SOUTHERN PARANORMAL & ANOMALY RESEARCH SOCIETY

 

PAULA WESTBROOK- Founder

paula@sparsparanormal.com 

         Paula Hayes Westbrook was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She was raised in the Catholic Church and with the backwoods practices of the area, traditionally referred to as Voodoo or Hoodoo. As a child, she was terrorized by spirits that haunted not one, but two of her childhood homes. Paula took control of her fears and started to face what she feared most. This unleashed her interest in the paranormal.   

                          As a young adult, Paula studied Judaism at the Bnai Zion Temple, and taught Catechism at St. Lawrence Catholic Church, both in Shreveport. From 1992 to 1996, Paula worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a Respiratory Therapist at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and later at the Ship Rock Reservation in New Mexico.  This is where she learned about Native American religions and customs. This religious knowledge would help in later investigations. 

                         In 1985, Paula became a serious paranormal investigator. She has investigated locations all over the United States, including sites in Fort Morgan, Alabama, Tombstone, Arizona, and Deadwood, South Dakota. Paula formed her first paranormal group, ArkLa-Tex Paranormal, in 1999. Later, she became the Regional Coordinator for Orion Paranormal, a TAPS family member. Her duties spanned Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In 2005, Paula co-founded the Southern Paranormal and Anomaly Research Society. SPARS became a TAPS family member in 2006. In 2012, Paula joined forces with David Childers (Truthseekers Paranormal Research and Investigations) to form The Delta Paranormal Project, which also was a TAPS family member until 2014. After two years full of conferences, fundraisers, and investigations, DPP split back into its original teams. At that time, Paula asked Shain and Jennifer Vice if they would be interested in leading SPARS into the future. Thus, on October 5, 2014, SPARS was reborn. Paula continues to be a lead investigator, as well as the Event & Training Coordinator, for SPARS. She is still an integral part of the team. She helped form the partnership between SPARS and Beauvoir, the final home of President Jefferson Davis, in Biloxi, MS. Paula continues to coordinate with Beauvoir to schedule events such as the monthly “Meet the Spirits of Beauvoir” fundraisers and the 2015 Gulf Coast ParaCon. She also helps to schedule training events for the team.               

                           Paula has been on “My Ghost Story” on A&E, as well as featured with her husband, David Westbrook, on Destination America's “Kuhn Hospital” episode of “Ghost Asylum” in 2014. Her story about the Jefferson, Texas “Urquhart House of Eleven Gables” was featured in Don Colclosuer's, “Ghost Around Every Corner” newspaper article, and was featured in a cover story for The Jackson Free Press Magazine. Paula specializes in extreme hauntings, to include cleansings of these locations. Paula and David also had a radio show, “The Delta Paranormal Project,” that aired on NLPI network, Blog Talk radio, and Event Screamer Radio.