Lion Around gets spooked telling ghost stories

Monica Freeman and Gina Geliche found themselves back in the Jutila Center for this spooky episode of Lion Around. With its history of being a hospital and rumors of ghost stories, the uninhabited floors of Jutila seemed to be the place to conjure up some Halloween magic. Both non-believers in the supernatural, Freeman and Geliche tried to keep the stories as local as possible and would like to thank North Wind Books, Dr. Hilary-Joy Virtanen, and author Jennifer Billock for helping with the search for stories.

Covering some of the more obvious stories, like the Paulding Light and the Calumet Theatre, Freeman and Geliche brushed on some (possibly) lesser known stories like Lake Breeze Resort in Eagle Harbor, Phi Kappa Tau in Hancock, Jeffers High School in Painesdale and of course the Jutila Center.

Doubling as Finlandia’s art campus, many students stay late to work on projects, and some students have had unexplainable occurrences happen while staying past hours. One example happened to Geliche while she was working in one of the computer labs. “I had this strange feeling of being watched, so I sat at a certain computer so there was nothing behind me. The feeling didn’t go away so I got up and closed the door to the lab. After hearing the door knob rattle and a door slam I decided that I was done for the night.” Several other students heard the same door slam, while others have stated hearing sounds like someone is running and children laughing. Former Michigan Tech students have stayed the night at Jutila to test whether or not the building is haunted. The students did pick up some paranormal phenomena on their “ghostie contraptions” as Freeman refers to them, experiencing various temperature changes on the floor they were on.

Freeman and Geliche also talked about two mine cave-ins that happened around Crystal Falls at the turn of the 20th century. Ghostly phenomena have also been sighted in the areas around the mines. If the legends are true, Freeman and Geliche highly encourage seeing whether or not you can see the lights of mining helmets in the Michigamme River.

The hosts ended the recording talking about weird things that tend to be common place at the Servant Leadership House. Freeman and Geliche are not convinced the house is haunted, and that the strange things all have logical explanations attached to them. You can determine if Monica and Gina are wrong by listening to the entire podcast below. Geliche and Freeman, as well as the entire Lion Around crew, want to wish everyone a safe and spooky Halloween!

FINLANDIA PODCAST NETWORK

Thanks for checking out Finlandia Fridays, one of four podcasts in the Finlandia University Podcast Network. Finlandia Fridays is a weekly interview series talking about a wide range of Finlandia University topics. You can check out an archive at finlandia.edu/fridays. We also invite you to subscribe to the Finlandia Podcast Network wherever you get podcasts.

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