'Haunted' program scares up large crowd

• Lewis

Paranormal researcher and author Chad Lewis, Eau Claire, Wis., stands behind the “haunted piano” Saturday at the Calumet Inn in Pipestone.

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PIPESTONE — It wasn’t the Historic Calumet Inn’s ghostly past that made nearly 100 people leave and relocate to the Pipestone Performing Arts Center.

There was simply no room at the inn for the unexpectedly large turnout at a presentation by Chad Lewis, author of “The Minnesota Road Guide to Haunted Locations.”

“I had no idea people in this town were so interested in ghosts. I guess that says a lot about Pipestone,” quipped Stephanie Hall, a librarian at the Meinders Community Library and an organizer of the event.

Lewis, a paranormal investigator with a master’s degree in applied psychology, has authored several books about the unexplained and unusual, and his “Road Guide” features haunts in southwest Minnesota, including one in Pipestone.

His visit was funded by Legacy Funding through the federal government and was a collaboration between the library and the Pipestone County Historical Society.

“I think the ghosts just don’t bother to show themselves to me because I wouldn’t notice them, anyway,” said Hall, who has worked at the historical society housed in the supposedly haunted museum. “But I’m not discounting it.”

Lewis said he first visited Pipestone about four years ago.

“We made several trips through the area. My research partner and I were both working ‘real jobs,’ if you will, at the time, and we were doing (our research) as kind of a long weekend thing,” said the Wisconsin native. “We’d get as far as we could, then go back.”

Lewis’ presentation took the audience to haunted locales around the state, from the Landmark Center in St. Paul — supposedly haunted by the ghosts of gangsters past — to the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth —haunted by two women who were murdered there — and right back to southwest Minnesota.

His book details the legends behind the Ghost of the Clock Tower in Albert Lea, the Janesville Doll House and the Sanborn Cemetery in Lamberton.

“They believe the spirit world is coming into their world,” Lewis said. “For years locals have whispered about … this cemetery. Balls of light floating in the air that cannot be captured on film. They say you will hear the faint cry of a young woman who was believed to be buried alive.”

Golf aficionados could also check out the Montgomery Golf Course, where players putt around actual gravestones. But of the most interest to locals in the audience were the spooky legends that hit closer to home.

The Pipestone Museum has long been considered haunted. According to the road guide, employees once had problems with a pair of boots in a World War II display that always seemed to jump off the shelf when no one was in the room. It was later discovered the footwear belonged to a victim of the Holocaust. “Apparently there was a restless spirit who didn’t like his boots sitting on the shelf next to the Nazi artifacts,” the book concludes.

Susan Hoskins was working upstairs at the museum when she had her own run-in with the supernatural.

“I thought I heard my name called. And a little while later I heard it again. And it was all coming from the same spot,” she recounted.

Hoskins asked the woman working downstairs if someone had been calling for her and learned no one else had been in the building. Oddest of all, she said, the voice she heard called her “Sue,” a name which she is only called by family members.

The Historic Calumet Inn, too, has frequently been said to be haunted, apparently by a musical ghost.

“The staff will hear a piano and nobody can be found playing the piano.” Lewis said.

As part of a Minnesota Ghost Hunters Society Investigation, video was taken of a rocking chair there that has been said to rock by itself. In the video, a wispy mist appears to float down the middle of the screen.

Many in attendance had their own ghost stories to tell.

One couple traveled from to Pipestone for their anniversary and happened upon the presentation.

“I was born on Halloween, so I’m kind of interested in ghost stories. I think that’s fun,” said Shauna Christiansen of Blooming Prairie, who was celebrating one year of marriage to husband Matt.

Shauna said she’d once seen an apparition in college, while Matt found most interesting the lore behind Forepough’s Restaurant, a St. Paul mansion-turned-eatery believed to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who hanged herself from the chandelier there.

A Pipestone man named David, who didn’t want his last name used, said he chased a spirit out of a Pipestone home while babysitting one evening 13 years ago.

“I think everybody believes to some level,” he said.

Tags: state and region, chad lewis, news, pipestone, haunted, minnesota