“Serial killer ghosts, huh?”
Brad rumbled. “We got one
of those too.”I’m immediately interested. True crime
and the paranormal are two of my biggest
interests, and when they cross over,
well...
“What do you know about John Wayne
Gacy?” Barry asks me.
I was familiar with the case, mainly
because Gacy regularly appeared in those
top ten lists of serial killers you saw
online. He had killed more than 30 men
and boys, in and around the Chicago
area, burying most of them in the
crawlspace underneath his house, and
dumping others off a bridge into the
river late at night. Some of them remain
unidentified to this day.
Gacy was a sadist, with a penchant
for brutal sexual assault and torture.
Once he had tricked them into wearing
a set of handcuffs with the promise of
showing them a magic trick (“the trick,”
Gacy would smirk, “is to have the key in
your pocket”) the poor young men were
subjected to a horrific ordeal, before
finally being strangled to death. Gacy’s
reign of terror finally ended in 1994,
after his time on death row culminated
in his execution by lethal injection.
He went to his grave unrepentant and
in denial, insisting that he wasn’t gay
(despite having served time in prison for
sodomy) and that he couldn’t possibly
have killed any of those victims. He had
been framed, Gacy insisted, by some of
his employees.And so, after a bucket of Kentucky
Fried Chicken and a large Diet Coke (his
insisted-upon last meal) John Wayne
Gacy was sent to his grave. And there it
should have ended.....but it didn’t.“Hang on a minute,” I say to Brad. “I
thought Gacy’s house was demolished.”“It was. They flattened it after all the
bodies were taken away. Somebody
bought the lot and built a new house
there.”“Well, firstly, I’ve got to ask if they’re
crazy,” I shake my head. “Who builds a
house on top of a place like that? And
secondly, how the hell did you manage to
get in there to investigate?”As so often turns out to be the case, the
truth was stranger than fiction. I don’t
know anything about the house built on
Gacy’s old lot being vacant — though I’d
be amazed if it wasn’t. According to the
Klinges, one of the world’s most depraved
serial killers was actually haunting...a
movie theater.Owned by a wonderful couple named
Robbin and Norma, the movie theater
is located in a very small Illinois
town called Auburn. When they took
ownership of it, the place was what you
might call a ‘fixer-upper.’ Even today, it
is still a work in progress. Since moving
in, Robbin and Norma have spent
countless hours renovating the R Movie
Theater to some semblance of its former
glory.Robbin is well-known among members
of the paranormal community, being
the owner of the infamous Ashmore
Estates. When he and Norma began to
notice strange things things happening
around their home, they brought in
some trusted psychic medium friends
of theirs. At first, the news was exciting:
the sensitives claimed to be picking
up on the presence of a male spirit
inside the theater, a man who went by
the name of John Wayne. Robbin was
ecstatic.