American Ghost Society 2008 Fall Open House in...

The Fall Open House at History and Hauntings Bookstore in Alton, Illinois, this past Saturday (10/04) was quite a success.

Len Adams and Luke Nadolski told some stories, often amusing, of their experiences leading ghost tours and Len's tour of haunted bed and breakfasts down south with his wife. He says he was surprised how the ghost tours that were offered stole material from each other and were generally not up to par. He was especially popular at one site where he debunked the ghost story on the spot.

John Winterbauer of Springfield told about the Lincoln-related ghost stories he'd dug up in reconstructed New Salem, at the Springfield Lincoln Home (believed to be that of a former caretaker of the tourist site), and in the White House, where the ghost of Lincoln himself has been repeatedly seen (there are upwards around 20 or 30 other ghost stories connected with the White House, I wrote an article on it years ago for Fate).

Amy Myers talked about cemetery art and Andrea Prindable talked about three ghost stories from her area of rural eastern Illinois.

Afterwards, Pat and I took part in the tour of the McPike Mansion on what was once called Lookout Hill back in the late 1860's or 1870's when the house was built by someone approrpaitely named McPike.

I used to walk by the mansion years ago when I lived a few streets away and wonder about who lived there. No one, as it turns out, it's been abandoned for 50 years.

We walked around outside and spent some time as a group in the wine cellar, one of the few parts of the building that remains intact (it was vandalized and scavenged after it was abandoned and is now being refurbished with a new roof up and walls shored up).

The wine cellar was McPike's favorite part of the house where he made wine, his main pleasure. It's where there has been the most activity. Troy Taylor told us that one time he was down there with a group, the owner left and he heard her come back, walking down the stairs, up to the door to the wine cellar, then the door opened. No one was there. Turned out she was still upstairs.

By candlelight, and then without, we tried to see if we could experience something, but no luck. Pat did say she thought she saw a mist.

If they ever rebroadcast the Family Channel series on haunted houses (not Scariest Places on Earth from the same channel with the hilarious 10- or 12-year-old kid who tried to talk in a spooky tone) you might get a chance to see the episode on the McPike Mansion. It may come up...the Scariest Places series was a summer replacement this past year. Anyway, it'll show you the mansion an all. Skip the rest. Except for an out-of-context quote from Troy, the experts were actually actors, and they made up most of the story they fed the viewer and the kids before tunring the teens loose in the house with videocameras where they wisely split up then scared themselves to death.

Troy Taylor, by the way, has written somrewhere around 40 books on ghosts and has a website with a free newsletter at http://www.darkhavenentertainment.com/. Len Adams' second book comes out this week on ghost of Lebanon, Illinois.

Anyway, time to publish this. Gather signed me off and lost the last version I wrote up.