Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: News

Nathan Koehler, sophomore, and Mike Kleen, graduate student, play the Goth trivia game during their Oct. 6 meeting. Karolina Strack/The Daily Eastern News

When Elizabeth Thurmond was a young girl, she saw a person going through her closet in the middle of the night.

She turned on the light and he was gone.

Ever since, the sophomore pre-chemical engineering major has been interested in the paranormal.

Thurmond joined the Ghost Club at Eastern this year. Ghost Club is an outlet for those interested in paranormal activity.

"It seemed like fun," Thurmond said. "I've been interested in paranormal activity since I've been really young."

Michael Kleen, a history graduate student, formed the Ghost Club in 2004.

Kleen has always been interested in the paranormal, so when he came to Eastern he looked for places around Charleston known for hauntings or ghosts.

Kleen said he found there were many places like this around Coles County.

He advertised his interests one day and founded the Ghost Club as a result.

It is now open to all interested in the paranormal.

"Basically, the goal is to just have fun with these different locations around here," Kleen said. "There's a bunch of haunted places around Coles County. And so basically, I just take people on the weekends."

Kleen takes the club members on trips to local "haunted" sites throughout September and October.

His original intent was for the club to be active for a larger part of the year.

"I'd meant it to be a year round thing but it turns out that after Halloween nobody showed up anymore," Kleen said. "So, I just decided that it should only be, like, these two months in the fall. That's basically when most people are interested in it."

Thurmond said around Halloween the trips are more interesting and the ghost stories more abundant.

The Ghost Club has a different event every weekend.

Kleen said he likes to vary what they do. Sometimes they go on trips, sometimes they go camping and sometimes they have a game night. Often the club will conclude their event with a horror movie.

On their trips, Kleen said weird things have happened to the group.

He said usually, their odd experiences happen at Airtight Bridge, located in rural Coles County, about 4 miles northeast of Charleston.

Kleen said Airtight Bridge had been the local party spot for over 50 years until 1980 when a woman's torso was found near the bridge.

"So whoever killed her, like, severed her head and her hands and her feet and left the body there," Kleen said. "So, as you can imagine, that was, like, a big story so it's really, it's changed the way people think about the bridge."

Whenever the club goes to the bridge, Kleen said they always see really interesting things.

"We get chased by dogs a lot. People leave their dogs unleashed in their yard out in the rural area and they chase the car all the time," he said.

The last time Kleen and the club went to Airtight Bridge, they drove by a path that went into the woods.

Kleen said standing there out in the middle of nowhere was a man in a white nightgown holding a dog on a leash in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

Their experiences at Airtight Bridge do not end there.

"A couple of years ago, when I took people out there we got kind of lost because it's very hard to find," Kleen said. "We drove by this trailer and a woman and her daughter were like standing at the edge of the driveway just staring out into space."

He said it was pitch black and there were no lights on anywhere.

"We drove by and then we had to turn around and come back and this was like five-10 minutes later and they were still standing there," he said.

The ghost club's next trip will be this weekend to Saint Omer Cemetery.

Kleen said the cemetery is a popular site and supposedly there is a witch's grave there.

The cemetery is located in an area where a town once stood. The town however, died as a result of the railroad moving.

Fact box:
"Hauntings" around Coles County:
Bethel "Rag doll" Cemetery- Mattoon
Pemberton Hall - Charleston
Ashmore Estates - Ashmore
Kickapoo Cemetery - Charleston (south)
Airtight Bridge - Charleston (North)
St. Omer Cemetery - Ashmore

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