Joliet investigator on the hunt for Will County’s top ghostly haunts

Lockport — Editor’s note: Whether or not you believe in ghosts and hauntings, this is one of several spooky tales of local lore that Shaw Local News Network will be sharing with readers in the spirit of Halloween.

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who’re you going to call?

If your neighborhood is in the Joliet area, you might want to call Blood Moon Paranormal, Joliet’s own paranormal investigation team.

Zak Wenzel, the nine-member group’s founder, said he has been interested in the supernatural since he was 8 years old, when he saw a painting in a friend’s basement change its facial expression when viewed in a reflection, he said.

“That was my first experience,” Wenzel said. “Then, when I was 12, I watched a ghost-hunting show on TV and got more interested. Then, a friend and his sister invited me to come on a ghost tour in Peoria, and I was hooked.”

Wenzel, now 23, started Blood Moon Paranormal in 2015. He has traveled around the country visiting reportedly haunted sites to document or debunk ghostly activity and sharing the group’s investigation tapes on YouTube.

Locally, Wenzel has done investigations in two locations that he said “got very strong results:” the Old Joliet Prison and Embers Tap House, 933 S. State St., Lockport.

“I think the Old Joliet Prison might be the most haunted place in Illinois, if not one of the most haunted places in the country,” Wenzel said. “I don’t usually claim to see ghosts with the naked eye, but while we were investigating there, I was alone in the cellblock, and I heard footsteps above me. I looked up, and for a flash I saw a white figure looking down at me from the second floor, and then it was gone a second later.”

Despite the results, Blood Moon Paranormal has not been allowed to return to the prison since the Joliet Area Historical Museum, which manages the site, stopped allowing private ghost hunts to take place this summer.

When asked why the museum has halted paranormal events, JAHM CEO Greg Peerbolte said that the museum still is allowing some public tours to go forward that discuss ghosts and the paranormal; however, it is limiting events to those hosted by “pre-vetted, trusted partners” and is evaluating requests on a case-by-case basis.

Peerbolte said that the museum canceled some of the scheduled events as part of a “multifaceted decision,” which was based on guidelines set by the Association of Carceral Sites and Museums, an organization that deals with historic prisons around the country.

“We didn’t adopt all their policies,” Peerbolte said. “Some sites are much more restrictive, but we’ve done a lot of listening, and we want to make sure content is handled respectfully and that the site’s history isn’t exaggerated.”

Peerbolte also noted that the decision eliminated difficulties with finding staff to work at the prison overnight and prevented legal complications with proper filming permits.

Spirits live on?

While places like the Joliet prison draw the attention of many paranormal investigators, there are other reports of haunted sites to be explored, especially in cities with many historic buildings such as Joliet and Lockport.

Wenzel said that although it may not be the “most haunted place in Illinois,” after doing his investigation in May – the first to be done in the building – he believes that at least one spirit calls Lockport’s Embers Tap House home.

“We spent about 12 hours investigating and interviewing the staff, and we got a lot of results,” Wenzel said. “Things were responding to us directly.”

Wenzel said he and his team found more than one spiritual presence there in their investigation, although staff members have been aware of a single spirit that they first asked the group to investigate.

Before becoming Embers, the 130-year-old building at the corner of State and 10th streets was home to Dreams bar on the first floor and the Towpath Inn. Today, the third floor is home to Embers’ speakeasy, where multiple staff members have reported strange happenings.

“We’ve had the TVs turn off randomly while we’re pouring the shots. Once, it happened three times in one night. We also had a box of glasses – which was not teetering at all – fall of a shelf in the back,” Embers general manager Nick Mauro said.

Other staff members have reported hearing footsteps from rooms nobody was in and seeing sinks turn on and off on their own.

Perhaps the strangest incident, however, happened in October 2021, when Mauro managed to get video evidence of what appears to be an orb bouncing throughout the establishment.

“I had just closed up one night, and I was going over the books in the office when the motion detectors on the security cameras started going off,” he said. “I looked at the monitors, and up in the speakeasy I see this white orb flying around the room. All the doors were locked, but it seemed to be bouncing around through the walls onto the monitors from the other rooms up there before it just disappeared.”

It’s like fishing. Sometimes you have to wait around for a long time, and sometimes you don’t get any bites.”

—  Zak Wenzel, paranormal investigator with Blood Moon Paranormal

Mauro recorded the security feed on his cellphone and shared it with Shaw Local News Network.

“It really spooked me,” Mauro said. “I was not a believer in ghosts at all until I started working here, but now I do.”

During Blood Moon’s investigation, the team used its own motion detectors along with recording devices and other specialized ghost-hunting equipment.

“A lot of our equipment is based around the electromagnetic spectrum,” Wenzel said. “I believe when we pass, our energy goes into the electromagnetic spectrum, and that’s what the spirit is, so ghosts are able to manipulate that.”

Although Wenzel’s team had multiple devices react to supposed ghostly activity during its overnight stay in May, including hearing both male and female voices responding to prompts through a radio scanning device called a “spirit box,” a short demonstration of the equipment in September yielded no significant results.

“It’s like fishing,” Wenzel said. “Sometimes you have to wait around for a long time, and sometimes you don’t get any bites.”

Although Wenzel stands by his conclusion that there are ghosts at Embers, he said not every location he’s investigated provides evidence that it’s haunted.

“Some places people think are haunted, and they just aren’t,” Wenzel said.

Rather than being discouraged by those investigations, Wenzel said, he believes that sharing those negative results on the Blood Moon Paranormal social media pages gives the organization credibility.

“It’s hard to just take my word for it, but we include the places where we don’t get anything to help authenticate the ones where we do,” he said.