http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-08272007-1398272.html

Psychic goes behind bars

By THERESA KATALINAS
Bucks County Courier Times

Joseph Tittel can't escape his job no matter how hard he tries.

A couple of Halloweens ago, Tittel of Bristol Township stopped by Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia for the former prison's annual scarefest, Terror Behind the Walls.

Instead of meeting sheet-clad ghosts and goblins, the psychic medium came face-to-face with the real thing.

“I wasn't there to talk to anyone,” said Tittel, who connected with a man who had been stabbed in the prison's courtyard. “I went in there for the Halloween thing twice and I had the same spirit come to me. It was someone who was in prison.”

Since Eastern State closed its doors to prisoners in 1970, it's safe to say that Tittel's meeting was with someone from the other side, a subject he knows quite a bit about. For 10 years, Tittel has helped his clients find closure after the death of a loved one by connecting the living with those who have died. His recently released book, “Messages from the Other Side,” sheds light on some of those experiences.

At Eastern State, where some of the most notorious criminals were housed — including Chicago gangster Al Capone from 1929 to 1930 — there's plenty of lost souls looking to connect.

This fall, viewers of “Mysterious Journeys” on the Travel Channel will see Tittel and a crew from Garden State Ghost Hunters bridge the gap between the living and the dead at the Philadelphia prison. Valerie Chow, the show's co-executive producer, declined comment except to say that the episode featuring Tittel will air sometime in October.

The show was filmed over two nights in June, Tittel said.

“It was kind of spooky, because I'm not used to that [type of] work,” Tittel said. “I don't usually communicate with people who were on death row.”

Paranormal investigator Boni Bates, Garden State Ghost Hunters co-founder, said Tittel's reactions to happenings inside Eastern State coincided with what the ghost hunters were sensing.

“My feeling is there is a lot of energy still existing in there,” Bates said. “It's imprinted in the atmosphere.”

During filming, Bates said investigators tape recorded question and answers with the paranormal entity. Sometimes spirits cannot be heard at the time but are audible when tapes are played back, Bates said.

Did Eastern State ghosts speak to the hunters? If they did, Bates isn't telling — at least not yet.

“We're still going through our tapes,” she said.

Tittel doesn't need to wait for tapes to know that spirits run rampant in the historic prison. In several instances, Tittel said he got chills at the same time photographers were capturing orbs — or energy balls of the paranormal — on walls behind him. While connected with a spirit, Tittel said, “Words just come out of my mouth.” A second after uttering them, Tittel said he's forgotten what was said.

Some of the sights, like a “big Italian guy” imprisoned for robbery, have stuck with Tittel. The psychic said the man “took me through and showed me things.”

“I came across a nurse who kept acting like she was still working in the infirmary,” Tittel said. “She didn't communicate with me, but I saw her walking back and forth.”

When the group asked the spirit to “show me a sign” upon entering one of the cells, the entity responded with a knock on the bedpost, Tittel said.

As Tittel found out later, spirits respond in different ways.

“The temperature dropped 15 degrees in 30 seconds,” Tittel said of another cell. “It was 90-some degrees in that prison. It went down to 60-some degrees within four minutes in that one spot.”

If that's not hair-raising enough, Tittel said the spirits had a hold on at least one crew member's physical state. The man, who Tittel said walked the prison alone, became sick to his stomach almost immediately.

“They can hit your energy,” Tittel said. “When they hit your energy really hard, it can make you ill.”

At the moment, Tittel's energies are being split between his Bristol Township home and Los Angeles, where he's filming another television show.

Wherever Tittel goes, his work — and the spirits that he can't help but see and hear — are with him.

For more information on Tittel, visit http://www.spiritmanjoseph.com/.

Theresa Katalinas can be reached at 215-269-5081 or tkatalinas@phillyBurbs.com.