Paranormal investigator talks about Milwaukee’s haunts

As a child growing up in Berlin, Noah Leigh had a favorite holiday — Halloween, when he could indulge his interests in ghosts and the paranormal.

However, it wasn’t until he moved to Milwaukee for graduate school and saw a preview for the cable television show Ghost Hunters that he realized paranormal research was an actual occupation.

Then Leigh got serious.

A bench scientist with master’s degrees in epidemiology and cell biology from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Leigh in 2007 formed Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee.

The volunteer group of nine ghost hunters — among them other scientists and former law enforcement officers — investigate reportedly “haunted” sites in the city and throughout the Midwest.

PIM doesn’t charge for investigative services. The team finances its activities through donations and income from public investigations, such as the one Nov. 3–4 at Milwaukee’s Brumder Mansion B&B.

Leigh describes PIM as a “debunk-first group,” meaning that normal explanations for unexplained phenomena are thoroughly researched before specters are allowed to rear their ghostly heads.

WiG recently interviewed Leigh about PIM’s activities, haunted Milwaukee and things that go bump in the night.

WiG: How haunted is Milwaukee compared to other cities its size?

Noah Leigh: When it comes to claims of haunted locations, every place has them.

I wouldn’t consider Milwaukee to have any more claims than other cities. The difference is how those claims are marketed.

Some cities, such as Savannah, Georgia, embrace their claims of hauntings more than others, which make those claims better known.

As far as high concentrations of haunted locations in the United States, the further east you go the more places you will find claiming to be haunted. I attribute this to that fact that the eastern United States was colonized first, so older buildings and locations exist in the east.

Name some of Milwaukee’s haunts.

The best-known list would include the Pfister Hotel, The Rave, the Brumder Mansion, the Miller High Life Theatre (formerly the Milwaukee Auditorium), and the Pabst Mansion.

Milwaukee’s least-known haunts include the Chudnow Museum of Yesteryear and the Miller Caves (on the Miller Brewing Company campus).

The most interesting place I have ever investigated is Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky. Once a slaughterhouse, it was the location of several murders, a decapitation, a suicide and even an exorcism). In the Milwaukee area, it’s a tie between the Riverside Theater and the Miller High Life Theatre.

What causes a place to become haunted?

Traumatic events are the main ones. Things like a murder or suicide, or a place like a battlefield where a lot of people died can drive a haunting.

Another scenario involves people who passed away but spent a lot of their lives at a certain location coming back because they enjoyed that spot. There are claims of people who loved the theater returning after they died to occupy their favorite seat in the house.

Some of the more common locations for hauntings are prisons and hospitals due to the high rate of suffering and death. Bars also have a high rate of reported activity, especially those rumored to have been former Al Capone hangouts.

How many investigations does PIM conduct each year?

We used to average around 40 cases a year, but we do closer to 15 cases a year now.

We find evidence very infrequently on our investigations. This is due mainly to the controls we have in place to prevent ourselves from creating anomalous evidence. This is what separates our group from many other teams out there.

Have you or any of your team members ever seen a ghost or apparition?

I wouldn’t say that any of us has ever seen an apparition. I will say that some of us have seen some strange things that we couldn’t explain. However, they weren’t captured on video, so we don’t consider them to be evidence.

I witnessed one of my investigators being pushed down on two separate occasions during an investigation (at Bobby Mackey’s Music World) and that was a very interesting experience. It was exciting for the obvious reasons and disappointing because the first occurrence happened before we had video rolling and the second time there was another investigator standing in the way of the camera so you couldn’t clearly see it happen.

What signs should people look for if they think they are being haunted?

The standard things that you see in movies are generally incorrect. There are the claims of footsteps or feeling like you are being watched, but most often those are just house noises and a normal human response to being alone.

I have investigated huge hospitals and one-bedroom apartments. Claims can happen almost anywhere.

The most important thing to remember is that 99.99 percent of all claims have normal, rational explanations. That is always the first thing you should look for. Only after ruling out all other possibilities should you consider the paranormal.