Old Brothel Investigation at OBI

This blog post was written by Whitney Dankemeyer, Sierra Swan, and Nicole Dankemeyer.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve visited the Old Baraboo Inn for the last twenty years or just this last one; the moment you set foot through the doors, you become a part of a family. Our team has been paranormal investigating since 2019, but not a single location has made us feel as at home as this one. Our first OBI investigation was in October of 2022, but our connection to this place feels like we’ve been coming by for years.

That’s the thing with haunted locations; people expect to be shaking in their boots when they discover a place is haunted. However, not all haunted buildings have spirits chasing you out the door. At Old Baraboo Inn, the spirits are always throwing a party. While some may be a little more sour than others, this place is just crawling with spirits looking to have a good time.

For those of you who have followed our OBI journey, we won a free investigation during the Celebration of Life event on June 24, 2023 for previous owner BC Farr. We scheduled our upstairs investigation for the 11th of August, just a day before Swan and I’s 27th friendaversary. Arriving at the 159-year-old establishment around 6:00 pm, we were immediately greeted by Mike Minigh and Shelly Wells.

Shelly and our team go back to almost a year when we met her in October of 2022. When we visited BC and Gail for the first time, BC had called Shelly at home and asked her to drive over. When she questioned why, he had told her a group of girls were visiting and he wanted her to meet us. Within the next couple of hours, all of us were in the brothel upstairs investigating.

Fast forward to the Celebration of Life event, that was where we met paranormal investigator Mike Minigh for the very first time. Mike has been investigating and a part of the Old Baraboo Inn for over 8 years. He is a part of We Are Paranormal, and we will share his page’s socials at the bottom of this blog.

Upon entering the old brothel upstairs, our hearts were already pounding. We were not only familiar with the spirits there, but we were also very sensitive to the energy in the room. We started our investigation in the living room, laying out equipment and explaining to Shelly how all of the new equipment worked. We had our mystery machine rem pod out, cat balls scattered across the coffee table, and an electronic EMF detector sitting on a chair to the side. 

We started our session with Shelly and Mike by saying hello to the spirits in the room. While we waited for a response, Mike asked if we wanted the AC unit turned off. Not only was it pretty loud inside the room, but this would help us debunk the orbs we would capture later. When we didn’t get a response on the equipment we set out, we pulled out our dowsing rods to get a conversation started. 

We said hello to the spirits again. We then asked whomever we were speaking with to come forward and cross the rods to let us know they were there. When the rods crossed, we thanked them and asked for them to be uncrossed. Intelligently, the spirit did so. Swan asked if we were speaking with Mary, and the rods crossed again. Not only did they cross, but they crossed facing the direction of Mary’s bedroom. 

When I brought up Mary possibly wanting us to go into the bedroom, the rods started swinging. We took this as Mary getting excited and asked her if she wanted us to go to her room. Just then, something occurred that has never happened to us before: Mary started spinning one of the rods around in full circles. After sharing a moment of astonishment and laughter, we moved our equipment into the bedroom.

Into the bedroom, we tossed the cat balls on the bed and turned the EMF reader on. When we turned on the first cat ball, it started to malfunction. The cat ball usually changes colors from red to orange to blue when set off, but in this circumstance, it was lit up entirely as the color blue. When Swan and I touched it with our fingers, it flashed orange and went out before it was set off again. At the same time, the EMF reader spiked. Mary really DID want us to come into the bedroom.

Shelly wanted to know if the spirit interacting with us was male or female, so I pulled out the dowsing rods again to ask. The spirit said she was female, and when we asked if this was Mary, the rods crossed again. Shelly was puzzled why she wanted us to go into the bedroom so bad, and we later discovered why.

The dowsing rods started to face odd directions then, and at the same time, I was feeling the same heart palpitations I felt walking in. When I asked Mary about putting the rods down to record an EVP session with her, the rods started moving in a way that looked like they were clapping. I asked Mary to bring the rods to a halt so I could sit them down and she did on command. We thanked Mary and put the dowsing rods away. 

We were going to set up the rest of the equipment to conduct our EVP session with Mary, but we could feel a heavy energy pouring out of the bedroom next door. It was as if the energy was leaking from that bedroom into the one we stood in. We chose to investigate that room prior to finishing our session with Mary. As soon as we walked through the doorway, I was hit in the stomach with a weird energy. Not only that, but our batteries were being drained. With what battery we had left, I took photos of the blocks in the room and asked the spirits to move them (they didn't). Shortly after, I actually had to leave the room because of how heavy the energy in there was. 

Stepping outside of the room, I walked into the hallway between the children’s room, Mary’s room, and the bathroom. Again, it was like the energy leaked into the hallway because we could feel an extension of it outside the room. However, when we set foot back in Mary’s room, the energy shifted. It was more calm in Mary’s room, almost to the point that it brought a sense of security. It was like no matter what occurred outside of the room, you were safe from whatever it was. 

In Mary’s room, we set up the rest of our equipment. We turned on the grid pen and positioned it to face the back wall of the bedroom. It casted green lights all across the wall and across a chair that sat beside the bed. We asked Mary a few times to walk in front of the green lights or have a seat in the chair for us, but nothing happened. It wasn’t until we started encouraging Mary that the lights suddenly brightened. Seconds after, Nicole caught an orb flying across the room on her phone.

We tried other methods of communication with Mary after we captured the orb, but Mary was unresponsive. We decided to go back into the children’s bedroom to scope out where the bad energy was coming from. The whole time we were in there, the EMF detector only jumped up to 9.1 mG when in front of the dresser in the back. This was the dresser that sat beside the stairs and had photographs of children on it. We took turns holding a photograph up to the reader one at a time, but the mG never changed. Looking back at footage, we noticed the entire time our device was in front of a small mirror embedded in the dresser. Could this be the source of the seeping energy?

When we sat the EMF down, we attempted an EVP session with the energy in the room. We didn’t capture an EVP, neither of the cat balls went off, and the rem pod never sounded. I tried asking a spirit to set a cat ball off, and instead, we heard a series of three knocks in the distance. When we wandered out into the hallway, we asked them to knock again. From the very corner of the living room, we heard another three knocks. Bingo.

We placed the cat balls and rem pod in the living room and asked whoever knocked to come up and touch them. When they didn’t, I pulled out my phone for SLS and noticed the battery was drained even more. Still, I pulled up the application and scanned the room. I asked spirits to manifest for us, but none of them would. 

We pondered other ways to communicate with the spirits in the room, and we randomly thought to ask Swan to hold out her hand. We asked for anyone to come up and hold Swan’s hand in the chair. It’s very possible one of them did, but it was not enough for us to capture it on any device. Instead, Swan ended up zoning out for five minutes in the chair with her hand out. What she was thinking about, one may never know.

Lots of ideas began flooding our minds now. We set the rem pod up in the children’s room in case anyone wanted to set it off, we recorded a few EVPs on my phone before it died, and we conducted an EVP with our voice recorder laying in the vortex. The rem pod never went off, we did not capture EVPs on my phone, but we did capture evidence in the vortex. The vortex was steady between 20.0-23.9 mG of the EMF detector, and we captured an orb flying around during the voice recorder EVP. 

It was just after wrapping up our vortex session when Mike brought up the Wimshurst Generator for us to try. Here is Swan’s take on the whole experience:

We heard the door to the old Brothel start to open & Mike emerged with the Wimshurst Generator. I remembered seeing the device used on Netflix’s 28 Days Haunted & was immediately excited to test it out! As soon as he started cranking the arm on the device, you could feel the energy in the room intensify. Mike had gone through about 4 full rotations when I noticed several orbs begin shooting around the room. One orb began to manifest down the hallway before passing Mike's head & disappearing! I was able to watch it manifest through the Night Vision Camera as I was recording. We stopped the device to review the footage before continuing. It is our most compelling orb evidence to date. It seemed as though the spirits had gone to another room when Mike restarted the device as I wasn’t seeing any more orbs on the camera. I asked “Where’d you go, little spirit?” As soon as I asked that question, two orbs flew from the kitchen towards Mike & the generator! It was such a cool experiment! 

After filming the Wimshurst Generator, Mike said he was going to go downstairs and leave us to it. The girls and I decided to split up, with Swan and I going into Mary’s room and Nicole going into the bathroom alone. Here is Nicole’s share of her experience:

Although we all felt a darker presence residing in the bathroom, I had decided to voluntarily sit alone to see if we could get any proof of paranormal activity. As the light from the outside slowly disappeared in the bathroom by Whitney closing me in, my only set of eyes was that of the night vision camera. An eerie energy soon crept in as I panned the camera around and began my questioning. Straight away, I noticed two orbs flying across the mirror. Eager to see more, the questions kept flowing. I then decided to place the camera on the counter, facing my only exit. I may not have been able to physically see anything, but man, did I feel it. The feeling of a spirit towering over me, my body reacting by increasing its temperature and soon feeling the sensation of sweat. My eyes would graze across the room and would constantly come to a halt at the sight of the mirror. I don’t know why, but every time I expected to see someone standing there. After a surprisingly short 10 minutes, I decided to conclude my investigation. Although I didn’t catch any more physical evidence on the camera, all three of us agreed that the bathroom has a different energy from the whole of OBI. Similar energy to what lurks just across the hall in the children’s bedroom. I know that I would enjoy conducting another investigation there the next time we visit. 

While Nicole was in the bathroom, Swan and I set up the grid pen in Mary’s room. Now that it was dark outside, we were hoping this would be easier for her to manifest. Any time we reached out to Mary though, we didn’t get a response. As soon as I asked if BC could come sit by us, an orb flew across the grid pen. 

When the orb manifested, I asked Swan if she saw it, but she hadn’t. Instead, she heard in her head, “I’m here, I’m here girls.” I panned the camera over to where I saw the first flash of light and it happened again for both Swan and I to see. It occurred a total of three times in front of us before Nicole came out of the bathroom next door.

At this point of the night, we only had about fifteen minutes left before we had to head back downstairs. We decided to stay in the bedroom and record our Estes session in there. We asked if we could speak to Mary and asked if she was with us. Swan responded, “Everyone,” which indicated that there was more than just Mary hanging around.

Because BC manifested for us when we asked him to, I asked if BC was still with us. Swan responded, “We’re Open!” and we knew it was him. Then she said, “New food. How’s Bill?” We didn’t know this at the time, but Shelly later told us there was a regular named Bill who BC would check up on. At the time of the investigation though, we told BC we weren’t sure who Bill was but hope he is doing well.

A few other words were exchanged before BC cut us off to say, “Let me talk.” Nicole and I said, “Okay, okay,” and he continued with saying, “Mike.” We knew Mike was downstairs, so we asked, “What about Mike?” And Swan said aloud, “The bar.” Mike was down in the bar.

What we needed to find out next was what BC wanted us to share with Mike. Nicole asked what he wanted us to tell Mike, and the response was, “Please open up the walls…respectfully.” When we asked what walls he was talking about, he responded, “Living room.” 

To be sure this was BC, we asked who was requesting this, but Swan interrupted the session and said she felt someone walk up in front of her. When we asked if this was BC, Swan cut us off to say, “Come on in for the past!” When Nicole asked for clarification if it was BC, Swan said, “Come back.” The wind picked up at the same time.

Attempting to get back on track, we asked who wanted to pass messages along to Mike. Our questions were skipped over with the response, “Two things.” Swan continued, “Northeast,” and “It’s expensive.” We asked a couple more questions related to this, but never got answers on the subject.

We moved forward and asked who was responsible for the footsteps downstairs (Mike posted a little bit prior that footsteps ran up on him down in the bar). Swan responded, “Following,” so Nicole followed up with, “You were following Mike?” and Swan responded, “All.”

Not wanting to keep pushing BC, Nicole brought up wishing she could’ve met him before he passed away (she is the only one of us who hadn’t met him). Swan said, “Happens” back. We took this as BC saying, “It happens.” 

We also didn’t want to forget about Mary, so we asked her if she wanted to say anything. Mary responded, “Baby,” “Blue tongue,” “Rescue,” and “How much time do we have?” It almost sounded like Mary was panicking and worried about a child. We asked her if she needed to be rescued, and Swan said, “One day.” 

Mary didn't say much after that, so we asked if anyone else had anything they wanted to say to us, and BC came forward to say, “I’m home, alright.” We asked him if he wanted to say something to Shelly, and he said, “I’m coming!” We asked if he watched over her and Swan said she heard someone say they were off somewhere. We weren’t aware of this during the investigation, but about ten minutes after our session ended, we discovered Shelly left because she had an early flight. BC was just letting us know he was leaving to go be with his sister. 

We ended up closing the session and gave Swan her body back. We said our goodbyes to our friends, and then we hurried downstairs to share our evidence with Mike. We showed him the message we were told to give him, and to our surprise, this wasn’t the first time he had heard it. When he listened back to our evidence, his jaw nearly dropped. He had been told multiple times that BC hid something inside of OBI. We were the first to get the response about the living room walls, but it was incredibly reassuring to know others have heard about his hidden treasure. He did end up calling Shelly, and this too blew her mind. 

This last investigation was our first conversation with BC since his passing in February. While we all miss him dearly, it is reassuring to know he is happy in the afterlife. It won’t be long before we make our reappearance to Old Baraboo Inn because as you know, “There’s no place like home,” and there’s no place like home other than BC’s big, red house. 

As always, thanks for reading!

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