If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?
Well, if it’s pertaining to the unexplainable, the Wausau Paranormal Research Society is a good place to start. These local investigators won’t rid your house of spirits and ghosts, but they may be able to offer some explanation of the events and guidance to reduce frightful encounters.
Established in 2000, the WPRS is a veteran investigative team with more than 81 years of combined experience in the field. They conduct professional investigations of reported phenomena not only in the Wausau area, but across the state.
While the subjects of their investigations are paranormal in nature, the WPRS’s investigative techniques and equipment are science-based. Each paranormal investigation starts with an attempt to rule out practical explanations, rather than seeking out the supernatural.
“You can’t just assume something is haunted going into a place, or just assume you’re going to have experiences,” said Shawn Blaschka, WPRS director. “You never go to a case that way. You’re always going to be skeptical to a degree, but have an open mind ... and work scientifically off of facts.”
Blaschka developed an interest in the paranormal at an early age, so when the society was founded 26 years ago, he jumped at the opportunity to turn his fascination into a hobby.
“Ironically, I read the cover story they had on City Pages,” he said. “It was about their group and they were looking for people, so I applied and that’s how I got my start ... I was so excited I couldn’t apply fast enough.”
Growing up, Blaschka was fascinated by perhaps the most famous paranormal investigator, Scooby-Doo.
“That sounds goofy, but they’d go out and find mysteries and solve them, and there was some paranormal stuff they’d run into,” he said.
But what brought the supernatural out of the TV screen and into reality were the stories Blaschka heard from his father, who worked at Channel 7 WSAW in the 1960s when it was headquartered at the Plumer Mansion on the corner of Fifth and Franklin streets. An imposing Gothic structure built for a lumber baron, the mansion was also home to countless ghost stories before it was demolished in 1972. Like many employees, Blaschka’s dad had unexplained experiences in the building, and shared them with his family — much to young Shawn’s delight.
“He had seen a couple different types of spirits in that house. He saw a woman in a turn of the century dress, kind of a bluish colored dress,” Blaschka said. “Actually one of his stories was he was working in the lobby during the day, cleaning the floor and he felt a need to look up and he said he looked up over his shoulder and he saw this woman floating right through the lobby — all the way through and past the reception desk and then kind of right through the wall.
“He said he could remember her looking at him as though her eyes were following, watching while she passed him. He said he didn’t recall seeing feet — she was just kind of floating across. There was another employee right after that came in there and said, ‘Who was the lady?’ And obviously he saw it too, but he thought it was somebody living, but it was definitely not.”
These, and many other similar stories, triggered a larger, more open-minded curiosity in Blaschka at an early age.
“What’s going on? Who are these people he’s seeing?” Blaschka said. “You start asking these questions to yourself and I don’t know. That was a big impact to me.”
Decades later, it’s still those words — “What’s going on? What are people seeing?” — that start every WPRS investigation. Not unlike an episode of “Scooby-Doo,” most cases start with someone reaching out about an unexplained phenomenon occurring (most commonly) in their home.
“We’ll find out what’s going on, get all the facts and details of everything that you can collect, and then assess from there if there is enough going on here for us to investigate,” he said. “In some cases there’s not enough going on and we might recommend that they log things for a while and see if there’s any patterns to what’s happening.”
Even if all the details add up, the investigators need to take the reporter into account, too.
“It’s unfortunate, but there are people that look for attention. Or people that have psychological issues going on or they take medications that causes them to see things that you know to them are very real, but they’re not probably real,” Blaschka said. “In a way you got to be a little bit of a psychologist too because you got to weed out those types of situations.”
Once they do come to a location to investigate, the WPRS deploys technology to rule out all the different factors they can detect. If the incident clears those explanations, they start searching for ways to identify or document the supernatural element. The success of that part varies widely. But when all is said and done, WPRS provides the individual with a full report of their findings, free of charge.
“We’ve never charged ever for any investigation,” Blaschka said. “That’s forbidden. We don’t do that. We’re not going to take money to investigate. That, to me, shows questionable credibility when you’re doing that.”
Blaschka said these investigations can often raise more questions than they answer. But plenty of homeowners are relieved to know what they are experiencing isn’t just in their head.
While the investigators do not clear houses of spirits, they can offer some guidance to individuals experiencing paranormal activity. The first step, Blaschka said, is usually simple communication.
“A lot of times people are afraid to talk to whatever is there, or say anything directly ... but honestly ignoring whatever is happening a lot of times seems to spur more activity,” Blaschka said. “Let’s say you’re a spirit in a home, you passed away and you’re staying behind because of some reason ... if you’re trying to communicate somehow with whoever is around you and if whoever is around you is ignoring you and is not responding, you’re probably going to try even harder to get that communication with them. So I think a big key is talking to whatever is there, laying down some ground rules so that there’s an understanding. ‘I don’t mind you being here but these are things I don’t like you doing.’ And as weird as that sounds, we’ve done this many times and it has quieted things down.”
Ultimately, the goal is to help educate individuals seeking help and give them a better understanding of what is happening in their house.
“Your house is supposed to be your safe place, your comfortable place,” Blaschka said. “When you’ve got something like that happening in your own house ... that’s kind of where we come in — we’re trying to make people understand a lot of these things so that they can feel a little bit more comfortable in their own skin.”
For more information on the paranormal society, visit wprs.net.
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