Ghost Research Society

The Ghost Research Society was started in 1977 by Martin V. Riccardo, better known for his leadership of the informal group pursuing Vampire Studies, and other youthful friends interested in things occult. Most lived in Chicago or the suburbs to the south and west. The organization focused interest on ghosts, poltergeists, and hauntings. In 1982, Riccardo turned over the society to Dale D. Kaczmarek (b. 1952) who assumed its presidency. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, Kaczmarek has become a well-known personality in the Chicagoland psychic community.

The society began with research into the many stories of ghosts and hauntings in Chicago and organized informal visits to local sites such as Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, Resurrection Cemetery, and Robinson Woods. They also sought out contemporary reports of hauntings and investigated incidents of ghostly appearances. Kaczmarek began to appear on talk shows and his adventures have over the years been the subject of numerous news features on television and in newspapers. Media appearances gave him and the society some level of fame and other ghosthunters from around the country joined their efforts to his. The society gathered members and established chapters in other states. State coordinators currently reside in five states. Relationships have also been developed with the Ghost Club, the older ghost research group in England.

Kaczmarek has hoped to prove the existence of life after death through his investigations. He has gathered a collection of spirit photographs and pursued ghosts on numerous field trips. However, he has been largely cut off from contemporary parapsychology. While such ghost hunting as the society has pursued was popular in the early days of psychical research, contemporary parapsychology has found it a deadend, and scholarly journals have ignored its findings. The society publishes its own periodical, the Ghost Trackers Newsletter, which is now issued three times a year. It contains reports of ghosts, poltergeists, and hauntings from around the world.

The Ghost Research Society may be contacted at P. O. Box 205, Oak Lawn, IL 60454-0205. Website: http://www.ghostresearch.org.

Sources:

The Ghost Research Society. http://www.ghostresearch.org. March 4, 2000.

Jarvis, Sharon, ed. Dead Zones . New York: Warner Books,n.d.

——. True Tales of the Unknown: The Uninvited. New York: Bantam Books, 1985.