Happy Halloween! Let’s talk with the guys who hunt for those things that go bump in the night. Brad Blair and Tim Ellis are part of the UP Paranormal Research Society. The real deal. In this interview they provide us with:
- The inner workings of a real paranormal team
- Paranormal Conventions
- Their favorite goosebump-inducing story
Show Notes:
Book: Yoopernatural Haunts
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Transcript:
Cliff Duvernois: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. And welcome to the show. My name is Cliff DuVernois. Your host today, we’re finally getting an opportunity to show the U.P. some love, but at the same point in time, we’re going to continue our Halloween series. And I have to tell you, I’m really looking forward to chatting with these guys I want to go ahead and introduce you to brad Blair and Tim Ellis. They are the founders of the upper peninsula paranormal research society. And if those names sound familiar that’s because in the previous episode with Dianna Stamplfer, she actually referenced working with them on a couple of investigations.
So anyways, Brad, how are you?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:00:46] I’m doing great. Cliff. How about yourself?
Cliff Duvernois: [00:00:48] I’m doing well. Thank you for asking and Tim, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:00:51] Ah, cliff. I’m doing good. Anytime we get a chance to show our, our upper peninsula, some love and talk ghosts. We’re always in a good mood. So thank you for having us.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:00:59] Yeah, thank you for being on the show today. with regards to, the paranormal society.
OriginsI just kind of want to jump right in here real quick. First, get a little bit of your backstory. So tell me, Tim, where are you? Where are you originally from?
Where did you grow up?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:01:13] I’m right here in Sioux, Saint Marie, Michigan, where, we are still located. grew up here, graduated high school from here, went off and, ran around the Mount Pleasant area for a while. While I got my degree in broadcast. Communications at Central Michigan and, loving it where I grew up, was couldn’t be happier to come back home and, make my, my career here and, and, and love.
And here in Sue, Saint Marie,
Cliff Duvernois: [00:01:34] Nice, Brad, why don’t you tell us a
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:01:36] No worries. I am also from Sue Saint Marie, Michigan, Tim and I, and the third founding member of our group. Steve Laplant all grew up going to elementary school on, through high school together, where Tim went away to college. I stayed here, got a degree at Lake superior state university. And, I just, I I’ve never had a desire to really leave the area.
I was fortunate enough. in high school I took a job. Sweeping sidewalks, washing windows at a, for a company that owned some souvenir stores down by the Soo locks, which is the big tourist attraction in town. And, I never left and it got to the point that they finally brought me into the business.
And, I know now on those stores and, just loving life in the U P.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:02:17] Now with regards to the, the upper peninsula paranormal research society. Was this something that you guys have had an interest in since childhood? Or is it something that you came upon later?
What is your interest? Where does it come from?.
Well, as
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:02:33] Brad had said, cliff, you know, I th I find it very, very fortunate, pretty special thing. When three friends who grew up since meeting each other in third grade and elementary school are together now. A full blown adults. And, we still haven’t outgrown this. we were as kids, we were the ones who at slumber parties would be telling the ghost stories in the basement.
We were the ones running through the cemeteries and looking for the old abandoned houses. And then we all kind of went our own ways for college for a while. And we were fortunate enough to all end up back here in our hometown. And we kind of picked it up from there. We took it now then to the adult level.
you know, at, at, at 20, some years old, you can’t be running through the cemeteries anymore and not worry about getting in trouble, the cops. So we had to take it to the next level, which was to actually turn it into a researching this, this. Subject matter that we loved so much as a kid. And the funny thing is, and we get this asked a lot, w none of us, the three of us who founded the team ever grew up in an actual haunted house.
We never had that, that ghosts that, you know, was in the home with us. We just loved. The subject matter and we just never outgrew it. Yeah. And I think as kids growing up in the U P you have to have a pretty good either, really have to take to the outdoors and get heavily involved in hunting, fishing.
None of us, none of us were that kid. And so you have to have a pretty good imagination just to keep things going, keep entertained. And it was, it was different time. Of course, we grew up in the late seventies through the eighties. And we were on our bikes all the time, riding to the local library and checking out anything on the strange and the unusual be it Bigfoot, UFO, anything in cryptozoology.
And all of us had this favorite topic of ghosts and the supernatural, and we would check out these books over again. And that, that really became the basis. Of this heavy interest that we developed in the paranormal. Yeah. And the funny thing is to cliff, when we decided once we all graduated from college and it was mid nineties at that point, this was years before the onslaught of paranormal television shows would hit scifi channel.
And now every channel on cable TV. So when we started this research group, we didn’t have the, the television shows weren’t out yet. So we were kind of. Following in the footsteps of our, who we grew up reading Hans Holser and ed Moran or Ryan Warren. Yeah. And so we were kind of going back into the books we read as kids to kind of blaze our way through this trail.
And then I remember one day, Brad calling me up on the phone and he’s like, dude, you’re not going to believe it. But I just heard the scifi channel is going to create this TV show. Based on what we’ve been doing. And, and I, we laughed about it because in all honesty, when you’re in the middle of a paranormal investigation hours, upon hours, upon hours, you’re sitting in a dark room and a lot of things nothing’s happening and I’m like, Oh, are they going to make that entertaining?
Here we are. How many years later? And it’s some of the hottest stuff on TV, the magic of editing. Yes.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:05:33] Yeah, the magic of editing. And it seems like for a while there every channel out there was having some parents, like, even like the pet channel they had, like, they had like haunted pet stories where people are talking about ghost of cats rolled around inside of a house. I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:05:49] there’s a market for it.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:05:50] Yeah, there’s a market for it. Cause I think that show’s still on TV and not, not that I watch it. Not that I watch it deny that I denied that I can’t prove it. so when did you guys like decide to like actually formalize this, like, Hey, we’re going to come together as a group. When did you guys decide to do this?
And was there, was there just some kind of event where you’re like, you know what, we need to make this official.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:06:10] There was, yeah, it really did kind of play out that way. again, after we got back from college, we kind of picked up where we left off as, as high schoolers. but I went to school for broadcast and communications. So I work in radio here in Sue, Saint Marie, and I wanted to bring a. Live investigation to the radio station that where we were, the radio station would be there, live on location with, you know, but we needed a team.
So we started researching and again, remember this is dial up internet, you know, and we’re, we’re, we’re scouring the internet to try to find a team to affiliate ourselves with. Right. We weren’t even looking at. You know, starting our own breakout group at the time, we just, we were three guys guys at the time that knew that that had a solid background.
In paranormal investigating what it, what it was in that day. Right? So we, we, we were looking and the closest we could find was a group out of Toronto. And of course in Sue Saint Marie we’re right across the river from Sue Saint Marie Ontario. So they were called the Ontario ghost and hunting research society.
We reached out to them and we, we created the relationship. And even though it was awesome here by ourselves and Suzanne Marie, we were affiliated with them to start our first ever. investigation, which was on the night of October 30th. And I think that one was 1999, I believe so. Yeah. And so that was our first ever investigation, which was part of the radio show, which we’re still doing today every night, of October 30th, we still go live with the radio station.
And, so that’s where it all started for us. We, we. Took what we loved. We wanted to get a little more serious into it. We started with the Ontario ghosts and hunting research society. And then about a year into that, that’s when, we had kind of formed our own team here of close friends. They were still everyone on the team is close friends.
And that’s when we kind of started, I remember sitting around my kitchen and we were discussing it and we’re like, well, you know what, why don’t we kind of break off and just do our own thing? And that’s when it happened. Jim says we were part of the Ontario ghost and hunting research society. We were using that for a name.
To put something out there that had a website that seemed like we were affiliated with an official organization. We’d never actually met anybody from that group. No. Other than a few emails and them giving us their blessing to be a, to, to put their name out there. Brad’s absolutely right. We just needed something to hang our coat on for awhile while we got our feet wet doing it at this level.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:08:36] Sure. Now, wait, now when you formed this, when you formed this society and you’re like, okay, it’s official now. We’ve we’ve, we’ve got our name logo, whatever. Now all sudden it’s, time to go out and investigate. So for investigating, is it just. Is it just you picking like abandoned buildings of any hospitals abandoned lighthouses we talked about before.
Do people reach out to you and say, man, I there’s some weird stuff going on inside of my house. Could you guys just come over here and check it out? I mean, what does, what does that all entail?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:09:06] Yeah, that’s closer to it. I mean, first, once the team gets together, you’ve got to get your black tee shirts coordinate. So that’s, you know, that’s how every team starts. but no, we’ve never done a lot in the way of soliciting as far as, and I know some teams do and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we had said, Tim said at the start, there weren’t other teams anywhere in the area.
So when we put our name out there and that we were doing this, we started getting people, calling us and saying, Hey, you know, this was happening in my house. This door keeps opening every night at this time. we hear footsteps. Can you guys come in and check it out? And yeah, some of the bigger ones, some of the lighthouse as we’ve done before and some larger locations that.
Other people had sent us stories on and said, Hey, you guys really need to check this place out. They’ve got super creepy haunting legends around it and stories and people at work there. See this ghost every night in this room and you guys should get in there. Some of those cases back then we would reach out and solicit.
And as time went on, we found that, we, we established a pretty solid reputation and it got to the point that people around the state. Started reaching out to us more and more to the point where we really, you know, everybody on the team has a real job, a career, a family. We didn’t have the time to just hop in a van, take off and drive four hours, you know, conduct an all night investigation and come back.
So, you know, it got to the point we kind of started to pick and choose. And then when the, the television boom happened, And as we mentioned the shows on every cable network, the, the taps team who was the original team from ghost hunters on scifi network, which was a show that started at all, they found they were so inundated with cases that.
They started up what they called the taps family. And that was a, a kind of a network where they would take teams in different areas. And they did thorough background checks. You know, they needed letters from upstanding people in the area and the community. They wanted to know that you were a
Cliff Duvernois: [00:11:10] You guys were legitimate. Yes.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:11:12] Yeah, yeah. That it wasn’t a bunch of a bunch of kids running around in abandoned buildings. So we, we ended up being the Michigan team for the taps family. So then we started getting some of their cases fed in and eventually. There was a team. It seemed in every town, every city, because the genre got so big from reality television that at some point we, we started farming out some of the investigations to other teams that we knew and trusted that we work with throughout the years.
So, yeah, it’s been kind of a wild ride, but I guess to answer your question, we, we wait for people normally to come to us. We don’t go out soliciting cases at this point.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:11:50] Right. Well, I can tell you that, when I was living in California, I am convinced that the house I had was actually haunted, but I dare not reach out to a paranormal group. Cause like I wanted was actual evidence that the house was haunted. Cause I don’t think I could have slept in there. So.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:12:06] There’s those people who don’t want to know. And then there’s the people who want to know because they love being able to tell the story of, of having a ghost in their house. And God forbid, you go in and explain a way what’s going on if it’s not paranormal, but because there, there are people with that take away my ghost mentality that are not going to believe anything.
You tell them outside of. Yes. Your house is haunted.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:12:30] Yeah, and I absolutely agree with that. And just to kind of share a little bit about my background here. So I come from an engineering background and I actually have a group of friends out there that will actually say. Man cliff, I can’t believe that you believe in this mumbo jumbo. Well, cause you’re an engineer, you’re a man of science and I always tell them, I’m like man science at the beginning of understanding, not the ending of it.
And so when something weird is happening in my I house, my first thought is not, Oh my God. It’s okay. Right. I’m looking for, you know, that I forget the lock that window, or, you know, as a TV on or something I’m always looking for. You know, that, that rational explanation, it’s just that when really weird stuff happens, which has happened at w which did happen in my house, really weird stuff happens.
That’s what I shake my head. And I I’m just like, man, there’s just something that I do not understand that is going on in this house. And I, I will admit that I don’t know everything about everything. So for me to say that this world doesn’t exist would be pure here with hubris on my part, but at the same point in time, it’s not my default position.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:13:29] Right, right. Fair enough. You know, but you know, kudos to you cliff for keeping that open mind. And if more people did at least keep an open mind to the possibility, I think we would find advancements in this field much more quicker than, than it seems like we’re always. Fighting that uphill battle to get recognition and, or get the credence that th that the study of this field does deserve.
It’s still even with the popularity of TV shows, it’s still kind of looked at what that raised eyebrow in some circles.
Ghost Story
Cliff Duvernois: [00:13:59] Yeah. Speaking of raised eyebrows, I want to, I kind of want to, I want to delve into this. I would really love to, to hear a story about perhaps when you guys were doing an investigation or something that just made every hair on the back of your neck, just stand straight up. I mean, just something that was that just really just completely creeped you out.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:14:21] Yeah, easy. Yeah. It’s our go to every time we’re asked this quite often.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:14:26] are you, are you holding a flashlight now underneath your face? As you’re telling me the story?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:14:30] Yes, that’s right. It was a stormy night. you know, but we are asked quite a bit. Have you guys ever been so scared that you wanted to stop doing what you’re doing? And the answer is no, but we did have one incident that truly for me anyways, had me questioning why the hell we do what we do. Do, and it was, it was, it was a fall night we were in, so the town is called Gulliver, Michigan.
It’s a old fishing town on the belly of the UPC. It’s right on the tip of Lake Michigan. And it’s the home of situa point lighthouse. And that has quickly become one of our favorite places probably are down solid. If, if we picked our top 10, this would be number one. And number one, we call it our Disney world.
Every time we’ve gone there. And we’ve gotten to know the historical society who runs it, we’ve gotten to know them very, very well. We’ve run fundraisers for them. We’ve just got a great relationship with them. So they’ve asked us back a number of times we’ve gone back a number of times on our own, because this is one of those places that every time we walk away from.
We’re left, scratching our heads with a few things that have happened. We’re never leaving that place saying, wow, that was a quiet night. It’s an amazing place. so the, the, the main ghost of situa point lighthouse is, captain Joseph Willie towns. And he was one of the, the light housekeepers there.
And he did die in that home. his body was lay and wake in that home. And so he is said to be the main haunt of it, but there are said to be multiple haunts, a couple of them being female spirits as well. So this was our second or third return to situa. And one of the stories is that captain Townsend loved to smoke cigars, but his wife would never let them smoke them in the house.
So he always had to go out on the porch. Well, now you smell very strong cigar pungent, cigar smells in the house these days. But what we, we did was we got there, we set our gear up. We hung out with our friends, from the historical society for a while. Then they left, gave us the place to ourselves for the night.
We said, all right, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to lock the house down. We’re just going to let our cameras and audio recorders do their thing with no one in the house. We’re all going to go aside in the, in the, in the driveway for awhile. And what we did was we all brought cigars to cheer captain Townsend.
So we get out there. We all liked our cigars. And, and we say captain towns, and thank you for allowing longest to come back. And then we sat and choke for a while because none of us were smokers psych in and of itself to behold. Yeah. It looked like a scene out of school where you’re behind the, the building trying to smoke that first cigarette.
But yeah, so w you know, but we’re, we’re talking to him, we’re, we’re, we’re thanking him for allowing us to come back and we’re hoping for a great night and, and we’re going to be here for awhile. And then we’re all kind of sitting there talking and, But I start focusing on the windows that are facing us.
There’s four big windows facing us. They all kind of are part of a different rooms, the one furthest of, so if we’re looking at it, the one furthest to our right is a part of the worker’s kitchen. And the two in the middle are part of the formal dining room. And then the one to the left is the family, which would have been the family kitchen.
And I’m looking at the one furthest to the right, the worker’s kitchen. And I see, all of a sudden, I see this shadow, on the inside, this, this dark shadow move across the, the curtain door open and it moves across the window and I’m sitting there watching it. And I didn’t realize that another member of ours, Matt BARR was behind and he saw it too.
He goes, did you just see that? And I said, yeah, you saw it. He says, yeah. I said, all right, I’m not crazy. So it’s heading towards the formal dining room. So we immediately look. At, or the rest of the group you guys realize we were talking about there’s something there, like what just happened? And we explained to him what we saw.
So everyone else starts focusing on the formal dining room window. Those windows, the curtains are closed. And as eight of us, eight sets of eyes are sitting here staring at the one window. The curtain pulls back as though someone is on the inside. Looking out to see who’s out there making all the noise.
Why are you on my property? And it stays open for like seconds. So it wasn’t just like something went by and blew it. It seemed like 10 minutes. It felt like forever. It was probably 10 seconds. Yeah. Right. But yeah. And it stays open and then all of us just watch it slowly close. And a few seconds of us being stunned.
And did you see that? What the hell happened? Exactly. They’re jumping around like kids on Christmas morning and then it hits us this just like, well, okay, now we gotta do our job. Something just happened. We got to get in that house. So myself and Steve will plot where the first two to get around the other side and get up to the front door.
And that’s that, that’s that moment I was just talking about before we started the story, as I’m reaching for the door handle, not knowing what we’re going to be greeted with and what we just witnessed. That is the one time in my head. I, and I turned and I look at Steve and I’m like, why the hell do we do ourselves?
Because I didn’t know what you know. So we opened the door. Expecting to see something. And we didn’t, but what we got blasted in the face with was this most strongest pungent smell of lilac, but not real. I like that cheap lie lock. Like your grandmother would wear the perfume.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:19:36] Yeah. Like the funeral home
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:19:37] Yeah. And it blasted us in the face.
It was so strong. And, you know, so that moment, that was one of those moments where. You know, we can go on 20 cases and not experience a thing. And then you have a moment like that and it just recharges your battery. And that was many years ago for us. And we still talk about it like it was yesterday and it’s moments like that, that, like Tim said, you, you go on case after case and nothing happens, you know, that’s that’s the norm is.
Nothing happens. And then when you have that event, it reaffirms your belief system, your, your whole reason to add her for being into this field. And that, that was the big one. That was the big one for the team, for the team together to all see this happen and then say, well, good luck to him. And Steve, let us know.
What’s his name? You know, and through the years we’ve all had our own personal experiences. One or two of us may have experienced something we’ve all caught, you know, voices and shadows on video and audio. But for that moment, for the entire team to experience it together, that’s first of all, it’s pretty unique, pretty special that we all got to witness that.
But when you can, when you have eight different people who can say yes, this happened, you know, those are powerful moments.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:20:47] Yeah in indeed. It is. And I have to ask the question, cause you said you put up, you put up cameras inside of, of the house and, and recording equipment and stuff. Did you actually capture the curtain being pulled back?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:21:01] Nope, not a thing. Well, so with that being said, though, we didn’t have a camera on the actual window, but we did have a camera shooting through that formal dining room. So we were hoping we were at least going to see something on camera coming through the dining room and to our dis may cause what we witnessed, we saw nothing show up on the actual camera.
Yeah. Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:21:22] Yeah, because you can, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, with the equipment that you have, you gotta be very strategic of where you put it and unfortunately you can’t cover every square inch of the building, but I was just thinking that, man, that’d be, I got goosebumps when you were just telling me the story.
So just to be able to see the video of that, I’d probably just like freak out, go
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:21:38] You know, it would be interesting too, because you know, we’ve been doing this for over 20 years now and the cameras we had back on that investigation compared to the cameras we have today, I would love for our cameras today to try to capture that because w w you know, We’re older. Now we have better careers.
We’ve got a lot more money put into our gear. back then we were, you know, we were scraping together what we could to make it work. And, so it would have been interesting to see if the cameras we had today Pitt were able to pick up any type of, fluctuation. Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:22:06] Yeah, with all that night vision and infrared and everything else I got going on. So the, you know, the technology behind, chasing ghost, has really evolved. and with that being said, I want to state for the record that the spirit box absolutely creeps me out. I hate it. I can’t stand it.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:22:22] You know, and that’s the weird thing, Brad and I talk about this all the time. The spirit box is one of the most controversial pieces in the field, but my God, if we had some amazing responses with it. Yeah, yeah.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:22:34] know, that’s why it scares the daylights out of me.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:22:36] Yeah. Basically a broken radio you’re you’re just taking transmission.
You’re taking signals. And it keeps going back and forth, back and forth. And for some reason, ah, on the odd occasion, You will get a direct answer to a question you ask or you’ll get a direct statement coming through that correlates with the part of the investigation you’re doing. Right. And it’s, it’s pretty bizarre.
And that is one thing that does make the hair on the back of my neck. Stand up when you get something coming across there and it’s being scanned so quickly that you, you it’s happening so fast. You, you shouldn’t be picking up full words from the actual. Scan. So when you do get forward or on those occasions, when you get two or three words that come through that, like Brad said that the hair stands up because it’s fast as that things go, it shouldn’t be happening unless it’s something other than what’s being scanned.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:23:31] Yeah. And what creeps me out is because I’ve heard the spirit box on a number of these ghost hunting shows and what creeps me out is those words that come out of the spirit box. They are all typically like either male or female. Or this is, I got goosebumps just thinking about it, but either like, like demonic, like some kind of a growl or something coming through that thing.
And that’s just, man, that just keeps you awake for like hours after I hear
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:23:57] It does. and along those lines too, and I, Brad, you know, he’ll, he knows what I’m going to say here. When you get, sometimes when we’ve gotten these through the years in an EVP session, too, you pick up, what’s almost a digital sound almost, The tinny tinny. And to me, for whatever reason, those creep me out than say a growl or something.
And I don’t know why, but those tinny responses that it almost doesn’t sound human or is it just it’s, it’s exerting so much energy to try to even communicate whatever it is. It’s just, those ones creep me out the most.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:24:32] Yes, definitely. Definitely. I do want to spend some time and talk about. Michigan’s para tourism industry. This is, this is like a whole world. I just never even, I’ve never even knew existed. and part of that is you guys founded the Michigan paranormal, convention. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:24:52] Yeah. Well back back before who said, when we were trying to learn more and more in the TV shows had just kind of started up. And Tim and I in particular, did a lot of travel to different smaller conferences, places where people that were more or less legends in the field to us. Anyway, I would be speaking at.
And we would travel all over wherever these occurred because they weren’t a regular thing at the time. They’re not really now either, but they’re, they’re a little more, there’s more of them out there, but, we were coming back from a trip to Florida one year and we’re on the plane. We’re like, man, that was so cool.
And they had some of the bigger names and we got to meet and sit and talk and have beers with these people and, and just fade trade notes. And we, God, do you think something like this would work in Michigan? And we got going back and forth on the company Sept of it. And it kind of went, yeah, John for, we probably went back and forth for about a month, two months and we said, well, If we pitch it to the local casino, Kuwait and casino here in the SU, maybe they would be interested in hosting this.
And as it happened, the head of their entertainment department at the time was a fan of the paranormal and was also looking for alternative forms of entertainment to start bringing in. So, we, we started forming our relationship with them at the time and it’s, God, that’s been 12 years now. 12 years.
Yeah, probably 13. Yeah. When we first started putting it in motion. and, and we’re pretty fortunate to have the, Quentin casino, the hotel and convention center we have here because it’s a really unique place for a town, our size. It’s got a great amphitheater in it. It’s got a. Nice hotel has got multiple bars, couple restaurants.
And of course all the gaming, if you’re into the casino part of it. So we’re able to bringing this event to one location, all the presenters and all the authors and all the TV star stay there. A lot of the fans will book their rooms there so they can, I can be around them all weekend long. So, yeah, and as Brad said that the timing it was perfect to come and they wanted something different.
we wanted to try this. And we had already made a few connections from the events we were going to. So we saw Brad and I sat down and we created that list for that first ever one. We did, it was a couple of presenters on Friday night and then all day Saturday, This year, if COBIT hadn’t happened, we would have celebrated our 11th anniversary, but we’ve had to push that to 20, 21 now, but now we are up to, well, by the time we get to next year, it’s probably going to be almost all day Thursday.
It’s getting there all day, Thursday. It is all day, Friday, and all day Saturday, and it’s grown to, the largest, Paranormal gathering conference of its type in the Midwest. So we’re pretty proud and still kind of shocked when we sit back and look at it that we were able to, to, to create this a pretty cool event that is become very special to a lot of people.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:27:40] And when, when you have one of these conventions, just ballpark it, how many people usually usually come through the convention?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:27:48] Depending on the year, anywhere from 1200 to 1500, I suspect next year with having to postpone and with everything being postponed that, you know, God willing things are back on track that by next August, it’s planned for the end of August, that we will likely have the biggest crowd, I think ever because.
When we announced the postponement, I was very much shocked that there were few people who actually wanted a refund. Most people held their tickets. So we we’ve already got a pretty good base of attendees and a year to push it yet. So it’s, we, we don’t like to book much over 1500 fact. That’s kind of where the casino really wants us to fall in at right.
Well, we we’ve gone a little bit over that, but we, yeah, we try and keep it around that we like to keep it to the point that people get tired I’m with their favorite television stars and their favorite authors. And it’s, it’s not overly crowded, like one of the big San Diego Comicon or dragon Connor or these huge shows.
It’s a little more homey. It’s a, you know, grab a drink, come and sit at the table with us. And, let’s, let’s straight some stories like that. It’s so open and relaxed that way. Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:29:01] Nice. That sounds
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:29:02] we’ve already, we’ve already got most of, because we folded over this year into 21. So most of the lineup is booked at this time where we’re still fooling around with a couple of the presentation spots, but you can, you can check everything out at dot com is the website and Michigan paranormal convention on Facebook and Twitter.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:29:22] Nice. Speaking of stories, cause I know you guys probably have a good collection of them. You were telling me before I hit the record button that you have a book that’s coming out.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:29:33] We do. This’ll be our second one. That’s coming out. Our first book you’ve read natural haunts came out last summer. We’ve got what? 10, 10 or 11 of our cases. Yeah, it’s, it’s a tri authored book by myself, Brad and as Brad had mentioned our third founding members, Steve Laplant, we sat down, went through 20 years of our files.
It was kind of fun to go back and read up on some of the files we hadn’t done in years. And we went through and picked out our favorites and, compiled a book that we were approached to do this, from visionary living publication. And, we, we had always talked about it. We just didn’t know. How to start it or, or how to publish it.
And visionary publishing came to us and said, Hey, do you guys ever thought of doing this? And it was, again, timing was perfect and which has happened a lot in this field with us. And, and so, yeah, so we sat down pen that that was released last summer. And now Brad and I have sat down and started on a second book, which is not a followup to you per natural haunts the second one coming out, which we’re hoping will be out in the next month or so.
Is based on legends and folklore and stuff, encrypted. Yeah. All of it, anything weird and strange in the great lakes region and by great lakes region. We mean all of the States that border, the great lakes and the lakes themselves. So there are stories from New York all the way over to Minnesota in this book.
It’s a lot of firsthand accounts. There’s a lot of folklore, Tim and I sat down and interviewed some experts in the field of euphology. I got a phone call in with a Marine biologist to talk about sea monsters. Yeah. We just, we brought all of this and all of these different fields that we loved as kids and have kept that passion alive and tried to put all that into this new book.
And yeah, the manuscript’s been turned in. It’s just with everything else with COVID, everything seems to be moving slower this year, the book was supposed to be out a month back and now we’re, we’re hoping to have it for a stocking stuff. Yes.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:31:27] Nice. And in addition to the book, you guys mentioned this before again, before we hit the record button, you guys are. So actually, you have a podcast to talk to us a little bit about what’s what that is.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:31:38] Yeah. So it’s, it’s a podcast again that Brad and I do, it’s called creaking door, paranormal radio. and again, it’s a, you know, for, so my profession is, is radio. And Brad was actually worked in radio back in high school, for part time for one of the local radio stations. So we’ve always kind of had that connection through radio.
We’ve got the connection through go. And so the idea of putting together a pod cast on the subject matter that we love was always a no brainer, but again much like the book where like, Well, let’s do this, but how, and when and where do we start? Yeah. Well, it just so happened that a gentlemen who attended well, the funny story is that that term is used very loosely with Bob Bob Smith.
so, so anyway, so here’s, here’s the funny story behind that clip. Do we have time for this?
Cliff Duvernois: [00:32:24] Yes, we do.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:32:25] Okay. Perfect. So a guy named Bob Smith, he reached out to Brad and I a much like you did a one day, many years ago and wanted to do an interview for his podcast. It’s called Slack jaw punks. and it’s a, it’s a podcast out of Detroit, that focuses on, comic books and monster movies, culture, pop, pop culture.
And, he said, Hey, we would love to interview you guys. It’s around Halloween. And we’re like, yeah, sure. I’d love to, well, We didn’t find out till later, but we ended up having a great yeah. interview with them. huh. A lot of fun. He, we invited him to our Michigan paranormal convention the following year and he came and we finally got to meet him and he sat down and he says, guys, I gotta be honest with you.
He says, when I reached out to you guys to bring you on my path cast, I was actually, my intention was to bring you on to embarrass you and to, you know, to make you guys look. Like fools for the simple fact. Well, yeah, because for the simple fact that he’s, he’s not a big believer in hauntings and ghosts, and he hated watching these TV shows that made everything seemed like it was a ghost.
Well, where we caught him off guard was Brad and I were talking about the fact that we always try to look for the rational explanation first. And more often than not find it. Right. And so we don’t go in wanting to find a ghost in someone’s home. We don’t want to tell a friend family that, yeah, you’ve got something, from the other side in your home with you, we want to give them rational explanations as to what could be happening.
And he was so caught off guard by that, but respected it so much that he completely bailed ship on what he wanted to do on his show. And he admitted that to us at, at, at. The convention that year and we laughed about it. But, you know, we had no idea what was coming. We were just went on. We were ourselves, we told our story and, it seemed to have saved our butts a little bit.
So, so anyway, so, so, so Bob or he does Slack jaw punks the podcast, and he says, have you guys ever thought of doing a podcast? Well much like the book. We’re like why? Yes, we have a, and I said, but we just don’t have the platform for it. He says, well, I’m just starting. A platform at Slack job, punks.com. I want to bring in a whole arsenal of different podcasts and I don’t have anyone that does a paranormal, one love to have you guys.
And that was five years ago now, somewhere around there. Five, six years back. Yeah. And then we were actually coming up on our anniversary. Our first show we ever did was on Krampus, right around Christmas time. And, Yeah. So, so yeah, so Creek and Gore paranormal radio is out there on the, all the, all the streaming media.
So iTunes, Google play Stitcher and slacked off on that. Yeah. And we’ve been fortunate through the years through Paragon and all of our travels that we’ve gotten to be friends with. People for most of the big TV shows that are out there, the reality quote, unquote reality ghost hunting shows. So we’ve, we’ve been able to enlist a lot of them to, to come on and record shows with us over the years.
So it’s a lot of fun. We just, it’s a labor of love. We, we really enjoy doing it. We don’t make a dollar. No, we just have fun with it. So, if you’re making a dollar off years, cliff, you let us know the secret. All right. Cause we haven’t figured it out yet
Cliff Duvernois: [00:35:25] Well, remember that a little box that you check that says, you know, I’ve read the terms and conditions of this interview. There you go.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:35:32] where I didn’t read the terms and conditions, the fine print.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:35:35] Nobody ever does. Awesome. Before you mentioned something about how you do like you do like a live show on the radio on October 30th.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:35:45] Yup. Correct.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:35:46] Is that something every year? So is that something that, cause I know a lot of radio shows also stream their stuff online. Is that something where like somebody down here, if they just wanted to tune in to see what you guys were doing?
Is that something that they could go to a website and a, and listening.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:36:00] first of all, if you follow the upper peninsula paranormal research society on Facebook, we’ll post the link there. Otherwise you can. So the radio station, we do it on is a radio station that, that I own now. And it’s Eagle radio 95.1. So the, the, the streaming is that Eagle radio nine five one, the numbers.com.
So Eagle radio nine five one.com. We stream 24 seven on there, and we’ll be streaming the night of October 30th. starting at, usually right around 9:00 PM. And, and we go live with the team from an undisclosed haunted location, and we only reveal where we’re at at the end of the night, if the owners of the location allow us to
Cliff Duvernois: [00:36:39] Okay, great. One of the, one of the questions that I wanted to ask you guys, and you kind of already alluded to this, but I wanted to give, like, if somebody were to say to you, you know, I, man, I would really like, you know, like the three. You know, like, it seems like just a hotbed of activities for places. And I know you mentioned the, the name escapes me the slash one, yeah.
Such wild point. So you mentioned the, the lighthouse there with the curtain. What are, what are a couple of other places that are just, just absolutely, you know, either got a lot of activity, just absolutely creep you out. What are the, what are some of those places
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:37:13] Mackinaw Island, makin Island. You’re in the biggest tourist trap in all of Michigan it’s Mackinac Island. A lot of the tourist trade that goes across doesn’t realize that whole Island is built up on an ancient Indian burial ground. And that’s, that’s where the native tribes in the area used to take their they’re revered.
Elders and bury them, the chiefs, the showman
Cliff Duvernois: [00:37:35] this is total Poltergiest right here.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:37:38] You bet. And if you talk to one of the locals on the Island, they’ll tell you, and they’re only half joking. You don’t dig to start a construction project over there without hitting bone. Yeah. And a lot of the Island is that way. There’s so many amazing ghost stories.
I, I think my favorite because we’ve stayed there several times investigated multiple times is a Mission Point Resort. And that’s there. There’s such a great backstory on that. It would take, take me 20 minutes to tell it all. It’s it’s natural Hans book, conveniently enough. And, but it’s, I mean, some of the activity we’ve caught, they’re the main ghosts that they claim Hans in Hans, the entire grounds of it was a student back when the, the main grounds were Mackinaw college, which lasted for four years.
And he, he supposedly committed suicide up on the block. we, we checked, there was a student that did that and they see him all around, but there’s other entities that are seen there. There’s a lot of doppelganger activity. I experienced that. I had someone see me, tried to follow me to, to talk to me about a presentation, Tim and I had given there at an event.
And they said, well, you went in the bathroom and I waited and you never came out. And I went in and no one was there. And then after your words, I had someone else tell me they saw me behind nine stage. And when they. They turned around and I came in from the back doors. So in apparently this happens with quite a few people there and, the, the Giannini, the vanishing little people are the fairies of the Island.
their ghosts lights, I guess, would be a simplified word way to say it. But we’ve experienced these where these lights shoot top speed. We’ll stop in front of you or around you. Yeah. It’s not a Firefly. It’s not natural. No, it’s much bigger than a fire. so cliff, have you ever been to the Island?
Cliff Duvernois: [00:39:25] Yeah, I admittedly I have not been to Mackinac Island since, since my return last November, but as a kid, yes, I was over there multiple times.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:39:34] Sure. if you go as an adult and especially now that you’re kind of opening yourself up really to, at least the possibility of, you know, this other world being out there, if you will. The moment you step on Mackinac Island, you feel the energy, there’s an energy about that Island. It doesn’t matter where you go places like a mission point, definitely a you feel it more.
but that, that whole place is just a magnet for amazing activity. We we’ve cotton some of our best evidence there. And for sure. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And then if we had to pick a third, it’d be kind of a toss up. you know, if you want to hear about another light house, it would be Whitefish point lighthouse, which is of course, very famous because of the record, the Edmund Fitzgerald, you know, it was trying to get just past the, the lighthouse to get into Whitefish Bay during the storm that took it down.
so it’s just cry, wrecked just 20 miles out from there. And the actual bell from the ship is on display at the great Lake shipwreck museum, which is there the point. Right. And we’ve investigated that a number of times with some amazing, activity that was picked up. and then something even closer to home.
So I guess, maybe an honorable mention right here in the SU, is a museum ship. We have called the Valley camp and it doesn’t have a dark history by any means. But we have investigated it again a number of times and we just, some of the stuff we’ve picked up from there has been pretty, pretty amazing, actually.
Yeah, it’s a retired, great lakes or freighter, and it’s docked right down on the waterfront and it’s open for tours during, during the summer months. That’s what we tried to stick to in the book too, was places that people can visit, Ken book rooms at. We didn’t want to get into off limit places and, and try and encourage people to go and.
Breaking and entering or, you know, just Snoop around. So yeah, these, these are all public places that people can come up and check out, you know, call ahead, check on hours, get online, especially with COVID because everybody seems to be operating at restricted hours right now. But yeah, any of these places you can get into and by all means ask, you know, Ask your bartender.
If you’re in a haunted bar, if you’re in a tell asset desk clerk about their ghost stories. And most of the time, if, if you’ve heard of story, the people working there know it. Yeah. They love to share it. They love to share it and they, most of the time we’ll give you a more in depth. Look at the real history and the real story and the real happenings you bet.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:42:00] Nice. And that’s actually, when, when I travel, that’s one of my favorite things to do. And one of the reasons why I started the podcast was, you know, just go in and ask these people questions, just like that. And so I’m going to have to add that now to, to my list of questions when I’m chatting with people, when I’m, when I’m out and about.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:42:16] you bet
Cliff Duvernois: [00:42:17] That’s excellent. Now, if somebody is listening to this podcast and they want to follow what you guys are doing, out there on the, on the socials or whatever it is, what’s, what’s the best way for them to be able to connect with you.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:42:29] Well, we got, three of them, at least three platforms. You can follow us on one of them. I had already worked in the upper peninsula paranormal research society, which is our, our teams page on Facebook. And, and probably gets updated the most, I would say. So that probably gets updated the most. And if somebody wants to send us a message that normally gets checked on a daily basis, right?
Yeah. And if people are looking to contact us for cases or for help or even questions, that’s, that’s the best one to send it to. and
Cliff Duvernois: [00:42:56] now, do you, now, when you guys, when you guys do your investigations, do you also post the evidence that you find in your Facebook page?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:43:03] no, in, in less, it is a public location that. Explicit permission that, yes, we don’t mind if you put this out there, but normally we still try and be pretty discrete on what we do because there are, I mean, let’s face it. There’s still creeps a lot of people out and there are a lot of the locations we go into that might be public, businesses.
Or locations that they don’t want that haunted reputation around their operation. And not only that, but if we’re in that as a business, but if we’re in someone’s personal home and it’s their life we’re dealing with, we, we keep that as is under locked. She is weekend.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:43:40] Okay, that makes sense. How else can people connect with you?
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:43:43] We’ve got two other places.
The other one would be through, Brad and I with our creaking door paranormal radio. We have a Facebook page for that as well, where we post all of our shows too, once they’re posted and ready to go. And, if we’re out speaking at any engagements, we’ll share it there as well. That’ll be there. And we also have a Twitter page for creaking door and for Michigan paranormal convention that the Facebook page.
Is Michigan paranormal convention. I believe the Twitter page is EMI Paragon. Yes, those are on there. So, but yeah, if you want to hit us up directly, if you have any questions about anything we’ve talked about today, go to the UPRS, the upper peninsula paranormal research society page, and you can, you can catch us there for sure.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:44:24] Nice. And for the audience, I will definitely make sure to have all of these links to all this yummy information in the show notes down below
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:44:32] Perfect. We appreciate that.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:44:34] Yeah. And, Brad, Tim it’s, it’s been awesome. Having you on the podcast. I’m actually bummed. This interview is over.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:44:41] Cliff. We’re happy to come back anytime you want us back, we appreciate you reaching out to us. It was not her to be with you. For sure. Anytime we can sit and talk about ghosts and share some experiences and have a laugh. We were always up for it.
Cliff Duvernois: [00:44:53] Yeah. And I tell you, one thing I would like to do is that I am going to put you on the spot right here. So don’t hate me for it. But one of the things that I always thought would be really cool to do is to do a, do a podcast episode on an investigation. So next October, when, hopefully when everything’s back to normal again, I’ll hit you guys up and maybe I can tag along on one of your investigations.
Brad and Tim, Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society: [00:45:12] Let’s make it happen. Let’s make it happen. We would love to have you.