PHENIX CITY, Ala. (WRBL) – Driving on Summerville Road in Phenix City, you may have noticed a purple building labelled “Attic Junky Paranormal.” If you’re wondering what it is, it’s basically a warehouse and workshop for a locally owned ghost hunting equipment business. The online store can be found by clicking here. However, its founder and CEO, Joshua Joiner, said customers may order items to pick up in person.
Browsing the website, you’ll find several pages of strange products, many of which are homemade. There are all sorts of glowing contraptions, crystals and even special teddy bears that supposedly rule out “false positives.” Each item has a description if you click it, though it may not be clear enough to someone who isn’t experienced with such equipment.
Joiner said he founded Attic Junky Paranormal around March 2021. He came up with the idea out of necessity. He said he became was jobless after slipping and falling at work as a chef, after which he kept experiencing blackouts. A doctor said it wouldn’t be safe for him to continue working in his industry.
Before that accident, he had been involved in a car crash on Dec. 13, 2019, which fell on a Friday.
“They found a huge mass in the front temporal lobe of my brain that was caused by the first accident,” he said.
After his second accident, Joiner stayed with the woman who would become his wife, Allision Joiner.
“She was there for every doctor’s visit, every emergency that happened,” he said.
Joiner felt pressure to find a way to make money again. He made two pieces of ghost hunting equipment called an EM pump and a REM pod, which both sold rapidly. He said the EM pump supplies energy for ghosts. He explained the REM pod.
“It has an antenna that sends out that radiating electromagnetic field,” he said. “So it only creates a field like a bubble … So if something come and breaches the bubble, it pops, and the lights start to go off.”
Joiner said that his grandfather, who goes by “PawPaw,” has been working with him from the start. Together, they make about 60 items.
Joiner explained another piece of equipment, “spirit portals,” made with two guitar pedals, one of which detects white noise that comes in from a radio.
“They call it a sweeping radio,” he said. “And you can go anywhere from 100 to 300 sweeps per minute. And then, it transfers over here to a reverb pedal, which gives it tone, depth, echo, whatever you want. And then it’s played out of this, and this is a voice equalizer … So it’s very interesting to see this thing react when you get an intelligent response to questions. I mean, I’ve had this thing cuss me out, call me all types of names…”
Joiner said his business has become very successful, even making equipment for the Discovery Plus series, “Conjuring Kesha.” He said he might make more equipment for the show’s second season.
He also said his business sponsors “Our Haunted Lives” on the PARAFlixx network, a streaming service focused on the paranormal.
Joiner said that what sets his business apart from others in his industry is that its products are cheaper and he explains how it works. He hopes to one day establish a brick-and-mortar store and host ghost tours of historic sites.
He has been a ghost hunter, himself for seven to eight years. His first ghost hunting experience took place in the St. Augustine area of Jacksonville in a lighthouse known for the ghost of a “lady in white.”
“They say she heard news of her husband being killed … And every night, she goes up there and watches to see if he’s going to come home,” he said.