Muncie's Past Leaves Clues to it's Paranormal Present

From Elliot Hall on campus at Ball State to the Hotel Roberts downtown, Muncie has a haunted history, one that can be explained by a pair of Ball State students turned paranormal investigators.

Andy and Shelly Gage, both graduates of Ball State, founded East Central Indiana Paranormal Investigators (ECIPI) in 2007 with hopes of investigating Muncie’s paranormal past. Their story of Muncie’s might explain why Muncie, for such a small town, is such an abnormal place.

The story goes that in 1827 Goldsmith Gilbert bought half of the Hackley Reserve from Rebecca Hackley and her family, Delaware Indians, but the Hackley family left out one major detail.

“Rebecca and her family were willing to sell that chunk of the reserve because they felt it was haunted,” Shelly said. “They wouldn’t do anything with it so our very history, the reason we are where we are is because they went ‘yeah crazy white man you can have the haunted side of the river because we ain’t going there.’”

The part of the reserve originally purchased by Gilbert was the southern half, below the White River, where downtown Muncie sits. This explains why downtown Muncie is such a rich area for abnormal happenings as well as home to most of Muncie’s most notorious haunts.

Six of the eight of the Gage’s top haunted locations in Muncie are south of the white river with five of them located in downtown Muncie. Those haunted locales being the WLBC station, Civic Theatre, Cornerstone Center for the Arts, Hotel Roberts, Meeks Mortuary and Carnegie Library. The stories range from suicides to workaholics, the characters of Muncie’s past possibly remain on set in each one of these places.

“Part of it could be the history of the spirits of the land,” Shelly said. “Part of it could be that (downtown) is the oldest part of town and there’s more history, people and time.”

Either way, the Gage’s and ECIPI will continue to investigate all of Muncie’s strange happenings

ECIPI is currently undergoing an investigation of Muncie’s Carnegie Library and will be reporting their findings during a presentation at the library on Oct. 14 at 7:00 p.m. The presentation will be open to public.

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