Rocking chairs that rock alone, lingering spirits and an ordinary piano playing with no player will be among the topics of discussion Saturday at the Calumet Inn.
Chad Lewis, paranormal researcher and author of the “Minnesota Road Guide to Haunted Locations,” will make a presentation about his adventures hunting the unexplained and listen to stories of the unusual from Pipestone residents. Lewis picked the perfect location as the Calumet Inn has more than its share of ghostly lore.
“There have been some stories circulating around there for a long time,” Lewis said.
“One of our housekeepers says that if you go downstairs in the laundry room after 11 p.m., you can hear a little girl crying,” said Jennifer Adolph, pub manager at the Calumet.
Adolph herself has experienced a seemingly possessed calculator. The calculator she uses at the front desk on occasion will begin to run all by itself. On one occasion, Adolph unplugged the calculator and it continued to run, with no batteries.
“I got a little creeped out and put it in a drawer in the office,” she said.
Across the street at the Pipestone County Museum, Susan Hoskins, executive director of the museum, said she’s heard stories of a man in a tweed suit that could be seen in the mirror behind the front desk of the Calumet, but when the desk clerk turned, there was no one there.
The museum also has its own history of ghostly encounters.
“One of my favorite places is the Pipestone Museum,” Lewis said.
In his book he recounts the story of a spirit that has repeatedly moved a pair of boots off a museum display to the floor. The boots, as the story goes, were made in a concentration camp during WWII and for many years they had been on display next to a Nazi uniform. Apparently, Lewis said, the spirit objected to the boots being placed so close to the uniform.
Hoskins said the boots are no longer kept near the uniform.
“I’ve got my eye on those boots, but they haven’t moved,” she said.
That’s not to say that she hasn’t experienced anything unexplained at the museum, or what she called, “creepy.”
She was upstairs working in the collections office when she heard someone calling her name from downstairs. She ignored it at first thinking that whoever it was would come upstairs to find her. Within 15 minutes she heard the voice calling her name two more times, but no one ever came upstairs. She went downstairs and asked the woman working there if she or anyone else had called to her. The woman said she hadn’t and that no one else had been in the museum during that time.
“For a while I was afraid to go upstairs,” Hoskins said.
It’s stories like these that drew Lewis to the paranormal. He grew up in Wisconsin near an area where there were frequent UFO reports. Lewis, who holds a Master’s of Science degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin – Stout, began investigating the unexplained to learn about the people who had such experiences.
“I became interested in why some people believe in the paranormal and some do not,” he said.
After a while he became so fascinated by the experiences that seemingly sane and level-headed people shared with him that he shifted his focus to investigating not the people, but the experiences and the stories.
His investigations have taken him to Transylvania to hunt vampires, to Puerto Rico to chase chupacabras, to Ireland to search for the Loch Ness monsters and to Pipestone to search for ghosts in the museum, the Calumet Inn and a private home. After 14 years of travels and adventures, he said he has more questions than answers.
“In the 14 years of doing this, I have yet to experience anything that is 100 percent paranormal,” Lewis said.
That lack of concrete evidence, however, has not deterred him. Instead, he is spurred on to travel to new places and talk to the people who live and work there about their unusual experiences. The stories, he said, live in the people and to understand and investigate the stories to the fullest he must go to the locations and talk to the people first hand.
“You really have to understand the people and the culture to understand the legends,” he said.
The goal of his book and the presentation is to encourage those who believe in the paranormal and those who don’t to go to the locations that he has written about and decide for themselves what is real and what is not.
“Don’t take my word for it,” he said. “I want people to go away from this presentation with an adventure of their own.”
The free presentation including case history, ghostly photos and his own personal experiences begins at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26 in the dining room at the Calumet Inn. Lewis will have copies of his book on hand and will sign autographs for those interested.
