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 Bachelors 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. httpwww.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.
