10/10/2009 6:00:00 AM Author shows us his favorite haunts
Chad Lewis will discuss this book and his other work at next week’s Friends of the Library meeting.
Lewis
Melissa Seymour Verona Press correspondent
In 1974, a 25-year-old woman named Mary Schlais was found brutally stabbed near the small town of Elk Lake in western Wisconsin.
She had been hitchhiking her way to Chicago, and her murderer has never been found. But many people have seen ghostly visions of her, and just this year, her body was exhumed so that authorities could look for DNA evidence that might lead them to her killer.
"So many people have traveled to see this spirit that the local sheriff's department has reopened the case into the murder of the young girl," explained Chad Lewis, a paranormal expert who will visit the Verona Public Library next week.
Lewis will share that story and many other paranormal occurrences he came across during research for "The Wisconsin Road Guide to Haunted Locations" after the annual Friends of the Verona Public Library meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.
That book is just one of several books he and Terry Fisk collaborated on exploring their passion for the paranormal. Lewis, a paranormal investigator, author and lecturer, has been featured on the Discovery Channel's "A Haunting," ABC's "World's Scariest Places" along with hundreds of radio interviews, TV appearances and newspaper articles.
He hosted his own television and radio show, "The Unexplained," and has traveled around Wisconsin and even outside the United States searching for evidence of paranormal activity.
"I look for several things in a haunted location," explained Lewis, a Wisconsin native with a master's degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Stout. "First, it needs to have a history of stories, yet it also has to have current sightings. I also look for places with numerous witnesses or stories, not just one person experiencing something."
It helps if those places are open to the public so that people can try to experience their own ghost stories, he said.
That's what "The Road Guide to Haunted Locations" series is about: giving the adventurer places to visit.
"It covers the entire state, from wandering ghosts of the North Woods to haunted (bed and breakfasts) in Milwaukee. From phantom creatures prowling the woods to graveyard apparitions located in your own backyard, no place in Wisconsin is without its own haunting," Lewis said.
Lewis himself has yet to stumble upon a confirmed ghost encounter, but he's been close.
"Over the last 14 years we have captured a few things on film, audio and have had psychics claim to be pinched by spirits," he said. "Yet I have never had something I would say was 100 percent paranormal."
This presentation is open to the public and begins at about 7 p.m. It will include photos, case histories, eyewitness accounts and ghost lore. Lewis' books will be on sale after the presentation, and Lewis will be available for book signings, as well.
For information, visit unexplainedresearch.com.
Verona Press editor Jim Ferolie contributed to this story.
