It’s officially October! Haunted houses, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, horror movies, and ghost shows are all ways I love to spend the month. This year, my calendar is filling up with events at which that I will be presenting. See you there!
October 11 & 12 – Louisville, Kentucky
At long last, I will be attending AND presenting at the Goatman Festival in Louisville, Kentucky. This free event has a full slate of horror and monster movies starting at 7:00pm on Friday, October 11. On Saturday, October 12, there is a full day’s Ghosts & Monsters Bus Tour, followed by free seminars, of which yours truly is presenting at 5:30pm. The day is capped off with a live director commentary of “Legend of Pope Lick Monster” and the movie Antlers.
October 17 – West Bend, Wisconsin
On Thursday, October 17 at 5:00pm, I’ll present “Haunted Stories with J. Nathan Couch” at the West Bend Library. Later that same evening at 7:00pm, join me for the final Downtown West Bend Ghost Walk of 2024, celebrating the Hunter’s Supermoon.
October 25 – West Bend, Wisconsin
The 2024 Halloween season rounds out with an appearance telling campfire stories at Nightmares Around Elm Street Haunted Walking Tours on Friday, October 25 from 7:30-9:30pm. This annual fundraiser supports The Youth and Family Project, Inc. in West Bend and features an evening is crammed full of walking tours, raffles, cocoa, and other goodies for sale.
Celebrate Halloween and support some great organizations while you do it! Copies of my books will be available for purchase at all these events.
Recently, I was tracked down by Wisconsin Frights to retell the story of a possible Goatman encounter near Holy Hill Basilica in Hubertus, Wisconsin. Watch it now and let me know what you think it was.
I first wrote about Mindy’s story back on November 1, 2014 in my blog, A Strange Creature Near Holy Hill. The story garnered so much attention and feedback that I published a follow-up blog, Holy Hill Creature Update, on November 19, 2014.
Mindy and I even appeared on episode 5 of Travel Channel’s In Search of Monsters in 2019. People just can’t get enough of our hometown Washington County monster!
Wisconsin Frights is the premiere travel guide to all the curious, bizarre, and creepy things the great weird state has to offer. Launched in 2014, Wisconsin Frights set out with boots on the ground to uncover and share the stories of Wisconsin’s legendary places in hopes of evoking the same curiosity and passion that we feel for them. We believe that the ghosts of the past convey interest, context, and relevance to the present, and that the folklore of a place, whether historical or contemporary, strengthens our connection to it, and deepens our experiences with it.
Holy Hill Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians is located on 435 acres of glorious scenery on the highest elevation in Southeastern Wisconsin, Holy Hill is a destination for those looking to celebrate their faith in a sacred place of peace, beauty and prayer. Under the care of the Discalced Carmelite Friars of Holy Hill, The Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians is open to the public and draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and sightseers annually. Visitors can attend daily Catholic Masses of worship, enjoy the scenic views and walk the life-sized Stations of the Cross in a serene setting. A café and large gift store are open year round.
For the first time, I’ll be speaking at the Chicago Paracon on Saturday, June 8, 2024. The low admission price of $1.00 per person gives you access to 80 vendors peddling ritual candles, occult items, oddities, weirdness, mysticism, and more. Also in attendance will be tarot, angel card, and tea leaf readers, plus psychics, and paranormal investigators.
No Midwest event would be complete without food, raffle, and music.
Besides yours truly, the other speakers are:
Allison Jornlin: Allison developed Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s first haunted history tour in 2008. Since then, she has presented at paranormal conferences across the U.S. and contributed paranormal essays and research to several popular books. Allison currently works as a professional weirdo, researching and writing for AmericanGhostWalks.com. Allison will discuss fairy folklore and fairy encounters.
Larry Eisler: Author of Ghosts of the Black Hawk War, filmmaker, historian, paranormal researcher and winner of the Annual Telly Award. Larry will discuss the advent of artificial intelligence and its effects on the paranormal community.
Bob Anderson: Bob is the host of the paranormal podcast Bob After Dark. He has been a paranormal enthusiast since he was a wee-lad. Bob has dabbled in many aspects of the spooky world from both research and investigations. He is sort of a Swiss-Army-Knife in the occult world, knowing a bit about not only ghostly hauntings, but cryptozoology, and demonology. Bob will discuss the true paranormal accounts behind horror films.
Barnaby Jones: Barnaby is the founder and lead investigator of C.A.P.S.: Cryptids, Anomalies, and the Paranormal Society. He is also the host of Whispers From the Dark podcast and Monsters on the Edge* on Untold Radio Network. Barnaby will discuss the scientific understanding of paranormal phenomena.
*I will appear on an upcoming episode of Monsters on the Edge!
Just arriving at newsstands and comic book shops everywhere, the 2019 Halloween issue of Scary Monsters!
Scary Monsters #114
For those that don’t know about SM, the mag touts itself as the REAL Monster Magazine. SM is a classic horror and sci-fi film magazine in the tradition of the original Famous Monsters of Filmland. Great articles about classic creatures from the heyday of imaginative cinema, on pulpy black and white paper.
Issue #114 features an article I’ve written about Super Scary Saturday. SSS was a horror host show that ran on the TBS Superstation from 1987-1989. The host was the legendary Grampa Al Lewis, of Munsters fame.
Gramp Al Lewis
The show introduced me to many monster movies I’ve loved my entire life, especially Godzilla and Hammer Horror, which they featured in heavy rotation! For this piece I was about to track down the series’ creator, writer, and producer Jeff Grimshaw. He gave some fascinating insight into the creation of the show and what it was like to work with Lewis.
There’s lots of other amazing content in the issue. 140 plus pages of content on a wide range of film, television, and even the paranormal. If you’re interested in the ghostly folklore of Maine, you’ll like this one!
If you don’t have a magazine stand or comic shop handy, you can order a copy at ScaryMonstersMagazine.com!
I’m sitting here in my office after a particularly busy weekend. I’m two days removed from the Friday the 13th/Full Moon Downtown West Bend Ghost Walk, where we had the largest, most enthusiastic group ever. Washington County’s dedicated support of their paranormal history never ceases to amaze me.
Bright and early the next day (Saturday the 14th for those keeping track), I headed down to Averno College in Milwaukee for the 2019 edition of the Milwaukee Paracon. I was fortunate enough to present at the inaugural event back in 2015, and I’ve been able to appear at all but one, which I had to cancel due to personal strife.
The event is always a highlight of my year. I got to see a lot of beloved local colleagues, such as Allison Jorlin (milwaukeeghosts.com), Mike Huberty and Wendy Lynn Staat (See You On the Other Side podcast), Jay Bachochin (Finding Jay Bachochin), and MPC mastermind Tea Kurlos (Monster Hunters) to name only a few.
I had originally been scheduled to do a Washington County Paranormal presentation to celebrate the re-release of my first book, but I quickly found myself swept up into a Paranormal Author’s panel with new friends Shetan Noir and Tobias Wayland. While getting a chance to talk about my process for writing Goatman: Flesh or Folklore? I also had an opportunity to learn some methods used by Noir in her new book Lake Monsters and Odd Creatures of the Great Lakes and Wayland’s soon-to-be released book on the Great Lakes Mothman who recently terrorized Chicagoland.
My presentation about Washington County Paranormal did indeed happen, and I had a great time talking about Goatman, and the Old Courthouse Museum’s electrifying spirit “George.”
The biggest highlight was meeting all the enthusiastic people that dropped by my vendor’s table. The nicest thing about being in this field is meeting people and learning what inspired their interest in topics that a lot of people look down upon.
If you missed this year’s conference, please keep an eye on Milwaukeeparacon.com for information on the 2020 event!
Back on August 26th, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on Haunted Heartland, a wonderful paranormal program which airs on Milwaukee’s WXRW! If you missed it, you can listen to HERE!
Just a quick note to folks in and around West Bend! I’ll be making an appearance at the West Bend Farmer’s Market on September 28th, 2019 from 7:30am to 11:00pm!
Drop in to All In Books and visit with me! The store will also be holding a raffle for two free passes to the Downtown West Bend Ghost Walk! See you there!
Details: Saturday, September 28, 2019 at 7:30 AM – 11 AM All In Books 136 N. Main Street West Bend, WI
With the 2019 Downtown West Bend Ghost Walk season kicking off on September 7th, my mind has been wandering back to seasons past. Guiding these walks is a lot of fun for a lot of reasons. It allows me to tell stories, it allows me to meet open minded people, but it also sometimes allows a large group to experience paranormal activity.
Before I get into exactly what I mean, please understand no
guarantee can be made that anyone will experience unexplainable phenomena on a
walk. In fact, most walks happen without anyone reporting anything peculiar. I
especially never experience it, because my back is always to the alleged haunt—though
I’ve had a few occasions where people shriek and take pictures over my
shoulder.
However, usually a couple of times a year, one or more tour
patrons are fortunate enough—or unfortunate depending on your point of view—to
see, hear, or even feel something. I’ve
been waiting to share a particular event for a while, as it occurred between
stops on the walk, thus it is rarely told.
It was a few years back, on an early October Saturday night. It was a very small walking group, thanks to some terrible, unseasonably cold drizzle. Only three patrons had proven sturdy enough to endure the unpredictable Wisconsin weather. As the tour neared its conclusion, the weather began to clear. We left the exterior of the Old West Bend Theater and we marched back towards our meeting place in front of History Center of Washington County on 5th and Chestnut. We were silently walking past the corner of 5th and Walnut when one of the young women cried out. I turned around to see if someone had fell, and she was looking at the other two women who were following a good eight or nine feet behind her, talking amongst themselves.
“Did you just touch me!?” she asked urgently.
I had turned quickly and knew there was no way they could have been within
arm’s length of her, nor had they been paying the slightest attention to anyone
but each other. The two young women looked at each other in confusion, and said
they hadn’t.
According to the alarmed patron, as we got a few feet beyond
the crosswalk, she’d felt a large, heavy human hand rest itself on the middle
of her back, and move to the right, as if brushing something from her clothing.
The woman was very disturbed by the encounter. She’d not
expected to have physical contact with paranormal phenomena, especially when we
weren’t even in front of a (known) haunted location. After having explained
what had happen, she regained her composure and we walked on and finished the
tour. As I told the final story of the night, she remained on guard, as did the
others, who were now nearly as frightened as she was.
I suppose it just goes to show you, when you go out seeking the
paranormal, sometimes it seeks you. One woman found that out first hand, when
she became to first person to experience the phantom hand of 5th
Ave.
Things are really gearing up as Autumn quickly approaches!
I’ll be speaking at the USS Liberty Memorial Public Library in Grafton, Wisconsin August 27th at 6pm! All the details are on the library’s website. The event is free to attend. Please drop by and say hello!
Goatman: The Midnight Delivery #1 by Tim Vargulish! Tim is a hilarious and talented indy comic creator who’s written and drawn numerous comics about everyone’s favorite hoofed crypid super hero!
If you like Goatman, and you love comics, go support Tim’s publishing efforts! Copies of this great comic, and many others can be obtained by visiting Goatman Comics on Facebook!
I believe this is why Holy Hill Basilica is located here. It is some kind of vortex and it’s possible people are seeing interdimensional beings and elementals.
I just finished watching an episode of The Dead Files on The Travel Channel. They helped a family who has a horse farm right below Holy Hill which sounds like it is in this area. The people were being haunted by a shadow figure and Amy Allan had a sketch done of the shadow being and it looked exactly like this. She said that area is a vortex and the land is sacred, yet doomed. It tries to suck people in and make it become part of the land. Several people have died while visiting holy hill. The original owner of these people’s property, last name Wren went insane there back in the 1880’s. The episode is On Demand the 9-26-19 episode.
