Those in search of Chicago ghosts won't want to miss the Chicago Ghost Conference, October 4th & 5th. Now in its fifth year, the popular event is promising to surpass all previous years, drawing some of the biggest names in paranormal research for a weekend unlike any you'll find in the Chicago area.
This year's conference, sponsored by Ursula Bielski's Chicago Hauntings and Willy Adkins' Spookshow Entertainment, will be held at the historic--and haunted--Portage Theater, on Chicago's Northwest side, nestled into one of the most haunted areas of the region, nearby Robinson Woods Indian Burial Ground, The crash site of Flight 191, the former site of the John Wayne Gacy Home, and the old Dunning Asylum property.
Guests will include Josh Gates of Travel Channel's Destination Truth, longtime demonologist John Zaffis of the popular Haunted Collector,and prolific author Jeff Belanger, location scout for Ghost Adventures and founder of the huge internet clearinghouse GhostVillage.com. Also attending will be famed parapsychologist Stephen Braude, who has worked on some of the most baffling cases in modern American history, Larry Arnold, the leading expert in Spontaneous Human Combustion, and Dave Schrader and Tim Dennis of Darkness Radio, experts in ghost investigation and protection from dark phenomena. Attendees will also be treated to an appearance by Christopher Fleming, one of Chicago's most popular mediums, known for his work on Psychic Kids and Ghost Adventures and Lisa Wyrick, whose terrifying story inspired the upcoming film, A Haunting in Georgia.
The conference will open Friday afternoon, October 4th with selections from the Chicago Paranormal Film Festival, leading into a cocktail hour meet and greet at 6pm, where attendees can meet celebrities, chat about Chicago ghosts and investigation, and share their stories. The evening's events will include the Music of Michael Esposito, an experimental musician who combines EVP tracks (the voices of the dead) and reverse speech with original music, as well as a live taping of Jeff Belanger's hit TV show, 30 Odd Minutes, featuring a panel discussion with some of the weekend's speakers. Following will be two live onstage interviews, including one with Chris Quaratino, one of the Lutz children and survivor of the events at Amityville in the 1970s which inspired "The Amityville Horror."
A full day of speakers and films on Saturday will be highlighted by a Chicago Roundtable panel discussion on Chicago ghosts featuring some of Chicago's most legendary lights in the field, moderated by author Ursula Bielski and including Dale Kaczmarek, head of the Ghost Research Society, and Edward Shanahan, psychic feeler and founder of Chicago Paranormal Nights, among others. The day's events will happen in tandem with a Ghost Hunters Expo gathering dozens of ghost hunting teams, researchers and vendors from across the country.
The keynote of the weekend will be the Saturday presentation from "para explorer" Josh Gates, followed by an after party at the haunted Great Escape Restaurant in Schiller Park.
Admission for the whole weekend, including the after party, is just $50, and the Sheraton Four Points hotel is holding rooms at a deeply discounted rate for conference attendees. For more information and ticket sales, visit the conference site at www.chicagohauntings.com/conference.html
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