Krulos - Monster hunters: on the trail with ghost hunters, bigfooters, ufologists, and other paranormal investigators

Copyright 2015 by Tea Krulos

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-981-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krulos, Tea, author.

Monster hunters : on the trail with ghost hunters, bigfooters, ufologists, and other paranormal investigators / Tea Krulos.

pages cm

Summary: Journalist Tea Krulos joins paranormal investigators in the field as they explore haunted houses, trek through creepy forests in search of Bigfoot, scan the skies for UFOs, and more. Along the way, he meets a diverse cast of characterstrue believers, skeptics, and hoaxersfrom the credible to the quirky Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-981-4 (paperback)

1. ParapsychologyMiscellanea. 2. SupernaturalMiscellanea. I. Title.

BF1031.K78 2015

001.94dc23

2015002299

Cover design: Andrew Brozyna, AJB Design Inc.

Cover images: (top) Fexel/Shutterstock; (bottom) Tea Krulos

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Illustrations: Courtesy of David Beyer Jr.

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

To my parents, Marty and Joy, for encouraging me to read monster stories

Index

M ILLIONS OF AMERICANS go about their lives in what is considered a normal way. Their interests are not the supernatural but ESPN, Wall Street, Better Homes and Gardens. They wonder, Whats on TV tonight? and Whats for dinner? Sometimes they enjoy a ghost story, or catch a rerun of a popular reality show like Ghost Hunters or Finding Bigfoot. Maybe they have had an eerie experience, but they just shrug it off. Maybe they think its all foolish folklore, kid stuff. And then back to the routine. Job promotion. Parking ticket. Pay bills. Field trip permission form.

And for downtime? Weekend fishing trip. Art museum. Video games. Curl up with a good book. Meet up with friends for a drink. Millions and millions of people, normal lives, normal hobbies.

This book is not about those people.

The universe is full of mystery, I thought to myself after getting off the bus and wandering into an unfamiliar neighborhood in Milwaukee named Granville. Ive lived in Milwaukee most of my life, but I had never set foot there before.

I walked into a quiet subdivision and dug my notepad out of my pocket to check the address. I looked up and saw the house down the street: a nice townhouse with the garage door open and a classic, freshly washed hot rod parked inside. I rang the doorbell.

A woman with a wavy mane of red hair answered the door and looked at me curiously.

Tea? she said, smiling. Come in.

She motioned for me to follow her down a hall. We walked by a living room table with a spread of potato chips, pretzels, and two-liter bottles of soda. I walked in and found a group of nine people seated on couches and chairs, staring at me politely. They all had matching shirts that identified them as the Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee (PIM).

Hi, I said.

Then I walked around the room shaking hands as people introduced themselves. I had spent some time studying the Members section of the PIM website, and my brain worked to match the two-dimensional profiles with the living people in front of me.

The redheaded woman at the door was Jann Goldberg, boisterous paranormal investigator and paralegal. Then there was Noah Leigh, meticulously organized team leader and founder, a research scientist with three degrees. I met Michael Gravy Graeve, with a soul patch and arms sleeved in tattoos, who worked at a printing company; Missy Bostrom, a polite, petite hair stylist; and John Krahn, a gruff ex-copyou know he likes you when he starts viciously making fun of you. Three other team members introduced themselves: Chris Paul, in the auto parts and salvage biz, his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail; Tony Belland, intense-looking guy with a shaved head and beard, an HVAC repairman and construction worker; and Randy Soukup, a kindly pharmacist. A ninth member was present but would be parting ways with the team before I saw him again.

I felt a touch of nervousness. It was obviously a tight-knit group. One of the first things that happened as I made introductions was that one of the members made an inside joke and everyone laughed while I looked around, puzzled. PIM was a little different than my usual peer group, too. PIM is composed of white suburbanites, most between thirty and forty-five years old and middle to upper-middle classand all of them are married with children. Ghost hunting is apparently something that appeals to those in the suburbs who need a more exciting and mysterious hobby than forming a bowling league.

After introductions, I sat down. All eyes were on me. And then I realized this wasnt just a casual PIM meeting I was sitting in on. I had been called in front of the board for a job interview.

Could you tell us more about yourself and the book you want to write? Leigh asked.

Well, I uhh

My own interest in the paranormal began when I was young. My library card was a prized possession that I used to check out every book I could find on UFOs, ghosts, and Bigfoot. I particularly remember Time-Life Books Mysteries of the Unknown, a popular thirty-three-volume series that covered everything from Alien Encounters to Visions and Prophecies. I would load these books up in my gangly arms and haul them to the checkout desk. I also occasionally caught the classic mystery documentary shows In Search Of and Unsolved Mysteries. I loved these stories, and part of me believed them.

As I got older, a new lovejournalismturned me into more of a skeptic, a person who needed fact-checking and hard evidence to be satisfied. I still thought the topic was fun stuff, but my view on it had changed. Bigfoot was nothing more than foolish folklore, wasnt it?

I imagined Jason Robardss Ben Bradlee in All the Presidents Men frowning at me for even daring to consider approaching the topic as news.

My interest in the paranormal was piqued again with the same thing that captivated a lot of peoples attention, a reality show that premiered in 2004 titled Ghost Hunters. Although ghost hunting dates back to the Spiritualist movement of the 1840s and has had a devoted following ever since, Ghost Hunters popularized paranormal investigation for a new generation. After the show premiered, amateur ghost hunting groups spread quickly and widely. There are now hundreds of these groups all over the country, in cities big and small.

Noah Leigh, PIMs founder, was inspired by Ghost Hunters as well. Leigh had a prior interest in ghost stories, reading them as a kid growing up in the small rural town of Berlin, Wisconsin.

When I was younger, I liked Halloween, Leigh later told me in an interview. Not the gory stuff, but the spooky stuff that really intrigued me and scared me a bit. I remember there was one book on ghosts in our middle school library that I would check out.

In high school, Leigh was intrigued with a piece of local ghost lore, a legend that a plot in a Berlin graveyard was supernatural. A certain sarcophagus with a lid featuring a hand holding a dagger in the local cemetery was the resting place of a man and two ex-wives he had murdered. When it rained, supposedly the dagger would bleed, is the story, Leigh said. After a cross-country training session near the hills of the graveyard one day, Leigh decided to look for the grave. He found it.