Paranormal investigations planned in McGregor
Author and psychic Adrian Lee and The International Paranormal Society will lead paranormal investigations in McGregor in late July. In partnership with the McGregor Historical Society, the findings will be developed into a haunted walking tour, short book and television episode. (Submitted photo)
The team hopes to investigate and film at least eight or nine buildings—with three to four investigations per day—over one weekend in McGregor. Investigations will last two to three hours and largely focus on Main Street buildings. Adrian Lee described the work as “science based and respectful,” with an emphasis on history. (Submitted photo)
Findings will be shared through haunted tour, book, ‘Unscripted Paranormal’ TV show
By Audrey Posten, Times-Register
McGregor’s history and charming 19th century buildings have long given the town a mysterious, haunted air—one it plays up each fall through a Halloween parade and festival. An upcoming multi-day paranormal investigation will shed further light on some of McGregor’s earlier inhabitants, yielding findings that will be developed into a haunted tour, short book and television episode.
Author and psychic Adrian Lee and The International Paranormal Society will lead the investigations, in partnership with the McGregor Historical Society.
“We’re doing these investigations primarily because the town wants a Halloween or haunted walk that can be done all year long. To be able to instigate a haunted walk, we need to investigate the buildings,” Lee explained. “I like the idea, and I’ve never seen it done before, of investigating an entire town. If the town opens up to us and allows us access to the most historic buildings, we can access all the pioneers, all the earliest residents, people who worked in the shops and businesses.”
Lee founded The International Paranormal Society, a real-world organization that investigates the paranormal from a scientific perspective. He and members based in the Midwest, along with a production team, plan to be in McGregor Friday through Sunday, July 26-28, to investigate and also film for the TV show “Unscripted Paranormal.”
“The production team saw what McGregor looked like when they did searches for the town on the internet and said ‘We want to come,’” Lee said.
They hope to investigate at least eight or nine buildings—with three to four investigations per day—over that weekend. Efforts will focus largely on Main Street, where the walk will be held. Some building owners have already signed on, and Lee welcomes others, even if the property is outside downtown.
“If you’ve got an amazing story and definitely got a ghost in your house, there’s no reason I can’t talk about that while I’m standing on Main Street,” he said.
The team will spend two to three hours at each location, utilizing Lee’s psychic abilities as well as equipment.
“The team brings with them decades and decades of experience. We have some of the best tech experts, some of the best experts in audio recording,” Lee shared.
Investigations can be performed throughout the day or evening, but ideally in as quiet and controlled an environment as possible to limit potential contamination of evidence.
Noted Lee: “Ghosts and spirits are just as likely to appear during the daytime as they are during the night. We don’t need long. A couple of hours in each property would tell us what we need to know.”
Findings will be shared with building owners, and the team may even go live on social media, allowing people to view parts of the investigation in real time.
Lee described the investigations as “science based and respectful.”
“There’s no drama,” he said. “I’m a historian, and we’re looking from a historical and scientific perspective to access previous owners and residents of those properties to gain historical knowledge and research. My books, like Mysterious Midwest and Mysterious Minnesota, are based on that.”
That’s what sets “Unscripted Paranormal” apart from other shows, according to Lee.
“I want to emphasize we’re not running around screaming, doing Scooby Doo. What people see in paranormal television shows isn’t what we’re doing. This will be 100 percent real. We don’t make anything up. It’s not scripted,” he explained. “If we go into a building and nothing happens, we’ll tell people nothing happened. It doesn’t mean it isn’t haunted; it means it didn’t happen for the two hours we were there. But I can’t think of a single time I’ve been in a building in this country where nothing has happened. It’s just a case of how much has happened. I guarantee things will happen. I bet there will be more information than we can possibly write in a book or edit into an episode.”
The paranormal investigation will likewise make the haunted walk more authentic. The film crew, said Lee, will validate the paranormal evidence the team discovers.
“In many haunted tours, it’s all rhetoric and hearsay and urban legend. We’re actually going to be able to give those tours and say, ‘This is what’s in those buildings because I was the person who found it and here’s the evidence.’ We can actually play that evidence during the walk,” he stated.
To further protect the integrity of the investigation, Lee likes to know the bare minimum upon entering the property. The building’s age as well as the original owner or prominent inhabitant generally suffice. It’s afterward that Lee digs into history.
“It’s nice when names and information come through, to then go and research them and find they existed in the town, find a photograph of them and say, ‘This person came through. This is who they are and their name. You can listen to them say it on the equipment,’” Lee said.
Conducting the investigations in July will give the team enough time to prepare a haunted walking tour by this fall. Further details on dates will be provided at a later time.
The tours will not only raise money for the McGregor Historical Society, said Lee, but draw new visitors to the McGregor Historical Museum and McGregor as a whole.
“We’re going to bring people into town for the haunted walks who normally wouldn’t come to town and they’re going to be drinking in the bars and eating in the restaurants and staying in hotels and buying things in the shops. It also allows me an opportunity to produce a small book, a novella, of my findings. It’s an opportunity for businesses to be able to sell that book and generate income from that. On the back of that, we can film the show ‘Unscripted Paranormal,’ and that allows people from all over the world to know about McGregor and access that town,” Lee shared. “It’s all about raising the profile of the town and highlighting it as a tourist destination.”
More information about Lee, his team and their work can be found at www.unscriptedparanormal.com. If you own property in McGregor and would like for it be to considered for a paranormal investigation, please fill out this form to provide more information, which the team will use to help make their selections. A link will also be shared on the McGregor Historical Museum Facebook page.
