

When Mercey visited the downtown Toronto home to film the first episode, she wasn’t privy to the homeowner’s experiences – bathtub taps being turned on full blast in the middle of the night, deadbolts locking out contractors, an exploding fishbowl and her dog standing at the top of the stairs, or in a corner of the basement, growling.

However, Mercey says she felt energy immediately upon entering the house. She mentioned four spirits, the name George and a plumber. A trip to the newly renovated basement was fine until Mercey entered the laundry room, where she says felt as if the spirits were pushing her out of the house. Negative energy flowed from a drain in the floor.

The show’s researcher later confirmed that the original owner was a plumber and that the house had been owned by a couple named George and Joan from 1932-1944. “A makeup woman told me I was 100 per cent right,” Mercey says.

It was startling news for the homeowner, the show’s executive producer Catherine Fogerty of Big Coat Productions, who had moved into the Riverdale house about four years ago following a separation. “I wasn’t in the best head space. Weird things were happening. There would be something on the counter that I didn’t remember putting there, I would go past a closed door but it would be open when I came back. I thought it was my imagination and the stress.”

Another psychic also toured the house and came up with the same results as Mercey, both pinpointing the ground under the basement laundry room as a source of negative energy. “The two psychics came up with their information independently,” says Fogarty, adding that there was once an ancient burial ground at the site of the house.

The home inspector chalked up the growling to raccoons and an opening door to the fact that it wasn’t hung properly. But he could not come up with an explanation of how a deadbolt would lock itself.

When the show features a home, results from the home inspection and the paranormal inspection are turned over to the homeowner and the camera crew returns a month or two later to see what affect the information has had on the homeowners.

In the early stages when Fogarty and business partner Maria Armstrong talked about the show, there were a lot of naysayers. “I was half one myself,” Fogarty says. That’s why they decided to make a legitimate home inspector part of the show.

 “We want to do a real show. We don’t want to fake anything,” says Fogarty.

To that end, Paranormal Home Inspection is searching for ordinary people with ordinary homes, but unusual experiences. Owners can choose not to be identified, and camera shots of the house are close ups so the house is not recognizable. Filming takes about two days, during which time the owners do not remain in the home.

Homeowners can live anywhere in Ontario. If you live in a haunted house, have a client or know of someone who does, visit www.bigcoatproductions.com/casting.php for information about how to have the house featured on an upcoming episode.