Tag Archives: Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters

Local man shares passion of ghost hunting to help educate, understand

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By Wayne Thomas
Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters

Wayne Thomas with Brandon Hoezee on a past episode of the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters. (WKTV)

South West Michigan has a rich history when it comes to haunted locations, ghost stories, local urban legends, and paranormal folklore. Certain people and groups have separated themselves from the public mainstream, dedicating their time to chasing shadows during long nights of tedious investigations.

Many of the people pursuing the paranormal have had mysterious experiences at an early age. Brandon Hoezee had his first paranormal experience as an adolescent in his own home. It was there he saw haunting shadowy apparitions and it wouldn’t be the last time he would see ghosts. Hoezee began researching the paranormal early on and progressed to co-founding Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters, where he spent more than a decade investigating 100-plus private and residential locations.

Wanting to be more than a ghost hunter and recognizing the historical significance of some of the haunted locations, Hoezee created another team called Kent County Paranormal. This team adopted a vision with the intent of training new members to investigate not only ghosts but UFOs, Bigfoot, Dogman and other cryptids, lake monsters, and even elemental entities.

For the last two years Hoezee has gone to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for Bigfoot training with Rich Meyer and Jim Sherman of UPBSRO or the Upper Peninsula Bigfoot Sasquatch Research Organization. Currently Hoezee is producing and hosting WKTV’s, Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters Podcast as well as Hoezee Paranormal History Productions YouTube channel.

Brandon Hoezee has received training from the Upper Peninsula Bigfoot Sasquatch Research Organization. (pxhere.com)

As a ghost hunter, Hoezee reports his top three favorite haunted locations and investigations were at Nick Fink’s in Comstock Park, the Old Allegan County Jail Museum, and the LST 393 World War II Navy Ship, docked in Muskegon.

Nick Fink’s, the oldest bar in Grand Rapids and part of the Gilmore Collection, was first established in 1888 as Riversite Hotel but it has been a bar, hotel, barber shop, post office, and rumored to be a brothel as well as wakes being performed at the location. Another rumor has it that Al Capone would frequent Nick Fink’s and his name can be found on an old registry. It was also rumored that Nick Fink’s was haunted. Hoezee and the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters have investigated Nick Fink’s several times, provided guided tours, ghost dinners, presentations, and annual Halloween parties.

Through the years, Hoezee has compiled several ghost voices, EVP’s or electronic voice phenomenon at this location. Team members names were often heard as EVP’s and several recordings suggest one spirit talking to another spirit and Hoezee even heard “Help” with just his ears, no electronic device used to enhance it. Recorded evidence suggests multiple ghosts may be haunting Nick Fink’s; one male (Larry or Ed), one older woman (Maggie or Clair), one child ghost with the Fink family name “Michael.” Ghosts have even been recorded whistling the song “Oh Susanna” at Nick Fink’s.

Just rumors right?  Be careful not to offend, judge, or disrespect the noisy dead!  

The ghosts of summer: hauntings at Mackinac Island

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By Wayne Thomas
Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters

It’s been said, “No man is an island” but they probably haven’t met Mackinac Island’s haunted historian expert Todd Clements. Clements authored “Haunts of Mackinac: Ghost Stories, Legends & Tragic Tales of Mackinac Island,” and followed it with his second book where he added “The Next Chapter” to the title.

Author Todd Clements

“Haunts of Mackinac” is also the name of Clements’ nightly Haunted History Tours on the island. These 90-minute guided tours start in May and run until late October. It’s about an hour walk ending at Mission Point. It’s family and pet friendly and is filled with ghost stories and tragic tales of the islands history.

Clements” books offer pictures, descriptions, actual addresses, and maps to the islands’ haunted locations. Each ghost story location is provided with a “Haunting & Ghosts Activity Scale” to measure the level of intensity or strength of activity, the regularity or frequency of activity, and the time scale or most recent activity. Either, one, two, or three stars, with 3 stars being the most recent, most intense, and most frequent. Several locations received three stars in all three categories on the list of most haunted, including: Mission Point Resort, Rifle Range Trails, Fort Mackinac, St. Cloud Dormitory, and Pine Cottage & Chateau Lorraine. 

The Grand Hotel has been rumored to be a “hot spot” for paranormal activity with an “Evil Entity,” a black mass with glowing red eyes. Other haunts have a ghost playing piano man wearing a top hat and a woman in Victorian clothing roaming the halls and getting into beds. The Drowning Pool has a tragic story of seven women/witches, who as a test to determine if they were witches, had rocks tied to their feet and were thrown into the pool to see if they would float. They sank and drowned. Visitors say they see these seven women floating and splashing in the Drowning Pool. Mission Point has its resident ghost, “Harvey” who either died of a suicide or was murdered, “Harvey” likes to pinch and poke people.

 

Todd Clements’ book “Haunts of Mackinac: Ghost Stories, Legends & Tragic Tales of Mackinac Island”

Mackinac Island is a perfect storm for paranormal activity. The surrounding water currents create electrical magnetic fields which ghost are able to use to help them manifest as apparitions. The huge limestone cliffs can store residual energies created during wars and play back these tragic events as ghost activity. Combine these factors with the history of some of the oldest residential and private homes in Michigan and you have the catalyst for paranormal calamity.

Clements was the guest on the eighth episode of Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters Podcast and we featured him on Cryptic Frequencies episode 12.  

When things go bump in the night, area residents call The Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters

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By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

It should start with a dark and stormy night as a group of of ghost hunters entered the old creepy house in search of paranormal activity but in truth, outside of a light drizzle, the weather was fairly routine as the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters joined others at St. Cecilia Music Center for National Ghost Hunting Day earlier this season.

 

“Our mission statement is directed toward private families although we do investigations like this — plenty of them,” said Wayne Thomas, a member of the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters. “But we have been to places where the people would not meet us at the house they just purchased because they were not taking their kids back and they were distraught and that’s where our passion for the paranormal comes in.”

 

The Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters team

The goal for the team is to create a better understanding of the spirits living among us by working with families and individuals dealing with paranormal activity.

 

“We have a process and we try to stick to that process,” Thomas said. “We have an interview and we have [Pastor Dan Schmidt] there so if there are any sensations in the house. We come back and do the investigation and we do a reveal where we present our evidence and that’s when Dan will ask them do you want a smudge or do you want to learn to live with your ghost.”

 

From the interview to the  smudging, which is a ritual done to help cleanse a dwelling of negative energies, spirits or influences, the process is quite different from what people see on such shows as “Supernatural” or “Ghost Hunters.”

 

“TV can make it so dramatized, the music, the door slamming and we sit there for hours and hours,” said Grand Rapids Ghost Hunter Tammy Post. And in fact much of the group’s work is not done in the dark because as Thomas puts it, “no one ever sees a ghost in the dark.”

 

Pastor Dan Schmidt checks out the second floor of the St. Cecilia Music Center.

“We will have gone through a whole night and we won’t know if we have gotten anything at all,” Schmidt said. “We will go back through and watch the video and listen to the recordings and that is the longest part of the process.”

 

The ultimate goal of the group is to help people better understand the spirits living among us.

 

“It is easy to see the help you are giving the living – it is not quite as easy to see the help you are giving to the dead,” Thomas said. “When I got into this, I thought ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to help the dead find peace and rest.’

 

But in truth, Thomas said it is hard to determine if they have helped spirits move on.

 

“We do start with prayer and we end with prayer as we do consider ourselves a faith-based group,” Thomas said. “I consider all the praying we’ve done helps.”

 

To reach the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters, call 616-541-4496 or visit the group’s Facebook page.

Of ghosts and beers: The Mitten Brewing Co. has some tales to share

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By Zac Sgro

WKTV Intern

 

What is it about ghost stories that makes them so compelling? Is it the spine chilling effect, the adrenaline, or maybe it’s an inherent love for the supernatural and anything that goes bump in the night? Whether you believe them or not, one thing is clear, there are some things that just can’t be logically explained. Whatever the case may be for the staff at The Mitten Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids, ghost stories have become something a little too real at times.

 

“The exact moment at the ghost footprint the light (points) above started flickering,” said Drew Vanhartsvelt, The Mitten Co. sale representative. “Not like weird current issues, straight up the conjuring movie flickering.”

 

The building on 527 Leonard St. NW, which is now The Mitten Brewing Company, used to be Engine House Number Nine and housed four to six firemen at a time operating for nearly a century before it was decommissioned in 1966. After serving as an office building and apartment complex for 46 years, The Mitten Brewing co-owners Chris Andrus and Max Trierweiler acquired the building in 2012. Soon after their purchase of the property suspicions began to arise that something was amiss.

 

The ghostly footprint preserved in the upstairs bar at The Mitten Brewing Co.

“Well my business partner Max and I did most of the renovations and demolitions ourselves,” Andrus said. “We were here every day for the better part of nine months, and right away we started to see things that weren’t right, shadows moving, and noises at night.”

 

Shortly after that night, following a last-one-out first-one-in shift, Andrus noticed what would become the first of many odd occurrences at the bar. A set of footprints left in the mop water from earlier, roughly the size of a child’s, even more troubling was the fact that Andrus stated the prints lead to a wall and just disappeared. Once the first Facebook post was made the story blew up and the brewery became a huge attraction for those who wished to experience the supernatural or even just hear the stories of what might be in that old firehouse.

 

In the years since, numerous accounts of paranormal activity have been reported by customers and staff alike from a single speaker having music to a light that flickers over the bar where one of the mysteries footprints has been preserved. The Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters has investigated the brewery confirming what the owners and staff already knew.

 

The original lockers of Engine House No. 9, now The Mitten Brewing Co.

“Whatever it is, I believe is playing pranks on us,” Andrus said. “It is appearing oneway to one and appearing another way to someone else. And maybe there are multiple entities here, an old man, a tiny child, I’m not sure. All I know is that I know this building backwards and forwards, I’ve been here since the beginning and I have found something that is not right and on more than a few occasions the being here has made its present felt.”

 

Interestingly, there is no beer named after the ghosts, however Andrus did point out that there is one paying homage to the last to horses to serve at the fire house, Ned and George. That oatmeal stout might just be a good choice to swap a few stories over, whether they be haunted tales or not.