I first met filmmaker Ben Wydeven at the Madison Horror Film Festival when we were discussing the haunted Rogers Theatre in Wausau. Sunspot had played there the weekend before and had heard some haunted stories, but Ben had shot his entire movie in the theater while it was being remodeled. I knew I had to pick up a copy of  The Medium

We recorded a  Sunspot Road Mania  episode at the Rogers Theatre (it was called the Fill-Mor then) where we had some weird stuff happen to us as well and the bar staff shared some of their ghost stories with us…

We reconnected with Ben Wydeven earlier this year when we saw him at our live podcast event at the Old Baraboo Inn  and he was working on a documentary about the bar, which has dozens of ghost tales. My sister, Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts is featured in the documentary as well, so she joined us for this episode and our conversation with Ben. She had her own paranormal experience that night of the live podcast and finally comes clean with it. That night was also Wendy’s first official ghost hunt and we had our own technical issues with our digital recorder not playing and finally comes clean with it. Our lively discussion covers everything from the movies and TV shows that influenced him (spoiler alert: he’s a big  X-Files  fan and we get into some heavy nerdery on that) to his own paranormal experiences and the logistics behind what it takes to film in a cemetery.

Ben Wydeven has created his own fictional paranormal film series called  The Raven James Chronicles  about an alcoholic psychic medium who is cursed/blessed with the ability to see dead people. He recently released a novel called  Drowning Demons  and the Raven James films are set in the same universe and are prequels to the story. The fifth in those series of films, Mourning In The Cemetery,  is being released t his Saturday November 5th. And where more perfect than the Old Baraboo Inn itself for the screening?