Lucky 13 Haunted America Conference After-Action Report (Part 2)

The Haunted America Conference this past weeked at the Lincoln Theater in Decatur, Illinois, also included Georgia ghost hunter Bob Hunnicutt who showed some wild films.  One film showed an elevated corner room (in that it wasn't on the ground floor) and as you watched, in the lower half of the window, a clearly visible space alien face slid into view then back out again.  In another house, a camera on a tripod is shooting up a stairway.  The family in the house is so scared the daughter is bunking with her parents in the basement.  Watching up the stairway to the empty upper floor, you see another smooth featured space alien face slowly poke out from the side to look downstairs towards the camera then withdraw.  Another photo shows a wedding party posing in front of a mansion.  In the second shot taken moments later, in the background against a large window is a black man in profile wearing a dark formal suit of some sort with a clearly visible white collar; the wedding partiers were white and there were no black folks present, at all.  Very cool.

Patrick Burns of TruTV's Haunting Evidence (no longer in production but being aired in reruns nightly around midnight) discussed why he has returned to using digital cameras after his disappointment with the earlier digital cameras and discussed one case profiled on their shows, showing them at a crime scene with a mist that no one present saw, gathered around their bodies.

Len Adams and Luke Nadolski led off Friday night with "Sons of Strange Stuff" where they told war stories about their favorite ghost tour experiences and invited others to talk about their own notable experiences.  They had a more sedate entrance than last year when Len, wearing a hockey mask and strapped to a dolly, was rolled to the lecturn.  They did end by pelting the audience with souvenirs.

We had a great time, saw some great photos and film, and probably even learned a bit.  I'm no ghost hunter (takes a huge amount of dedication)(as Bilbo Baggins says, "Adventures make one late for dinner") but we do enjoy hanging out with people who are into ghosts and the like and taking ghost tours when we can.

By the way, I got a few inexpensive T-shirts, including one of Gort ("Klatu. Barada. Nicto.")  I also bought a couple books including CDraig's book.

No coffins for the door prize drawings this year (see my posted photo of me, the used 1880s coffin I won last year, and an orb over my shoulder), but they did have other neat stuff. 

Pat actually won two items!  The big prizes were 13 shadow box-type moutings with a soil sample or rock inside the frame and a certificate of authenticity as the background.  One Pat got was a rock from the Bell Witch Cave about which Troy has written a book, and the other was a rock from the Gates of Hell at Stull Cemetery in Stull, Kansas, where the devil supposedly makes an appearance twice a year during his world tour.  Neither one of us had even heard of Stull cemetery until Pat's win, but Troy has something about it at his website (www.prairieghosts.com).  Both are souvenirs are reputed to carry bad mojo so Pat used a cleansing ritual on them.