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Features Archive:

2009 Archive:
Haunted Cape Encounters - Ghost Chronicles
December 30, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ouija/Talking Boards with Robert Murch By 30 Odd Minutes
December 17, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Psychic Vampires with Michelle Belanger By 30 Odd Minutes
December 10, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Rosemary Ellen Guiley - Ghost Chronicles
December 9, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Astral Projection with Robert Bruce By 30 Odd Minutes
December 4, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Four Predictions for the USA in 2010 by Lee Prosser
December 3, 2009

Column - regular feature

Secrets of the Holy Lance - Ghost Chronicles
December 2, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Investigating the Gettysburg Engine House - Ghost Chronicles
November 18, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Hindu Perspective on the Paranormal by Deonna Kelli Sayed
November 17, 2009


Animal Spirits with Melissa Sehgal By 30 Odd Minutes
November 12, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

There's Something About Resurrection Mary by Ray Johnson
November 12, 2009


Psychic Recommendations By Tiffany Johnson
November 2, 2009

Column - regular feature

Best of Paranormal Journeys By 30 Odd Minutes
October 27, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Anniversary Show - Ghost Chronicles
October 27, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

What are Ghosts? by Rob Conover and Brad Conover
October 26, 2009


Ghostvillage.com - 10 Year Anniversary By Lee Prosser
October 23, 2009

Column - regular feature

Investigating Alcatraz By Mike Brody
October 14, 2009

Column - regular feature

Life, Death, and the Magicians - Ghost Chronicles
October 14, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Conspiracies with Dean Haglund By 30 Odd Minutes
October 8, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Investigating Anawan Rock - Ghost Chronicles
October 7, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Reincarnation By Tiffany Johnson
October 6, 2009

Column - regular feature

Tarot with Scotty Roberts By 30 Odd Minutes
October 1, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Faeries with Rosemary Ellen Guiley By 30 Odd Minutes
September 24, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Crop Circles with Freddy Silva By 30 Odd Minutes
September 17, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Myrna the Death Doll - Ghost Chronicles
September 16, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Skinwalker Ranch and April Slaughter By Mike Brody
September 15, 2009

Column - regular feature

A Psychic Rant By Tiffany Johnson
September 8, 2009

Column - regular feature

Parapsychology with Loyd Auerbach By 30 Odd Minutes
September 3, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Doppelgnger By Lee Prosser
September 3, 2009

Column - regular feature

Fort Delaware - Ghost Chronicles
September 2, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Derby Gaol with Richard Felix By 30 Odd Minutes
August 27, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

When Live TV Goes Wrong By 30 Odd Minutes
August 20, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Demons and Exorcism By 30 Odd Minutes
August 13, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Pet Whisperer - Ghost Chronicles
August 12, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Interdimensional Beings By Lee Prosser
August 12, 2009

Column - regular feature

UFOs and National Security By 30 Odd Minutes
August 6, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Ghosts, War, and the Paranormal - Ghost Chronicles
August 5, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Eveleth's Haunted Recreation Building By Mike Brody
August 4, 2009

Column - regular feature

2012 By Tiffany Johnson
August 3, 2009

Column - regular feature

Childhood Nightmare or Past Life Memory? By Andrea Leininger
July 30, 2009


Paranormal Comedy By 30 Odd Minutes
July 23, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery - Ghost Chronicles
July 22, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Developing Your Psychic Ability By 30 Odd Minutes
July 9, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Accuracy in Psychic Readings By Tiffany Johnson
July 9, 2009

Column - regular feature

Ghosts and Hauntings - Ghost Chronicles
July 8, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

10 Things Guaranteed to Ruin Your Paranormal Investigation By Beth Brown
July 7, 2009


The Ghost of Tim Hardin By Lee Prosser
July 3, 2009

Column - regular feature

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) By 30 Odd Minutes
June 25, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Investigating the Legend of Dudley Road - Ghost Chronicles
June 24, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Fearing Tavern By Mike Brody
June 22, 2009

Column - regular feature

Ohio Grassman By 30 Odd Minutes
June 18, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Night Terrors By Lee Prosser
June 8, 2009

Column - regular feature

Vampires By 30 Odd Minutes
June 5, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Those Who Have Crossed Over By Tiffany Johnson
June 1, 2009

Column - regular feature

Thayer's Historic Bed & Breakfast By Mike Brody
May 21, 2009

Column - regular feature

Your Worst Nightmare By 30 Odd Minutes
May 14, 2009

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

A Demonologist the Title Doesn't Make by Adam Christian Blai
May 8, 2009


My Clientele By Tiffany Johnson
May 4, 2009

Column - regular feature

The Ghost Huntress, Marley Gibson - Ghost Chronicles
April 29, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Ghosts of Atlantis - Ghost Chronicles
April 22, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghosts and Talking Rocks - Ghost Chronicles
April 15, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

A Journey Into the Future? by Richard Senate By Richard Senate
April 9, 2009


Investigating Turtle Mound - Ghost Chronicles
April 8, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Spring Evolution By Tiffany Johnson
April 3, 2009

Column - regular feature

Spiritual Healer, Kelle Eli - Ghost Chronicles
March 25, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Most Haunted's Richard Felix - Ghost Chronicles
March 18, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Return of the Haunted Dibbuk Box - Ghost Chronicles
March 11, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Talismans By Lee Prosser
March 6, 2009

Column - regular feature

A Haunting at the Inn on Washington Square - Ghost Chronicles
March 4, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Manifestation By Tiffany Johnson
March 2, 2009

Column - regular feature

Jane Doherty Investigates - Ghost Chronicles
February 25, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Retrocognition at Mission La Purisima Concepcion By Richard Senate
February 18, 2009


Interview with Brian "The Monk" - Ghost Chronicles
February 18, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

In Search of Edgar Allan Poe Part 2 - Ghost Chronicles
February 11, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Pacific Northwest Ghosts By Lee Prosser
February 9, 2009

Column - regular feature

In Search of Edgar Allan Poe Part 1 - Ghost Chronicles
February 4, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Decompression By Tiffany Johnson
February 1, 2009

Column - regular feature

David Wells - Ghost Chronicles
January 28, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Live at the Circles of Wisdom - Ghost Chronicles
January 21, 2009

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Painting By Maurice DesJardins
January 19, 2009


Missouri Hauntings By Lee Prosser
January 12, 2009

Column - regular feature

A Night on the
Queen Mary By Richard Senate
January 6, 2009


How Do You Know You're Psychic? By Tiffany Johnson
January 1, 2009

Column - regular feature



August 4, 2009 Confessions of a Novice Ghost Investigator is Mike Brody's monthly humor column on the paranormal.

Eveleth's Haunted Recreation Building
By Mike Brody

Recreation Building Recreation Building
I know it's clich to say that a haunted building is straight out of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but just look at the Recreation Building in the tiny northern Minnesota town of Eveleth. Can't you see the little girls skipping rope on the sidewalk singing "1-2 Freddy's coming for you...?" Well, try going inside! Except for a jovial and superbly bearded caretaker named Greg, the whole place is abandoned. The walls and floor are chipped, everything creeks like somebody's playing a Halloween sounds CD, and there's old cars and machinery everywhere. And how's this for ominous: the toilets don't work. All it needs is a stripe-shirted serial killing monster and a cheesy 80's soundtrack to be complete.
Recreation Building Recreation Building
Recreation Building
First I should give you a little history on myself. I have been afraid of sharks, aliens, and ghosts my entire life. I admit it's not the most rational laundry list of fears. For starters I live in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, which is not exactly a hotbed for shark activity. But in my crazy mind that's 10,000 chances for the very first DNA mutated Lake-Shark to evolve and bite my leg off. The odds of running into an extraterrestrial are equally as slim, yet when nighttime hits, I'm convinced that a whole fleet of those bobble-headed sons-of-bitches are outside my window waiting to take my temperature. And ghosts are invisible. How creepy is that? God help me if the ghost of a space-shark is ever discovered. The real truth is, I'm 31 years old and I'm afraid of the dark. It's not about those three individual fears, it's what lies hidden in the dark corners of the room and my mind. Sharks, aliens, and ghosts represent the unknown and the unseen to me. Strangely enough, I am also fascinated by, and drawn to, what I'm afraid of. One of my biggest dreams is to swim with sharks. I would give anything to go cruising on a UFO even if it was terrifying. And ghosts? Well...

This summer myself and Scotty Roberts from Dead Reckoning were invited to check out the Rec Building by native Minnesotans and paranormal experts Joel Sturgis and Brian Leffler. Their stories of full-bodied apparitions, shadows, orbs seen with the naked eye, and general interactiveness both freaked me out and intrigued me. And then they played me an amazing EVP that Joel caught on the second floor. Brian and Joel swear to me that everybody was finishing up a break outside and were just starting to walk up the stairs when this was recorded. Nobody was in the room yet and the place was dead-silent. In the EVP you can hear the noise of machinery and voices saying "They're coming up here. I'm playing a prank. I'm gonna change the batteries." When they got back up, all the batteries were dead. Check out the EVP here: http://www.hauntingresearch.com/Theyre_Coming_Up_Here_JOEL.mp3

Recreation Building

Recreation Building

As far as the building goes, it was built in 1919 and designed to give locals the opportunity for hockey, curling, and other sports that appeal to pasty white people. Higher-scale folks used other rooms for smoking cigars and having Monopoly Man look-a-like competitions. The building flourished for years until the city erected a new arena across town with the frighteningly Mad Max-esque name of "The Hippodrome." Shortly thereafter, the local minor-league hockey team was re-located to a small town called New York City, where they become known as the New York Rangers. True Story. After that the building changed owners and became a shirt factory. Even better true story: I learned about the shirt factory by email from a local Eveleth historian, who's "R" button must have gotten stuck while typing "shirt", because they typed something else.

This building was my chance to test myself. My goal, before the night was over, was to find the darkest, coldest, most remote and active part of the building and sit there alone for as long as I could. But which room should I pick in a building rife with haunted rooms? There's the aforementioned cigar-room, where women were not allowed. It's said that whenever a female enters this room, the ghosts act up and get uppity. That one wouldn't work, unless I've got some Jamie Lee Curtis genes I'm unaware of. Then there's the "Peekaboo" room, where a mysterious shadow of a head is supposed to peek around the corner. But I hate surprises and I'm not particularly good at Wack-A-Mole, so no dice on that one either. The garage is frequented by a kindly old caretaker named George and another shade, who specifically loves to hang around the old black El Camino that was his when he was alive. I drive a Ford Focus. Enough said. Then there was the basement. Stuffy, dusty, full of equipment, and empty cans of paint remover. And as the story goes, haunted by the most cantankerous old fart this side of Duluth. Jackpot. It was truly the most foreboding room in the building, old people hate me, and since there's no windows, it was PITCH BLACK down there, and nobody would see me pee my pants. I couldn't wait to get started.
The door to the left is the Peekaboo Room Recreation Building
Recreation Building Recreation Building basement
Recreation Building basement Recreation Building basement
Have you ever seen the movie Commando? When 20 minutes of the whole film is dedicated to Arnold Schwarzenegger putting all his weapons on? That's what I felt like this night. I got loaded up with flashlights, EMF detectors, digital audio-recorders, a head-lamp, an Ovilus, and a shack-hack (see my previous article). Brian brought a Ouija Board (which I won't go near). They even set up a motion detector light in the Peekaboo Room (it never went off). And of course, the most important resource on any ghost investigation:

Mt. Dew, Doritos and Reese's Peanut Butter CupsThere were about eight or nine of us in the building, but it was so large of a place that we all split up and didn't even run into each other unless we wanted to. I paired up with a 20-something guy from a local paranormal group. According to him, he had been in an automobile accident, had a near-death experience, and could now see/feel ghosts. I know it's not the most scientifically sound theory, but whenever I'm investigating I like to find a "psychic" person and just follow them around. Interesting things tend to happen and he seemed like an honest enough fellow to me. Incidentally, he also didn't respond to my email request to use his name, so for this story he will be called "Jamiroquai."

Jamiroquai and I started off in the garage. We checked out the El Camino without much success. No readings on the equipment, no psychic feelings. It just seemed like any other El Camino that you'd find on the front lawn in Kentucky. The only thing that stuck out was the wadded up jacket that was still on the passenger seat. It was a bit of a stark reminder that these people who may or may not be ghosts were in fact just that: People. Suddenly, across the garage we heard the distinct sound of plywood scraping across the floor. We paused and listen. We heard it again. And again. We followed the sound until we found the guilty plywood and it moved again right before our eyes. Jamiroquai and I didn't know what to think. Something was moving it and we couldn't explain it. We were inside. There was no wind that we could hear. Just then the (living) caretaker walked by. We told him about the plywood and he said that even though you sometimes can't hear it, the wind makes the windows move, which then moves the plywood that is leaning up against it. "Happens all the time" he said. "I told you about it when you were loading up equipment." Flash-back to an hour before: I'm ferociously stuffing my face with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups while the caretaker's incredibly useful information flies right over my dumb head. Candy - the bane of my existence.

After shamefully asking the caretaker to remind me of any other helpful tips I might have missed, we set off to the cigar room. This was the room that no women were allowed in back in the day. Joel and Scotty were in there using the Ovilus and the shack-hack to communicate with spirits, but to no avail. For the first time in my life, I wished that I had a Bugs Bunny-esque drag outfit to wear. There actually was a woman investigator floating around the building somewhere, but that's kind of a hard sell. "Hey, I know you're a beginner and dudes in real life always cat-call you and harass you. But do you want to be bait for dead ones? It'll be great, they'll get really mad at you and maybe throw a top-hat at you. Let's go!"

The night was off to a slow start, so Jamiroquai and I decided to go to the most infamous place in the building: the basement. I am a big scaredy-cat when I am alone, but if somebody's with me I feel invulnerable. Maybe I think if some crazy toothless melonhead comes running at us I can push the other person toward him and run for the hills? That's bravery, huh? All I know is that the basement was gnarly looking and if anything was going to happen, it was here. So we went to the far corner of the basement and turned off our head-lamps.

"I love the dark," Jamiroquai said. "The shapes you can see in the blackness."

"What shapes?"

"You can't see them? There's about four or five spirits down here with us right now."

I kid you not, the moment he said that, in the adjoining room came a loud and distinctive "Mmmm-hmmmm-mmmmmm." We both heard it immediately. Like a grumble. Like Sling Blade. I don't know what that guy in the other room was, but I bet he liked French-fried taters. We walked into the room and temporarily turned our flashlights back on. That room was a dead-end. No windows. Just a room and some machinery that hasn't worked in years.

After about ten minutes of nothing else happening in that room, we turned our flashlights back off and let the darkness surround us again. We started talking about general paranormal stuff. Experiences we had. His accident. I was rambling on about something that surely wasn't that important when suddenly a yellow flash popped up to the left of me. I know this sounds crazy, but I didn't see it with my eyes. It was in my mind. I know, my straight-jacket is already reserved. And with the light I had the incredible feeling that something just approached me and was about a foot away.

I stopped mid-sentence and said "Whoa, I just got the feeling like something just sidled up to me."

"That's because it did."

I am fully aware that this could just be the imaginations of two people in a dark room that want to have a paranormal experience so badly that we subconsciously made it up. That very well could be the case. But it didn't feel that way at the time. So of course, this can only be chalked up to personal experience, not evidence. But I've been around enough of this stuff now, and seen some pretty nutty things with multiple witnesses to at least know that it had that feel. Anybody who believes they have been near a ghost knows what I'm saying when I refer to that feel. You get that prickly, pins-and-needles sense like electricity. It's the same feeling you get in everyday life when a friend walks up behind you and you turn around because you know they're there.

We stayed down in that room for a long time, and not much else happened after that other than Jamiroquai occasionally saying, "There's one over there." It was still dark out, but getting to be early in the morning, and I still had to drive three hours back to the Twin Cities. As we started to walk back up the stairs, I told Jamiroquai to go on without me. I needed to confront my fear of being alone in the dark.

As I headed back down the stairs, I set my stop-watch to zero. I walked to the far corner of the room where we heard the skulky "Mmmm-hmmm-mmmm,"I hit the timer on my watch, turned off my head-lamp, and sat down. Some time passed. Then I got up and stood in the corner facing the wall like the Blair Witch Project for some reason. Then I ran as fast as I could up the stairs.

I made it one minute and 37 seconds.


(All professional-looking photos by Scotty Roberts. Everything else by Mike Brody. For more information on the Eveleth Recreation Building, check out Brian Leffler's site www.hauntingresearch.com)
Recreation Building basement


Mike Brody is a comedian based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. He's been interested in the paranormal his entire life. He's only found it funny since 2005. You can visit Brody's Web site at: www.mikebrody.com.




2014 Haunted New England Wall Calendar by Jeff Belanger photography by Frank Grace
Check out the 2014 Haunted New England wall calendar by Jeff Belanger and photography by Frank Grace!


Paranormal Conferences and Lectures
Don't miss the following events and lectures:

Jeff Belanger and “The Bridgewater Triangle” at Dedham Community Theatre - April 6, 2014 9:00PM

The Spirits of the Mark Twain House - Hartford, Connecticut - April 12, 2014

Paracon Australia - East Maitland, New South Wales, Australia - May 10-12, 2014