AURORA, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — I might have had a conversation with a ghost.
It was late on a Sunday. I was at Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora with the Ghost Research Society (GRS), an Oak Lawn-based group that dates back to the ’70s and bills itself as a “clearing house for reports of ghosts, hauntings, poltergeist and life after death encounters.” They let one of my coworkers and myself join them on a paranormal investigation at the roundhouse, which was built in 1856 and has a reputation for unexplainable encounters.
I will do my best to explain.
We started in the dining room. It has two levels, high ceilings and over a dozen round tables. Our leader was GRS President Dale Kaczmarek, who has hunted ghosts for over half a century. He set up a ghost box — a device that scans AM and FM feeds in an attempt to communicate with spirits in real time. When he turned it on, sounds and voices began to come through the device.
We went around the table introducing ourselves, so that it may “encourage” a potential spirit to do the same. I can attest to hearing a child, a man and a woman’s voice. Some of it sounded like laughter, which flowed out of the device with a sort of chill. Among the words we could make out: “Matthew,” “help,” and “assault.”
GRS member Mari Huff asked, “Do you like trains?” and a voice replied “Oh Yeah.”
Two Brothers Roundhouse was built in 1856 for the Chicago and Aurora Railroad. For generations, the roundhouse in Aurora serviced and stored locomotives until the mid-20th century, when rail traffic declined. Though listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it was abandoned for decades until Bear’s legend Walter Payton bought it in 1995 and made it into the entertainment venue it is today. Today, it is owned by Two Brothers Brewing.
Jim Olson, a manager at Two Brothers Roundhouse, spoke to me about what he’s heard from staff about the unexplainable phenomena that have taken place there.
“I have one guy who said … he saw a little girl run across the room,” said Olson. “And there have been other stories of a guy with a lantern running around … They had one of my managers, about a year and a half ago, go up one of the back staircases. Same area. It was late at night, and something touched his shoulder and he looked back, and no one was there. Nobody.”
As for our potential ghosts, it appeared that they had a sense of humor to them, too. There were multiple times where we would ask questions, such as what their job was at the roundhouse. Their response: “boring.”
To even get a response at all, though, felt significant. I asked Kaczmarek to describe the science behind his process.
“Einstein said that we have an energy in our bodies that cannot be created nor destroyed,” Kaczmarek said. “So measurable energy is biochemical energy. So what happens to the energy when we die can't be destroyed? Does it hang around? Does it go to heaven or hell? … So if there is a ghost sort of hanging around for whatever reason, we might be able to pick up that ghost using this equipment because there will be a slight deviation in the electromagnetic field.”
After some time, the first ghost box we used ran out of power, so Kaczemarek shifted to a new, battery powered device. He turned it on, and we continued to chat casually until we heard something that was much more familiar: my name. Or, at least, something that sounded exactly like, “Arielle.”
I whipped my head toward the ghost box, as it sputtered vowels and attempted to form a sentence. My colleague, Sara Dingmann, was with me.
“Did that just say your name?” she asked.
The ghost box kept sputtering noises, but we were able to make part of it out: “R-Ee-L … Hi.”
To hear more from my experience with the Ghost Research Society, listen to Looped In: Chicago on the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts!
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