October 31, 2014 at 4:37 p.m.
Who you gonna call?
Who you gonna call?
Halloween is a time where fear takes center stage. For most, that probably means a scary movie marathon or a haunted house, but for one Northwoods group new to Rhinelander, hauntings, UFOs and a myriad of other supernatural subjects are par for the course.
The Northern Wisconsin Paranormal Society, a non-profit organization, recently moved its headquarters from Minocqua to 1244 Eagle Street in Rhinelander. It's the home of Kevin Malek and his fiance Jennifer Scelsi, but it doubles as the Northwoods Paranormal Research Center.
"It's a place people can come to if they have any kind of questions about paranormal activity," Malek said. "If they want to report something, if they want something investigated or if they just want knowledge, this is a place to come. Also, if they want to get involved in our group and attend our meetings they're welcome to do that too."
Malek, the group's official founder, has been interested in all things paranormal from a very young age. His mother bought him a paranormal encyclopedia when he was about 10 years old and he's been hooked ever since. What was once a simple hobby, has blossomed into something much more involved.
"I was living in Madison a few years, and when I moved back up here, I decide that I had enough paranormal knowledge that I would be an asset to a team," he said. "I looked for a team and I couldn't find any up here. That's how the Northwoods Paranormal Society really started."
The group started small with just a few members. Malek met Scelsi over Facebook and she's added another dimension to the group.
"I've been into the paranormal since I was a little girl," Scelsi said. "I was born with my psychic abilities and my mediumistic abilities. The home I grew up in was very, very haunted. As a young girl, I had my first experience at the age of five. Back then, the house I lived in was built in the 17th or 18th century. Back then, they used to have your wake in the living room. Apparently, that happened at some point in our house because we had a spirit we called the Lady in White. We used to see her at certain times in the house."
This Lady in White played an important role in fostering Scelsi's interest in the paranormal and her eventual work with Malek.
"What's funny is, I wouldn't see her as transparent like you'd normally see a ghost," she said. "I would see her like me and you."
"I would think we had company and come down and ask my mom who the lady she was talking to was, and she wouldn't know who I was talking about," she said. "One day, when I got older, I came down and asked my mom to introduce me to the woman she had over for company. She asked me to describe her and I said 'The lady sitting there in white.' She said, 'Oh, you see her too?' I was born with this ability and that got me into paranormal research."
The Northern Wisconsin Paranormal Society is now in its sixth year and recently the group has experienced some serious growth. They began advertising more and getting their name out in the community. That led to increase in membership and an even greater interest in the services they provide.
"Our last year in Minocqua, once we started advertising, everything really increased, and that means helping families too," Malek said. "We'll get a family that's traumatized, and people think it doesn't happen often, but we get calls on a daily basis from people who are upset, broken and beat down ... If they don't have peace at home, who can they turn to? Until recently, it's been a very taboo thing. Now with the ghost shows there's been a kind of awakening where people have started to accept we're a spirit with a body."
To do their investigative work in a skeptical and professional manner, Malek said they make sure to approach each case with the scrutiny required of a paranormal investigation.
"Everyone in our group is a paranormal investigator, but we do have our own titles," he said. "We have them because some of our members prefer to stay anonymous for various reasons. I'm a paranormal historian. Jennifer moved here last January and she's a physical psychic medium. We have a psychotherapist, a reverend, a tech manager, a documentarian and more, and each doubles as a paranormal investigator. Working that way, it's well balanced and we get very good results. Our society works on cases and we approach each one from many different angles."
Scelsi said her abilities as a medium have allowed the group to expand the services they offer. Recently, one particular client had an unusual request for which Scelsi said she was a perfect fit.
"If people are going to buy a house, they can contact me and I'll do a walkthrough to get a reading," she said. "People will literally send us haunted objects. We have a doll in our office that's haunted. We got it yesterday in the mail. I'll see if I can get impressions from her to identify what kind of a spirit it is. I'll do whatever I can to figure it out. The present owner said the doll tended to move on its own accord. They have other dolls and our client said she would hear this doll talking to the other ones. They've tried to get rid of it and do other things to it, but it would keep coming back. It took a couple tries to get it to us because it kept coming back."
The Northern Wisconsin Paranormal Society can be reached on Facebook, by phone at (715) 614-1204 and email at [email protected].
Andy Hildebrand may be reached at [email protected].
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