 "Photo: Patrick Zakhm")
Although ghosts always fascinated him, Patrick Zakhm didn't really believe that people could communicate with the dead. However, things were about to change. It was 1996. Zakhm was at a Montreal psychic fair. A "clairvoyant" approached him, offering to pass on a message from the "other side." She told Zakhm that she could feel a "presence" guiding him. Zakhm recalls the psychic's behaviour vividly to this day. "How she received the information was interesting," Zakhm said. "It was as if you were witnessing a conversation between two people you know. She was seeing somebody and was talking to them. She was not making any of this up, you could tell from her behaviour." While the psychic reading had piqued his interest, he was still skeptical. So Zakhm began to do some research on the unidentified spirit she had talked about. After talking to several relatives, Zakhm said it became clear to him that the spirit was one of his grandfathers, who had died years before he was born. Convinced of the psychic's abilities, Zakhm began to investigate ghosts, and develop his own paranormal abilities. Now, at 40, Zakhm continues to study ghosts and deems himself to be somewhat of a ghost helper. With almost 18 years of experience studying ghosts, he currently runs a website about his paranormal investigations. He has also written a book about his experiences, and started a ghost-tracking group. These days Zakhm spends much of his time investigating houses and sites in Montreal that are reportedly haunted, including the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery and the Old Dow Brewery. Zakhm also claims to have a number of paranormal abilities, including being able to see ghosts. Growing up, Zakhm was always interested in the supernatural. He claims to have experienced several encounters with both spirit guides and ghosts, when he was younger. Born in Lebanon, Zakhm moved to Montreal in 2006. "I wasn't comfortable living in Lebanon because I could not go with the way they lived and worked there," Zakhm said. "My mentality was more at home in Montreal than Lebanon. I feel at home here." In 2007 he started the Montreal ghost tracking meetup group, on the website meetup.com. While the group has 194 members, Zakhm does most of his work with a small number of "expert" ghost investigators. Zakhm leads the group, working closely with Judith Lessiter, a 69-year-old psychic. Like Zakhm, Lessiter believes she can see ghosts. "He has his own way of looking at the whole ghost situation and it's fairly good," said Lessiter. "It's different to mine, which doesn't mean to say its worst or better. He's good because when we are together, we have different views and he doesn't say you're wrong, she's right or you're wrong, he's right. Everybody is included. He takes everyone's view on it."
Although many joke about his job, Zakhm is anything but embarrassed for his passion in ghost seeking. He takes pride in his ghost seeking skills, yet he is also quite secretive about his work. He believes that sometimes you cannot just tell a person and believe that they will understand. Still, Zakhm continues to share his passion for ghosts with others and tries to make people believe similarly to the medium that inspired him that there is a world beyond what we can perceive. A world that does not mark the end of our lives, yet our graduation to a spiritual one. "Death is our graduation," Zakhm said. "We graduate when we leave this plane in the experience we call 'death.' Everything that is made from the physical plane can be touched by the death experience but not the soul, our true eternal self, the driver of our physical body."
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