Tony Brueski - Real Ghost Stories: Haunting Encounters Told by Real People

Tony & Jenny Brueski are heard every day around the world in thousands of homes, cars, and offices on their incredibly popular podcast Real Ghost Stories Online. Their show is an exciting and often chilling mix of real ghost stories as recounted by the people who experienced them. Its not medical advice, but their show is often referred to as group therapy for the paranormally affected, as thousands find comfort in the community of like-minded individuals that have discovered their show. Real Ghost Stories Online can be downloaded through iTunes, YouTube, and almost any podcast download program. Tony & Jenny live in the Ozark Mountains with their two girls and no ghosts, just the stories sent in to them every day.

Growing up, one of the most common phrases you heard was very likely dont talk to strangers. We always felt the concept of dont listen to strangers was just as important.

Over the years, many of our listeners have come know our backgrounds and quirks. If youre new to our brand of paranormal discussion, welcome! We thought it would be good to stop being strangers. Well start off by giving you a little backstory on who we are and where we come from to help you better understand our voices and opinions on the unexplained topics we are about to get into. If you already know us from the podcast, here is a chance to learn a little more about the strange voices that travel with you every day as you listen.

In some of my first childhood memories, I am often doing one of two things, and at times combining the two: playing radio station or being a ghostbuster. I was an only child, so that left plenty of time for my mind to wander and allowed me to develop into a very creative and curious individual. I still have a cassette tape that my aunt recorded on one of those old black rectangular tape decks of me at the age of two playing Ghostbuster Radio.

I guess that could be considered the earliest incarnation of the show.

To say that I am doing what I love, or what I was meant to do, may be a bit of an understatement. The interest in the topic of ghosts and my passion for broadcasting seemed to have started from the moment I could speak. As for why these are deeply ingrained interests, Im not sure, as many of the life events that kept me interested in the topic occurred many years after I made my initial broadcasts to the family pets.

In this chapter, Im going to take you back to some of the paranormal encounters that made me the person you hear today, and maybe answer some of your questions about the random thoughts that come out of my mouth on our podcast. I must forewarn you, however: Unlike on the podcast, there will not be any quiche recipes in this chapter. If you came here searching for the most kick-ass egg-in-a-pie-crust recipe ever, this would be a letdown. Now that we have that out of the way, lets begin.

I grew up in the medium-sized town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, located about evenly between Milwaukee and Green Bay. It was a great environment for exploring. We sat on one of the largest inland lakes in the country, had miles of hiking and walking trails, and even had a storied history of mob legends and historical figures wandering through our city.

I loved walking around the downtown area, which was dotted sporadically with some antiquated stores. When I was a child, my mom would push me in the stroller past the now-vacant shops she once frequented and tell me stories of their former retail lives. I would peer into those windows wondering what once was, enthralled by the peeling paint and decaying walls visible through the glass. I was fortunate enough to witness firsthand a few holdouts before time would claim them, as well.

There also stands a historic hotel building in this downtown that I would wander through as a teenager. Its allegedly home to a resident ghost named Walter, who was the creator of the building around the turn of the century. Walter apparently saw fit to reverse his name and give it to the property, adding to the buildings spooky factor: Retlaw.

There was certainly a creepy undertone to many of the places my mother would take me to visit and explore, and I loved every minute of it. They are some of my fondest memories, and I wouldnt change them for anything. One of my other favorite places to visit with my mother was called Rienzi Cemetery, a sprawling graveyard lined with oak, hickory, and black walnut trees. To get there, we would never take the main road; instead, we would follow a shortcut. It was a journey that started at the edge of the woods in my backyard and involved scaling a large rock ledge in the middle of a forest, then wandering through several valleys lined with dead grapevines, trees that had been uprooted by storms, fallen branches, dead leaves, and a desolate creek. Eventually, we would reach the back of the cemetery and find ourselves in one of the eeriest settings a person could put themselves in.

Id find myself peering into a hundred-plus-year-old cemetery filled with massive trees, dilapidated gravestones, and not a single living human in sight. From there, I would wander into the graveyard to explore, read the dates on the headstones, and soak in the creepy atmosphere for every second that I was there. As an excuse to stay in the cemetery longer, we would collect fallen hickory nuts from the trees to take home for later cracking. We would often wrap up our walks around dusk, just in time for me to return to my basement studio, which consisted of a WTCX bumper sticker and a bulky boom box. Here I would talk about my experiences while playing Todays Hits and Yesterdays Favorites for my number-one listener, my cat Murphy.

Eventually, I grew out of playing radio station, and at the age of fourteen, I found myself employed by the very same radio station I had pretended to be on for the previous eleven years of my life. I got the job after being a guest DJ for an hour during a station promotion. The station general manager, Terry Davis, called, asking, Who is this kid?! and hired me on the spot. I would spend the next five years practically living at the station, doing every job I possibly could while soaking up the creepiness of downtown. There were many moments during this time span where I could have easily been canned from my radio job for pulling some adolescent on-air stunt, but thanks to the patience and understanding of my bosses Todd Dehring and Gregg Owens, I was allowed to continue and make my passion into my lifelong career.

The radio studio had a large storefront window that overlooked Main Street. Thats where we would do our shows, and where we were able to view the vibrant nightlife of one of the drunkest cities in the United States. It was also the location where I first hosted a real, on-air ghost show. Every Halloween, I would take calls and discuss local legends and haunts. This would eventually lead me to do a little ghost exploring of my own. The best place to start just happened to be in the basement of the radio station itself.

Housed in what had been a carriage stop, tavern, and countless other businesses over the last hundred years, the radio station had quite a history and a few ghosts of its own. From the basement, one could enter what had once been a tunnel that led to other locations in the area. Now bricked off, you were very limited as to the depths you could explore. I had always been told it was part of the Underground Railroad, but some historians now argue that it may have been part of a bootlegging tunnel during prohibition. Either way, it held energy, as did the rest of the building.