Brent Bader at Illinois State University’s Daily Vidette has written an excellent article about my new book, Ghostlore of Illinois Colleges and Universities. Thanks, Brent!
We’ve all gathered around campfires to hear friends tell ghost stories which were never fact-checked or investigated, but Michael Kleen is doing the research and compiled a list of “ghostlore” present at many Illinois colleges, including Illinois State University.
“I’ve written about other kinds of haunted places in the past, but until now, no one has devoted an entire book to Illinois college ghostlore,” Kleen said. “It’s a celebration of what makes our colleges and universities unique.”
This is a topic that Kleen is quite familiar with, having written many books about the subject, but by specifying the stories that took place on college campuses he is going back to the very location that originally inspired his hunt.
“I have been collecting and researching folklore and ghost stories for more than a decade,” Kleen said. “Although I’ve always been interested in reading ghost stories, I didn’t start writing about them until I went to college at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. I started collecting them and publishing what I found on the internet.”
Kleen said he found that Eastern was host to some of the most popular ghost stories in the state, which inspired him to look beyond the campus and see what other colleges offered in that realm. The author made sure to detail all of his findings in a way that others could prove or follow up on his work.
M.A. Kleen 