It lives! Paranormal Museum to stay in former Cooper Center past Halloween

Oct. 30—Dracula. Freddy. Jason. Zombies. The season for Halloween, horror movies, and ghost stories are about things thought gone that just keep coming back. The stay of one of Somerset's creepiest attractions in its current home is now among them.

Kyle Kadel, owner of the International Paranormal Museum and Research Center in Somerset, had previously been told that he could continue operating through October 31 in the otherwise vacated John Sherman Cooper Community Arts Center building, as the Pulaski County Library Board is currently making efforts to find a new buyer for the venerable North Main Street facility. Halloween is typically a busy holiday for the Paranormal Museum, so providing it a home through the end of this month was crucial for their contributions to downtown frightful festivities.

Come to find out, they'll be around longer than that. Kadel told the Commonwealth Journal that the museum will continue to operate in the basement of the former library, post office and community arts center on a month-to-month basis, until the building's future is determined.

"Instead of (today) being a sad day for us, it is a happy day," said Kadel. "We're not sure how long (it will be for) — I don't imagine very long — but at the very least, we don't have to move out immediately."

Current plans are to use a space provided by Applied Behavioral Advancements on College Street on a temporary basis once they have to move, noted Kadel, "and then after that, we are still working on a permanent location."

It's possible that the popularity of the recent Cumberland Con event played a role. The event dedicated to comic books, collectibles and the paranormal saw over 700 tickets sold come through the Cooper Center in mid-October

"I think that Cumberland Con was very successful in the idea that this building is still a wonderful asset and functional for great community events," said Kadel. "It was absolutely incredible. I'm sure that that's the largest event that's ever happened in the history of (the building)."

While it's been several years since downtown Somerset has held an actual downtown Halloween event, the streets of the city are still flooded with kids in costumes every trick-or-treating opportunity, and the Paranormal Museum likes to join in the fun. The museum will be open for regular hours, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today (Tuesday, October 31) and will close just before trick-or-treating begins at 6 p.m.

At that point, they'll be outside the Cooper Center, handing out candy to kids as part of their regular Halloween circuit. And there are usually a lot of kids — about 2,000 or so, said Kadel. The Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce has provided some candy to help, but make sure there's enough, anyone who brings candy to the museum today gets free admission, and the first 10 people to do so also get a free sticker.

"It makes it a little bit easier for us, and helps the kids," said Kadel. He added about the former downtown trick-or-treat event, "It really promoted the downtown community feel and made us feel like we're doing something together. I really do miss that, but it's amazing to still ... have such an incredible turnout on Halloween. It's amazing to be able to represent downtown ourselves."

The trick-or-treating is as normal tonight, October 31, throughout Pulaski County — 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the unincorporated parts of the county, and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the cities of Somerset, Burnside, Ferguson, Eubank, and Science Hill.

Following the conclusion of trick-or-treating, the museum will co-host a Halloween party at Jarfly Brewing Co. on West Mt. Vernon Street, with merchandise, a costume contest, and other fun activities.

Recently, the museum also took part in a "Halloween Takeover" at the Somerset Falls mini-golf course, utilizing the life-size Ghost Night Spookshow figures by Jonathan Brinson which are found in the museum (and in the past, outside the Cooper Center this time of year as decorations) this time on the artificial green.

"For Friday and Saturday, we decorated the entire golf course, and put up creepy cloth and fog machines and spider webs and props, and Jonathan took seven of his creatures he's made, including the brand-new one, a six-armed one, and put them all around," said Kadel. "My favorite was that the six-armed guy was on top of the waterfall, and had a pile of bones on the waterfall, and we had a smoke machine behind him. It was really cool."

Kadel described the Spookshow as a "year-round Halloween attraction" at the museum — year-round until October that is, when the figures go "on tour" to different locations, such as the Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce window display.

Of course, every community has its share of Halloween-suitable tales of the strange and scary, and Somerset is no different. The Paranormal Museum is a key source of local lore and while some stories are familiar and have been told generation after generation, there are still new ones to pop up all the time.

One of the more recent weird stories — and one of Kadel's favorites — is what he calls "the giant flying stingray of 2014." Reported through MUFON — The Mutual UFO Network — Kadel noted that someone in Burnside was getting home from the hospital at 1:30 a.m. and heard a loud "swoosh" sound from their driveway.

"So they look up and there is a flying stingray that they said took up the entire gap between their house and their neighbor's house," said Kadel. "So it had to be about 150 feet wide. It looked like it was swimming how they do in the water but it was doing that through the sky. As soon as it flew over the eyewitness, the eyewitness could see not only the stingray but the stars through it, so it was also a translucent flying stingray. It flew from the direction of the lake into the woods behind the house.

"It's pretty amazing, but there is actually somewhat of a precent for that," he added. "In 1978, in Hebron, Ky., there were flying stingrays reported that were normal-size, like one- to two-feet-wide, and they weren't high up in the sky. They were reported specifically around a bridge that went over a river. So they thought the stingrays might have lived in the water but could just fly out."

Some UFO investigators believe these are "living UFOs" that more often look like the stingrays than a metallic spacecraft, added Kadel.

As far as ghost stories, there's no need to go further than the Cooper Center itself, which plays host to one of this area's most well-known legends about the presence of someone gone from this earth lingering in a location. Mark Thatcher's life was claimed as a 10-year-old boy after getting shot by an arrow in 1898 on the property right next to where the Cooper Center building stands today.

"His family had a portrait commissioned of him, and it hung here when this building was a library," said Kadel. "Often he was seen running and laughing down on the basement floor where the museum is and playing with the elevator and making it go up and down by itself. So the library moved to the new location and took the portrait with them — and the spirit. So Mark is seen in the new location as well as still coming back to our building."