Spooky STL: Paranormal Researchers Seek Out City's Dark Corners

ST. LOUIS, MO — It's the time of year for spooky stories, and Lacey Reinhardt and Mark Farley have plenty. They are the founders of the St. Louis Paranormal Research Society, a local company specializing in haunted history, ghost tours, and investigating creepy buildings at night. They have staked out forgotten cemeteries, gloomy Victorian mansions, and a cursed bridge — supposedly the site of dark rituals.

The pair have always had a fascination with things that give them goosebumps and make their hairs stand on end. It all started for Farley when he moved into a haunted house. "I used to work nights for American Airlines as a line mechanic," he said. "I would go to work at night and everything would be turned off, but when I came back in the morning, the basement door would be open and the lights would be on. It got to the point where I had a marker board on the fridge and I'd write down the exact time I turned the lights off."

He describes the moment he was convinced he had a ghost. "I was at a Fourth of July picnic and I started talking to buddy I hadn't seen in a long time. He read the meter for the electric company, and we went to high school together so he knew it was my house. He said, 'I didn't know you had a daughter, Mark.' I told him I didn't, and he said, 'Who is that little girl that waves to me every time I go by to read the meter?"

It started much earlier for Reinhardt. She described herself as the "Marilyn Munster" of an eccentric family growing up. "Other parents read their kids fairly tales — my dad was reading me 'Frankenstein,'" she said. "So, I was always open to the idea of ghosts."

The two met over their passion for urban exploration — often shortened to "urbex" in the community — and decided to partner up. In exploring abandoned buildings, they both said they'd encountered things they couldn't explain and paranormal investigations arose naturally from their curiosity. "We run ghost tours as a business to subsidize our investigation efforts," Farley said.

Here are some of the creepiest places Farley and Reinhardt have investigated.

Lemp Mansion & Bottling Plant

St. Louis is a beer town, thanks to two things: its natural limestone caves — the perfect place to store beer before the invention of refrigeration — and the Lemp family. In the early 1800s, the German beer barons built several breweries and bottling plants in St. Louis, as well as a family mansion. The entire neighborhood where that mansion stands today was build atop lost cemeteries, the paranormal investigators said, and the mansion itself is supposedly haunted by the ghosts of several family members who committed suicide or met untimely deaths there. At night, the dimly-lit bottling plant is home to a shadow figure that's been observed by some of the team's investigators.

Fox Theatre

Hamilton' tickets aren't the only apparitions people are chasing at the Fox Theatre. The Paranormal Research Society was invited to do an overnight investigation and some tour-goers reported an eerie presence and sightings of a ghostly woman in white dancing on stage. A man in a suit and slicked back hair has also been sighted, as well as ghost lights and ghostly voices on electronic recorders — something ghost hunters call EVP.

Alton YWCA

In the 1930s, the Young Women's Christian Association building in Alton, Ill. was the site of a murder-suicide, Farley said. "There was a maintenance man — his wife was the cleaning lady — and they would bring their daughter with them at night while they worked. The maintenance man thought the daughter had drowned in the swimming pool and in a panic ran to his workshop. The mother pulled the daughter out and revived her. When the daughter went to find her dad, he thought the daughter was a ghost and stabbed her with a screw driver. When the mother jumped in to try to stop him, he ended up stabbing her to death too."

Farley and his team have conducted several tours and overnight investigations at the Alton YWCA. "We've actually followed apparitions through the building," he said.

Hernando's Bridge

Supposedly the site where a married man hanged himself and his family after being seduced by a witch, the old covered bridge was replaced with a more modern one a few years ago. An urban legend says you can still see dark reflections of hanging bodies in the water on moonlit nights. "Mark and I went out there to explore the site," Reinhardt said. "And I just felt like lead. I couldn't even get out of the car. It was several months before I could go back."

Old Courthouse

On Halloween night, the St. Louis Paranormal Research Society will be allowed to present the first ever paranormal history tour in old St. Louis County Courthouse, a place with a haunted history even without the ghosts. Auctions for enslaved people were held on the site, suffragettes were tried in the courthouse, and the infamous Dred Scott case was heard there before being appealed to the Supreme Court.

Tickets are selling on the groups website for $35 and are expected to sell out.

"We don't push our beliefs on anyone," Reinhardt said. "It's all about exploration. Many people come on our tours just for the historical aspect. They don't believe in ghosts whatsoever — and that's great too."

Image via Pixabay