S.P.I. serves Grass Valley, Nevada City, Penn Valley, and all surrounding areas.  We strive to provide professional service free of charge to families or businesses who believe that they have legitimate paranormal activity.  Our four founders have a wide range of experience and backgrounds. 

The Founders 

Ariana Vickers – born and raised in Southern California, Ariana attended UC Davis before moving to Penn Valley.  Ariana is well versed in the physical sciences as well as their possible application to the natural, and therefore the supernatural world.  A logical and science-minded individual, Ariana experienced numerous paranormal experiences in her youth that ranged from strange to terrifying, and all in the same home.  After she moved from her childhood home in Southern California, she never experienced the phenomena again. 

Matthew Vickers – born and raised in Southern California, Matthew spent his high school and college years focused on the visual arts.  This, of course, meant that his adult life would lead to a career in finance.  Matthew has worked in mutual funds before moving to Penn Valley and beginning his career in banking.  Matthew experienced phenomena in his childhood and late teens that many people would have assumed was paranormal, but research in his early adulthood showed that the experiences were hynopompic states.

 Independent Investigators 

Laura Greenfield – currently lives locally and is employed in health care registration. 

Patrick Couch – born, raised, and still living in Southern California, Patrick earned his MS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Irvine in 2005 and current works as a consultant.  Patrick is primarily a member of “The Network” but will grace us with his presence from time to time on larger investigations. 

The Network 

At S.P.I., we recognize that as paranormal investigators, we are essentially acting as detectives, gathering evidence of the unknown.  But in any investigation, does the review of evidence stop at the detectives?  Of course not.  Evidence gets passed on to experts who can evaluate it with skill beyond that possessed by the detectives.  We have the same theory. 

Before we are willing to classify a location as legitimately haunted, we share our evidence with a network of debunkers with expertise in a variety of fields.  We work with contractors, nurses, physiologists, engineers, and statistical analysts (to name a few) who know us well, and respect our team enough to know that the evidence we present to them is legitimate and not doctored.