Man shares photos and videos of alleged paranormal encounters

Updated

Charles Brandon claims he can see dead people. He wants you to see them, too.

Ever since the 50 year old moved into his Brooklyn home in 2010, he's had frequent encounters with what he calls "paranormal beings." Doors mysteriously open, cups are thrown and ghostly visions appear in his mirrors.

But Brandon doesn't live in a "haunted house" like you see in the movies, he told AOL.com.

"There's nothing special about this house — every home has dead people" he said. "Some are just weigh stations or portals for the dead."

Brandon said he realized after a while that it was not his house that is particularly special or haunted -- it's him.

"They're trying to get my attention because they think if they get my attention, they will be removed from the house," he told AOL.com. "The powers that be will take them away. They don't want to be here in this realm."

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He said he has been given a special gift through which he can telepathically communicate with the dead, but he doesn't know how it happened.

"I think the spirits saw what I was going through -- that I just kept taking all the bad things that happened in my life -- and they were impressed," he said. "I'm like a 21st century Job. I've been through every trial imaginable."

Brandon claims he can summon spirits, and he thinks that anyone can see them when they are present.

He wants to share the spirits he sees in his home through his YouTube channel "A Brooklyn Haunting," where he has shared some of his hundreds of videos:

Brandon is not a ghost hunter or a medium -- he thinks of himself more as a "civil rights activist" for ghosts. He is currently unemployed and seeking funds to be able to start his own spirit-summoning television show, where he will hopefully prove his critics wrong.

One of those critics is Michael Shermer, a noted skeptic of the paranormal and the best-selling author of "Sk?ptic: Viewing the World with a Wandering Eye."

"There are no ghosts, just sights and sounds and hallucinations inexplicable to ghost believers [that] they fill in with preternatural beings," Shermer told AOL.com in response to Brandon's claims.

Time and time again, people have told Brandon that the spirits he documents are not real.

"People say they're dust balls, and I'm willing to say that maybe some of them are," Brandon said. "But dust balls don't come in beautiful colors, whip around at unbelievable speeds and take verbal commands."

Many have claimed to see ghosts over the years, and skeptics like Shermer blame it on various factors, such as emotion.

"With billions of people having billions of encounter every day, there's bound to be a handful of extremely unlikely events that stand out in their timing and meaning," he wrote in Scientific American.

Shermer debunked his own seemingly paranormal experience in which he and his new wife thought they heard a ghost speaking to them through the radio. He said that personal anecdotes do not equate scientific evidence that the dead survive or communicate with us.

Nevertheless, Brandon is constantly frustrated that no one seems to believe him, but there's not much else he can do besides keep trying.

"You don't choose the paranormal," he told AOL.com. "The paranormal chooses you."

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