Chasing Ghosts with Brad Blair

As kids, Brad Blair and his friends swapped ghost stories on the playground, rode their bikes to the library to check out books about Bigfoot and UFOs and eventually graduated to what they called “spooking”: piling into a car with a Ouija board and heading for abandoned houses and old country cemeteries.

“We were the paranormal geeks,” Blair said. Decades later, that hasn’t changed. Blair and his buddies still spend their time walking on the Upper Peninsula’s strange side, only with better equipment and more methodical investigations. And along the way, Blair has turned his lifelong fascination with the spooky, weird and unexplained into a career.

Blair and childhood friends Steve LaPlante and Tim Ellis returned to Sault Ste. Marie after college, at which point they realized they’d outgrown their teenage approach to “spooking.”

“We’re adults now,” Blair remembers thinking. “If we’re out wandering around in abandoned houses, we’re gonna get arrested.”

So they founded the Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society and began investigating reported hauntings and other unexplained phenomena more seriously, with a focus on Sault Ste. Marie, a place that’s rich in weird and spooky questions. 

Where History and Mystery Meet

Born and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Blair has spent most of his life in Michigan’s oldest city. He started working in tourism at age 14 and has been in the industry since 1988, giving him plenty of opportunities to see his hometown through visitors’ eyes.

Sault Ste. Marie’s human history started far earlier than its 1668 founding as a French settlement. Indigenous communities had lived in the region for thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and Blair is fascinated by the layers of legend and lore that have accumulated around the St. Marys River and the Great Lakes.

That includes stories of Mishipeshu, the underwater panther of Anishinaabe tradition, along with more recent tales of mysterious creatures.

Every Great Lake, Blair points out, has its own sea serpent stories. The St. Marys River even has one of its own: “Leroy,” a creature described in local lore as a massive serpent with a long red mane. 

Bigfoot, of course, factors heavily into any conversation about the Upper Peninsula supernatural. Blair admits that he’s sympathetic to the idea that Sasquatch is the real deal - there’s just too much evidence to discount, he said. 

But no matter his personal interest, skepticism is central to the way he and his fellow investigators approach every case. “I really wanna see the body before I believe it’s there,” he said. “We go in with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you don’t, you’re a fan, not an investigator.”

As paranormal television has become more popular, Blair has watched attitudes change. Years ago, homeowners often wanted investigations kept quiet. Today, some people are disappointed when the team finds a perfectly normal explanation for whatever goes bump in the night.

But for the most part, paranormal investigations can look surprisingly ordinary. Hear mysterious banging in the walls? Check the plumbing. Lights behaving strangely? Look at the electrical system. An electromagnetic meter lights up in the corner? Make sure there isn’t an old microwave nearby. “A lot of the time, we explain things away,” Blair said.

Still, reports of strange footprints, unexplained hair samples and sightings in the U.P. are enough to keep him curious. And every once in a while, the team encounters something they can’t easily explain.

A Voice from the Valley Camp

One of Blair’s favorite places to investigate is the SS Valley Camp, the retired Great Lakes freighter now docked along the Sault Ste. Marie waterfront.

The team has returned many times over the years, recording unexplained sounds and what they describe as shadowy figures. But one experience in the ship’s engine and coal-storage area still stands out.

The setting itself makes it easy to imagine the vessel’s working years. Deep below deck, crew members once shoveled coal into the engines in a space that would have been hot, dirty and dusty.

During one investigation, Blair and his team heard a gruff cough. “Did you hear that?” Blair asked. Another investigator answered that it sounded like a man coughing, and the group didn’t think much more of it until they played back the audio recording and clearly heard a gruff male voice - that they hadn’t heard at the time - respond, “I am coughing.” 

“It’s one of those moments you just get a big grin and your jaw kind of drops,” Blair said.

For him, that jolt is part of what has kept paranormal investigation interesting for so many years. He compares it to an extreme sport: long stretches of searching and waiting punctuated, occasionally, by something that sends the adrenaline rushing.

Sharing the Sault's Stranger Side

These days, Blair spends almost as much time telling paranormal stories as investigating them.

He’s the author of three books, including Yoopernatural Haunts: From the Case Files of the Upper Peninsula Paranormal Research Society, written from decades of investigations; Great Lakes Monsters and Mysteries, co-written with Ellis; and Paranormal Justice, which explores cases where claims of paranormal activity have found their way into courts and legislatures.

Another book, focused on the historical and creepy side of Sault Ste. Marie, is in the works.

Blair and Ellis have also brought those stories out onto the streets of “The Soo” with their Sault Ste. Marie Haunts and History Tour. The experience mixes local history with tales of haunted buildings, UFOs, Bigfoot, sea monsters and other oddities connected to the city Blair has spent a lifetime exploring. 

They've even taken the stories onto the water, partnering with Famous Soo Locks Boat Tours for excursions along the St. Marys River. It all circles back to the same curiosity that sent Blair and his friends pedaling to the library in search of Bigfoot books decades ago. You can learn more about the books, tours and other paranormal events at yoopernaturalhaunts.com.

Spend enough time in the Upper Peninsula, and you quickly learn that every lighthouse, old freighter, stretch of forest and Great Lakes shoreline has a story. Some are documented in history books, while others are a little harder to explain. 

And Brad Blair is still happily looking for both.