Well, can you think of a better way to kick off a surprise birthday road trip? Dream-come-true fiancée (too mushy for a paranormal newsletter? Fine.) “See You on the Other Side” podcast producer & co-host Wendy Lynn Staats ‘abducted’ me for a weekend getaway of mysteries. Driving north through Wisconsin, we drove alongside the expansive Kettle Moraine State Forest in Eastern Wisconsin. The southern portion of this forest is where Bigfoot hunter Jay Bachochin lead me on two expeditions, each of which left me beyond words (check out his documentary, “Finding Jay” now free on Amazon Prime). So, already, I knew I was in a strange area. Little did I know, I was about to come face-to-face with a being that came from another world.
The first thing that really caught our attention on the drive was Dundee Mountain. Yes, a mountain peak in Wisconsin… not a common sight in the Midwest.
Within 10 minutes, we were at our destination… Benson’s Holiday Hide-A-Way, a small lakefront bar that appeared closed and possibly out of business at first blush, owing to a ‘For Sale’ sign that has been on the building for over a decade. Fortunately for us, the bar was open and we were the only revelers to go along with bar owner Bill Benson and dozens of alien figures of various sizes.
Quickly, I realized I was at ground zero of a UFO sighting hot spot. You would assume a small, lakefront bar like this would be inhabited by ‘salt of the earth,’ blue collar recreational fishermen, and that is likely still true, but the conversation tends to be about strange lights in the sky, frequently seen in the area of Dundee Mountain, like Devil’s Tower in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
According to Benson, UFOs had been seen in the area for decades, even before he ran the bar. Crop circles have popped up in the area well before the phenomena took the media by storm in the early ‘90s. Within the last two decades, the bar and shoreline has been a great spot to set up a camera to wait and catch a glimpse of strange crafts flying through the sky, especially at sunset or shortly thereafter. He’s even got a well-worn photo album sporting dozens of unexplainable pictures taken on the premises. I must admit, many of them were very compelling.
Perhaps the landmark feature of this dive is hidden away in a foggy jar behind the bar. According to Benson, a man once entered the Holiday Hide-A-Way after discovering an alien corpse in a cave in Rosewell, New Mexico. Afraid of being on the government radar and it being confiscated, he decided the safest place to hide it was here in Bill’s bar. So, with word getting out that there is an alien body on site, has the government come calling? According to Benson, yes. A member of a government agency, perhaps the CIA, questioned him, asked to see the alien. The man took the jar into the next room, did his own examination and left, leaving the alien behind.
The greatest thing about how Benson tells a story is that he doesn’t go over-the-top, trying to convince or prove anything. “This is what happened,” plain and simple. Was the guy really a government official? Are those strange lights really UFOs? All he can do is report what he’s seen and repeat the stories he’s been told.
There’s never a bad time to swing by and see this place for yourself, but summer may be the best time as this becomes an absolute hot spot of enthusiasts of the unknown during the UFO Daze celebration. I know I’ve already got it on my calendar as I hope to attend the 32rd annual meeting in 2020.
Every location mentioned on this list is a place I’ve visited for the very first time in 2018. Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the release of “Voices from the Chicago Grave,” I’ve made it a point to revisit every location covered in the book. This is an ongoing process, but it was great to see places like the 
I should give an odd shout out to the Museum of the Weird in Austin, TX, which houses tons of fascinating exhibits and, in fact, is so weird that Johnny Depp lived next door at one point. The main highlight is the “Minnesota Ice Man,” an alleged Bigfoot corpse kept preserved on ice since the late ‘60s.
One of my favorite investigations of the year took place at the Southern Illinois Cemetery of Elmwood, where a legend surrounds a beautiful monument to H. Annie Marshall, better known as “Violin Annie.” The legends around Violin Annie are more plentiful than the facts. The basics are that this gravesite belongs to a girl who died tragically young. In life, quite clearly, she played the violin. Speaking on the legends, there are countless tales of hearing violin music waft through this cemetery at all hours. The uniqueness of this monument, plus its easy access (near the front of the cemetery, just two dozen feet from the access road), makes it an easy candidate for urban legends. Does that mean the area isn’t haunted? Of course not. The restless adventures of “Violin Annie” may very well be legit. It’s also possible that thousands of people over the years, visiting this site, hoping to hear violin music, have impacted the area, imbuing it with a psychic residue from the living. If Annie’s consciousness is here, we brought a trigger item in the form of violinist Wendy Lynn Staats to play songs and simple scales to see if we could coax a musical call and response. With several cameras rolling and even more microphones scattered around the area, it will take some time to dig though all the recordings, but our fingers are crossed!
Dipping as far as we could possibly dip into the Florida Keys, we found ourselves at the home of Ernest Hemingway’s six-toed cats and a doll that can move on its own. “Robert the Doll” has been a story so sensational, it’s no surprise that people assume the movie “Child’s Play” was based on this legend. In 1904 a young Eugene Otto was given a doll in a navy uniform. It did not take long before this doll began terrorizing the family, especially little Eugene. Massacring his other toys, and flipping his furniture over, the parents were understandably suspicious, however even they heard voices and laughing coming from Eugene’s room that were not his own. Eventually the doll was banished to the attic, where it remained peacefully for decades. Currently the doll itself is on display at Fort East Martello Museum where it apparently does not like being on display. If you are bold enough to take a picture of Robert without first asking his permission, legend has it that you will be besieged by extreme misfortune. There is a nearby wall of the museum covered with letters addressed to the doll from people desperately asking Robert’s forgiveness.
I was in Key West with family. My parents have both been exceptionally supportive of my unorthodox line of work. They’ve attended paranormal conferences to watch me speak and my mom even joined for an exploration of Bachelor’s Grove and was pinched by an unseen hand in the process. They were all for visiting the museum until we took a ghost tour that lead us past the home where the events took place. Upon hearing the full story, I was no longer asked, “Hey, do you wanna check out that museum today?” I had previously been vague, offering only that there was a “famous, haunted doll on display.” Not wanting to push them or, honestly, expose myself to something truly negative (just in case), we never visited Robert. However, by total luck and coincidence, we did take a walk through the Key West 
Cemetery and, coincidentally (again), I stumbled across the grave of Eugene Otto! I was able to conduct an EVP session at his grave site. While nothing came of it, I do always urge investors to try poking around at all locations associated with the tale you’re investigating, not just the main target. Travel Tip: you can now rent out the room where Robert was banished for decades as the Otto house is now a B&B.
Coming straight off the bucket list is a MUCH fabled tale of “America’s most well-documented haunting,” as it’s always called. The story of the Bell Witch is too vast and spectacular to fully cover in a blurb, but I will tease that it involves a curse, mythical creature, disembodied voices, an intensely violent invisible entity, a homicide blamed on a ghost and some of the paranormal activity was even witnessed by a man who would become president. You’d think this would be so rich a story that it would make for a great movie. Well, they tried. Wendy and I visited the location, then watched the movie before then shooting a new episode of “A Ghost Hunter Watches.” Check that out below:
Most of the time I find an incredible location with a colorful story… the type of place where I’m dying to find some paranormal evidence, that’s exactly where I’ll find nothing at all. This was not the case at the darkly impacted Shoal Creek in Austin, Texas. A Native American massacre of a settler family in 1839 could be enough to generate some paranormal activity, but this area was also the site of skirmishes and battles through the years and countless unmarked burials. When the banks of the creek flood, taking with it lose dirt, it is not uncommon for more and more human remains to be unearthed. A recent flood unearthed the remains of a solider who served with General Custer. There are also multiple tales of gold being hidden in this area by criminals who were apprehended before being able to reclaim their hidden loot. Might their spirits be the ones still occupying the area, keeping their gold hidden? Shadow figures are seen in the area and disembodied voices are heard. Visiting the site in the middle of the afternoon with 
Another location, rife with urban legend-y glory that really deserves to be somewhere on this list is the 
Are you ever caught in the difficult situation, trying to decide, “Do I want to look for a ghost, a UFO or a crypid today? Maybe I wanna look into a place that has ties to the ultra creepy phenomena of Black-eyed children. Well, you’re in luck! This is the one-stop shop! Down in very rural and very remote southern Illinois, at the end of a dead end gravel road on the top of a wooded hill is Shelby County’s pioneer cemetery. When it comes to cryptids, the threat of coming across a werewolf-like creature (better known as an up-right canine in cryptid circles) would be enough, but there is also a winged dragon-like creature seen flying over the area. As long as you’re looking to the skies for dragons, you might as well keep an eye open for UFOs as well while as lights have been spotted in the skies and cows have been mutilated here. Indeed, the unnerving black-eyed children have been spotted here and occasionally appear after the fact on video recordings. That said, the ghostly encounters here probably get the adrenaline pumping the most: An elderly man charges out from the woods, seemingly ready to attack you, but he vanishes moments before striking! Wendy and I spent a couple of hours here, but had no experiences ourselves. This is a place I definitely want to visit again and spend a lot more time on site. Unlike many outdoor locations, this cemetery is so remote there is no fear of audio interference from a neighboring house or school, nor is there a blanket of traffic noise interfering with EVP recording.
One early morning, fire broke out and the gang, like everyone else, was forced to stand on the street to watch fire envelop the hotel. Knowing they had some precious cargo inside, a firefighter was convinced to go retrieve their luggage. In appreciation, the firefighter was given a significant tip. The following day, the firefighter in question happened to see a photo in True Detective Magazine of the generous tippers. Within two days the entire crew was arrested, setting the stage for one of the most famous and clever prison breaks in history, that being the escape in the warden’s car in Crowne Point, IN that is described in detail in “Voices from the Chicago Grave.” (
“Oh?” Just “oh?” I will never understand how there wasn’t a string of follow-up questions to my statement. I guess I’m a researcher and others are not. ….but still! A Hollywood movie was made based on events in your town and you have zero interest? A UFO plucked a dude off of your sleepy street and you’re not interested?
The two-floor lobby with the wrap-around balcony proudly displays vintage, signed black and white photos of the stars of yester-year who once stayed there. Some rooms even display names on them, presumably honoring past residents. It’s in this upper lobby where people have heard phantom conversations, singular voices, footsteps and laughter.
We, however, had our sights set on margaritas and the High Noon Restaurant and Saloon and they delivered! The building itself has to be one of the oldest still existing structures in the United States as it was first built in the 1750s. The building has long reported the presence of a woman in white in the Santos room (pictured to the right, note the saint statues in the alcoves), but the current owners have been feeling more and more unsettled. Something isn’t right here. That’s what led them to reach out for help in the form of Travel Channel’s “The Dead Files.” (
