CityState: Current
Author Amy Bruni
and (right) co-author
Julie Tremaine.
just a hobby that grew into more. I would investigate haunted
locations for fun, first with my dad and then with local
paranormal groups around Sacramento. Eventually I started
going to paranormal conventions and meeting other weirdos
like me. When Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes first asked
me to be on “Ghost Hunters,” I actually said no. I had a
good job with benefits at the time. It seemed insane to me
to give that up to go pursue a life searching for scares. But
eventually I said yes, and here we are.
For Amy: How did you come to live in Rhode Island
after starring on “Kindred Spirits”?
The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which is the group that
the first “Ghost Hunters” show followed, is based in Warwick.
We were constantly on the road traveling for cases,
but when we weren’t, we were here. I practically lived at
the Biltmore for the first few years I was on the show. My
daughter’s father lives here, so when we decided to have
a family, it was an easy decision to make this my permanent
home.
Q + A >>
Amy Bruni
The Newport resident and star of “Kindred Spirits” and
“Ghost Hunters” shares insight about her debut book,
Life with the Afterlife: 13 Truths I Learned about Ghosts.
Amy Bruni has spent her entire life
searching for things that go bump in the
night. Now, the reality TV star wrote a book
about it, Life with the Afterlife: 13 Truths I
Learned about Ghosts, to be released on October
27. We caught up with Bruni, who lives in
Newport, and her co-author (and Rhode Island
Monthly contributor) Julie Tremaine, to talk
about ghosts, wine and Disney.
For Amy: When did you first think that you could communicate
with the dead, and how did you turn it into a career?
I grew up around ghosts. We lived in a haunted house when I was
a kid in the Bay Area in Northern California, and my parents just
accepted it as a fact of life. As for how it became a career, it was
For Julie: How did you and
Amy team up to write this
book as a partnership?
We met through a mutual friend.
I had to know the fashionable
ghost hunter who lived here.
Finally she brought Amy to my
house for a dinner party, I served
them fondue and wine, and the
rest is history. Amy and I were
actually on a weekend trip to
Walt Disney World when we decided to write this book. I
distinctly remember writing down one of the chapter
concepts as we were getting into a boat on Pirates of the Caribbean.
I had to stash the notebook before we went down the drop so it
wouldn’t get wet!
For Amy: What is the most haunted place in Rhode Island
that you write about in the book?
The “Conjuring” house, for sure. That house is in Harrisville, and we
investigated it for an episode on the most recent season of “Kindred
Spirits.” We brought back almost the whole Perron family (the subjects
of the movie) to try to get to the bottom of what really happened
there. It’s very, very haunted, but many of the family members have
a lot of positive memories of that place.
For Amy: What did you witness at the “Conjuring” house
that didn’t make it onto the screen?
It’s more about what we didn’t witness. In the movie, and in Ed and
Lorraine Warren’s real investigations of the home in the 1970s, they
concluded that a woman named Bathsheba Sherman murdered her
child in the 1700s and remained in the house to convince mothers
who lived there to do the same. We found historical records that
disproved her involvement and that she never lived in that house.
The house is definitely haunted, but not by her. —J.C. �
PHOTOGRAPH OF AMY COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR/LEFEBVRE PHOTOGRAPHY;
PHOTOGRAPH OF JULIE COURTESY OF THE CO-AUTHOR.
18 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l OCTOBER 2020