Newspaper Articles and Interviews
Muntz said the St. James property was never known to house monks.“There have been no monks on the property,” Muntz said. “I have no idea why (the ghosts) are here.”John Wilkinson is a deacon at St. James Church. He says the ghost stories and folklore surrounding the property aren’t real.“I have been around 15 years and I have never seen anything,” Wilkinson said.However, that doesn’t deter people from trying to come in and look for ghosts, he said.“We will have extra security for (Halloween) weekend. You have to guard the property because of the stigma that’s on it,” Wilkinson said.Wilkinson reminded that the church property is private property.“People know this isn’t a state park, this is consecrated ground where we bury our dead,” Wilkinson said. “These are memorials for their loved ones here.”While Muntz said she has yet to witness the monks or the carriage on one of her many visit to the cemetery, she does claim to be in contact with a spirit in the cemetery.She said a man buried in the back of the cemetery, Daniel Sullivan, spoke with her at various times, and would tell her he has had a hard time “crossing over.”“He said he is afraid of what he had done in this life and the judgment he would receive if he crossed over,” Muntz said.After years of visiting, one day Muntz said she was greeted by the spirit of Sullivan’s wife, Mary. She came to let Muntz know Daniel had finally crossed over.Even as St. James Cemetery is rumored to be one of the most haunted place in Lemont, cemeteries in general aren’t known among ghost hunters to be haunted, Muntz said. A cemetery has no connection to relatives or past possessions for spirits, which is where spirits normally like to haunt, she said.Muntz said most spirits are considered good, but she insists evil does exist in the spirit world. Muntz warned that dabbling in witchcraft and even using a Ouija board can be dangerous.“To have good you have to have bad,” Muntz said. “To see evil is far worse than anything you would encounter in the movies.”
“We have various names that come up,” said Muntz. “The name Rose has come up in the past. There’s a lady prominently that shows up with a young child, but says she’s not the child’s mother she’s the child’s aunt.”
One figure that appeared during a recent investigation was a man named Tomas.
“It’s funny because he’s not standing on the ground. He is actually standing up, like kind of levitating off the ground,” said Muntz.
While the movies and TV shows we watch today make it sound like these ghosts are something that wants to haunt or harm us, Muntz says 98% of the time that’s not the case.
“They tease us about the most mundane things sometimes,” said Muntz. “You think ‘why would they care how we drive, or why would they care about the fight we just had with our spouse,’ and it’s about letting us know that they are here and they are interacting and see what’s going on in our daily lives.”
Muntz didn’t have the answer for why she can communicate with the spirits while others can’t, but she said with the right equipment, sometimes you can get a feel of how she interacts.
The paranormal investigators use tools such as a Theremin, which detects energy from humans and spirits.
Perhaps the most useful tool is the voice recorder. Muntz says the cheaper recorders are the best because they capture the background noise ,also know as white noise.
“The spirits are able to attach their voices onto the white noise,” said Muntz. “On an average investigation we are able to get over 270 recordings in an eight-hour period.”
Researchers Investigating the Paranormal are conducting ghost hunts for residents to take part in through the first week of November at undisclosed locations.
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Local Ghost Hunter has Regional Appeal
Bolingbrook medium and ghost hunter Cindi Muntz shares what it's like to be clairvoyant.
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Cindi Muntz sees the world a bit differently than the average person.
She's been clairvoyant since she was a kid—it's not something that she can turn off and on, and it's not something she asked for.
But her sixth sense is something she embraces.
Muntz is the owner and founder of Researchers Investigating the Paranormal, a Bolingbrook team that investigates haunted locations both in Bolingbrook and throughout the Midwest.
"Essentially all ghost hunting is, is taking tools that can evaluate the environment for changes," she said. "Spirits have the ability to change the environment while they're there."
The R.I.P. team uses electromagnetic-field meters, night scopes, thermometers, cameras, and voice recorders to determine first, if there is a ghost problem at a given location and second, to gauge its severity.
Muntz has hundreds of "other-worldly" recordings on her computer.
She sees spirits everywhere, similar to the boy in the Sixth Sense, just not as gory, she said.
In fact, she brought her husband to see the movie when they were dating to warm him up before breaking the news.
She said spirits are not usually dangerous and referred to some she's encountered in the past with words like, "cute" and "sweet."
But they can also be melancholy.
She described one experience with a ghost who'd been hanging around our earthly existence since 1832, unable to "cross-over."
"It's kind of sad, isn't it?" she said. "Sometimes they (the spirits) are cranky. We all get that way when we're not in a good mood."
She explained that everyone has at least one spirit guide—she even has her own named "Sam."
She uses dowsing rods to communicate with Sam, and said anyone can talk with their own spirit guide if they want to—the rods don't even have to be made of any special material; plastic pens that cover the bent ends of wire hangers will work just fine.
But there isn't any crossing of the streams or anything like that. In fact, the word "extermination," makes Muntz cringe.
It's more about teaching both the spirits and the humans who live with them how to coexist peacefully, she said. She's not interested in banishing them or trapping them—but when she can, she will help them get wherever it is they are trying to go.
She cited one instance in which a client was being poked an prodded by a ghost incessantly; flicking his earlobes and tousling his hair. By the time Muntz got the call, his friends had diagnosed him with Tourette's Syndrome.
With a little rapport, she was able to help the spirit on his way.
"Our bodies are just a vehicle," she said. "When we die, our spirits live on. Some just haven't made it to the 'other side' quite yet."
For more information visit CindiMuntz.com.
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Paranormal researchers on the hunt for local spirits
In the HERALD-News Oct 7, 2010 01:39PM
http://heraldnews.suntimes.com/1800998-417/muntz-midwest-ghost-group-rip.html
BY JANET LUNDQUIST
A chance of a ghost
In the BolingbrookSun Oct 21, 2010 09:55PM
http://bolingbrooksun.suntimes.com/news/1944045-418/muntz-group-midwest-ghost-spirits.html
By Janet Lundquist
The members of Researchers Investigating the Paranormal Midwest (RIP Midwest) spend hours on visits and by phone investigating commercial and residential buildings that owners suspect are haunted.
Unlike the Ghostbusters of the silver screen, they don’t want to trap or fight ghosts.
They will conduct a free investigation of an allegedly haunted place, however, and will travel across the Midwest to help provide answers for people freaked out by unexplained occurrences.
The group was founded by lead investigator Cindi Muntz of Bolingbrook, who works as a medium.
This month the members of RIP Midwest decided to offer a chance for folks to get up close and personal with spirits. They planned several field trips to outdoor haunted locations in Bolingbrook and Naperville, where they would attempt to show visitors evidence of an otherworldly presence through electronic equipment and other implements.
“We’re still trying to understand why these spirits are accumulating in this location,” Muntz told one group recently before they headed out into the chilly night air.
She asked her visitors to respect the place they were going and told them they would participate in some activities that would allow them to interact with ghosts there.
The right equipment for the job
Once at the site, which Muntz wants to keep private to discourage trespassers, she explained how some of the group’s equipment works and how to use it.
Meters would show electromagnetic fields, digital thermometers would monitor the air for sudden temperature drops and spirits would communicate by moving thin metal dowsing rods, she said.
The group broke into two smaller groups and used the equipment to attempt to detect responses from the other side. And they weren’t disappointed. Many people in the groups interpreted movement in the rods and changes in the meters as messages and information from the spirits dwelling there.
Muntz described one spirit she spotted as a man with thinning hair, wearing dark, baggy pants and worn shoes anxiously pacing near the ghost-hunting group.
Muntz runs into a number of skeptics, many of whom are eventually clients that contact RIP Midwest.
“There are people who don’t really believe, who say, ‘I don’t believe that someone can communicate from the afterlife, but I keep hearing someone calling my name,’” Muntz said. “They’ll say, ‘I know I’m alone in my house, but I hear someone walking up the stairs. What’s that about?’ If it happens more than once, it’s worth taking a look at.”
Q&A with the spirit worlds
The groups eventually rejoined and gathered around a spirit communication table, which resembled a Ouija board.
The table is constructed from layers of natural materials, with each layer prayed over and blessed before the next layer was added, Muntz said.
The table was painted with letters, numbers, words and symbols. Everyone around the table leaned in to rest a finger on a small glass dome, which slid around the table in response to questions from the group.
One spirit Muntz said she knew paid a visit, the ghost of a man named Jack Veranda. The group watched the dome slide over to cover the word “happy.”
Muntz held up a digital recorder and spoke into the air around her, asking Jack to yell into the recorder.
The dome centered over a question mark symbol, and Muntz verbally explained what the recorder was for.
Everyone around the table took turns asking questions into the night air as Muntz held the voice-activated recorder. Then they listened to the recordings as Muntz played them back on her laptop.
Muntz interpreted some ghostly voices in the white noise of the recording as saying “My name is Pat,” “help me,” and “thank you.”
“I’m surprised that (the voice) was clear like that,” guest Gary Shrimpling, who is from England, said about one of the recordings. “Most of it, I’ll be honest, just sounded like noise.”
Muntz and the members of RIP Midwest say they don’t pressure anyone into believing what they’re doing is real.
“My job isn’t to convince anybody of anything,” Muntz said. “That’s everybody’s individual journey. Everybody has to come to it in their own time.”
RIP Midwest will host another ghost hunt from 3:30 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10. Call 630-697-0286 for more information or to join the hunt. For more information about RIP Midwest, visit www.ripmidwest.com.
Comment at www.heraldnewsonline.com.
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Joan Smith uses dowsing rods to attempt to speak to a spirit during a ghost hunt held by Researchers Investigating the Paranormal Midwest on Friday in Bolingbrook. | Ryan Thompson~For Sun-Times Media |
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Aired January 19, 2010
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2010 NEW YEAR PREDICTIONS
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TRUE GHOST STORIES, HAUNTINGS, & THE PARANORMAL w/ MEDIUM CINDI MUNTZ
Aired October 27, 2009
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PSYCHIC READINGS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE TRIB LOCAL Home > Stories > EntertainmentEMAIL THIS | PRINT THISParanormal investigators contact spirits in the 'burbsBy: Elizabeth Vassolo/ Triblocal.com staff reporter
October 29, 2009
 There is nothing eccentric about ghost hunter Cindi Muntz. She doesn’t shuffle around in a long velvet robe patterned with glittering stars and moons. She prefers broken-in jeans and a black windbreaker with a front pocket to hold her lip balm. Her cloud of glossy, coffee-colored hair surrounds a sweet face with honest brown eyes and a welcoming smile that puts people immediately at ease.
Muntz, 41 from Bolingbrook, is a medium who claims to have been communicating with the dead since she was a child.
She said she knows what happens to people once they die—their spirit goes to a different plane of existence. Someone seeking her services might want to believe in Muntz’s power and perhaps it’s true, but whatever the reason, sitting next to her is a great comfort.
She also is the head of the Midwest Researchers Investigating the Paranormal, a west suburban-based ghost-hunting group.
Since the group’s inception in 2007, it has conducted investigations into more than 52 businesses and residences around Illinois including recent work at a historical estate in Joliet.
“It is an amazing feeling to help people in a way no one else can,” Muntz said. “By the time people call us, they are freaking out.”
The eight-member group’s approach to investigating paranormal activity is rooted in science with the added advantage of Muntz’s ability to communicate with the other side. Members don’t typically seek out cases, nor do they charge for their services.
“A lot of the times our clients will have employees refusing to work in their restaurant or homeowners are hearing their names being called out of nothing,” Muntz said. “People are feeling a presence, hearing noises, footsteps or seeing spirits out the windows or walking down the hallway. Sometimes objects might be moving in the house as well.”
To prepare for an investigation, the group uses simple tools like thermometers and electromagnetic field monitors—the kind an electrician would use. Investigators draw a diagram of the area to investigate and take extensive baseline readings, so if their equipment picks up changes in the environment they can compare it to the original measurements.
They also use video and digital cameras to record light anomalies and digital voice recorders to pick up the most compelling evidence of all—electric voice phenomenon.
Electric voice phenomenon isn’t a new thing. According to the American Association of Electric Voice Phenomena, it is captured speech that is not the result of the intentional recording. In the 1920s Thomas Edison told Scientific American magazine “it is possible to construct an apparatus which will be so delicate to detect personalities in another existence. This apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves.” That first device was the electronic recorder.
This approach, coupled with Muntz’s sensitivity, is what attracted Joliet homeowners Diethard and Kurt Beyer and Keith Nicholls to MRIP.
When the Beyers and Nicholls moved into the 107-year-old, 30-room manor nine years ago, they began hearing things like children running on the third floor when there were no children in the house.
Other unexplained occurrences include seeing a figure they mistook as a house guest enter a bedroom, smelling the spicy scent of a smoking pipe in the library or catching the drift of old-fashioned perfume in the hallways.
The building was once used as a nursing facility for seniors and was then repurposed as a funeral home. In the past few years the owners have elaborately decorated for Halloween and opened their home free of charge for guests to enjoy.
The new owners believe that long-dead inhabitants continue to take up residence there. The Beyers and Nicholls wanted learn more about who was still in the house and why.
“You watch these paranormal shows on TV and it is seems like it is a bunch of bologna,” Diethard Beyer said. “Then it happens to you and it becomes real and you are a part of it and you know it can’t be fake.”
After the group finished the investigation at the Joliet location, they met with the owners to listen to the recordings taken during the process.
Sitting around an antique table in the formal dining room on a recent evening, the group placed an EMF meter on the table’s corner and Muntz played the findings.
Voices from those clearly not part of the group could be heard. Some were static bits of words and sounds.Others were clear comments including a woman saying, “I am Rebecca” though there was no one named Rebecca involved in the paranormal investigation.
Another childlike voice said, “He noticed me,” perhaps referring to Kurt Beyer’s previous comments about frequently seeing a little boy running around the home out of the corner of his eye, Muntz said.There was also what sounded like several calls for assistance. “Help me, help me,” could be heard by both male-and female-sounding voices. Muntz explained that sometimes spirits get confused and need to be directed to move on.
Each time a new voice was heard, the EMF meter spiked from green to red, indicating environmental changes in the room. Muntz would occasionally pause in between playing a recorded incident to address the air the around her—she claimed the spirits knew they were being talked about.
There were more than 150 of these EVP instances to report from the Joliet house. Muntz presents the information and lets her clients make their own judgment.
And that includes homeowners learning to live with the uninvited company.
“If they were throwing butcher knives at us we would want [the spirits] to move on,” Diethard Beyer said. “We have never had a negative threat and are fine sharing the house with them.”
For more information, go to www.ripmidwest.com.By Elizabeth Vassolo | Triblocal.com reporter  | HERALD NEWS Medium offers to help put spirits at ease
November 1, 2009
By JANET LUNDQUIST jlundquist@scn1.com
The split-level house nestled along the quiet, tree-lined Bolingbrook street doesn't look all that unusual.
But each night spirits crowd into a bedroom there to talk to Cindi Muntz.
Cindi Muntz, of Bolingbrook, holds an abalone shell she uses for cleansing, protection, grounding and raising energy when she meets with her clients for healing.
(Michael R. Schmidt/Staff Photographer)
 Cindi Muntz doesn't try to sell you anything.
She doesn't try to convince you that she's for real. She doesn't hit you up to host a psychic party or book her for a seance.
I interviewed Muntz with an open mind. And while I still have my doubts about the paranormal, it's hard to find chinks in her armor.
She talked about how hearing and seeing spirits around everyone, every day feels normal to her.
As a teen, she discovered a book defining her abilities -- clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairprescient, clairsentient, and psychometry -- and was shocked.
"Someone knows what I'm talking about!" she said.
Her husband seemed as baffled as I was by the accuracy of her predictions. Eight years of marriage made him a believer.
But Muntz doesn't mind if you're not convinced.
Using what she called "her gift" seems to help her personally as much as it apparently helps her clients.
Anyone seeking Muntz's help in the form of a personal reading will have to take a number. She is taking new clients, but is booked for readings through February.
-- Janet Lundquist
Muntz, a medium who reserves part of every evening for conversations with "ghosts," said she sometimes flips the television on at bedtime to drown out their voices.
Even after she tells the group she needs to sleep, they stick around to chat with each other for a while, she said.
An early start
Saving her nights for spirits doesn't stop them from finding her all day, she said.
Muntz, 41, says she has always seen and heard dead people -- everywhere.
As a 5-year-old, too short to reach the telephone, Muntz said she remembers incessantly asking her mother to call a complete stranger to impart seemingly random information: check inside a mattress.
Her mother eventually made the call, largely to get Muntz off her back, she said.
It turned out that the family she called was cleaning a recently deceased relative's house. The deceased relative, who Muntz said had been urging her to call the family, said there was money and the deed for the house stuffed in her mattress.
Sure enough, the family found money and the deed inside the mattress, which they had just put out with the trash.
Still religious
The fact that Muntz knew that information didn't sit well with her Roman Catholic family, Muntz said.
It still doesn't sit well with some of her family members and friends. They found out she was psychic a few years ago -- if they didn't already have a hunch -- when she "came out of the closet," she said.
Muntz said she has always been religious and that religious beliefs are important.
"It's hard not to be religious, in a weird way," she said.
While she graduated from a Catholic high school and college, and taught Catholic education classes for years, Muntz said she pulls her beliefs from multiple religions that fit into what she has experienced in life.
"Obviously, I know there's life after death. For those who (don't believe there is), they'll be pleasantly surprised one day," she said.
RIP group
In addition to offering her personal services, which are detailed on her Web site at www.cindimuntz.com , Muntz and her husband of eight years, Brian, 40, run Researchers Investigating the Paranormal Midwest, an organization that conducts investigations of "haunted" places in the Midwest.
They have conducted 56 investigations in about two years. Right now the organization is investigating five haunted places, she said.
Their services have been a great help in situations where building occupants -- residents or business employees -- have had it with ghostly shenanigans.
Often they are called as a family is preparing to move out of a house in desperation, she said. Sometimes it's a business where employees refuse to show up for work because of paranormal activity.
The organization owes its success in large part to Cindi's ability, Brian said.
"Most groups don't have someone like that," he said. "She's able to see spirits, she's able to communicate."
Predicting outcomes
Brian said he became convinced of his wife's ability when she would predict the fate of people involved in accidents or missing when their cases were reported on the evening news.
Brian would check her predictions in follow-up stories in the newspaper. She was always right, he said.
"That convinced me then that she knows what she's doing. She's not the type of person who'd say something to try to impress somebody," he said. "She'd know what happened to people before the cops or the person's family. It's kind of mind-boggling."
Despite her accuracy, Muntz often questions her own findings.
"We're quite the skeptics," she said of the paranormal investigation team. "I always look for proof. I dismiss things," she said.
Media portrayals
Television shows such as "Medium," about a medium who works with a district attorney to solve crimes, and "The Ghost Whisperer," about a medium who helps spirits resolve lingering issues in the land of the living, are fairly accurate, she said. The recent movie "Ghost Town" is as well.
The horror movies featuring evil ghosts tormenting innocent mortals? Not so much.
There is evil in the world, she said, but those cases are not common.
Sometimes, spirits trying to communicate with people who cannot see or hear them will move objects around to get their attention, she said.
The intent is not to frighten anybody, but people get scared because they don't know the rest of the story, she said.
Sometimes spirits want to pass along a message. Sometimes they need help finding their way to the afterlife. Sometimes they just want to say hello.
Muntz said she can help them accomplish those things.
"It's a real rewarding thing to do something that most people can't do," she said. "It's hard to explain, but it touches you in a deep way."
Fakes vs. the real deal
Not everyone who advertises psychic ability is legit, of course.
"It's a hard business, from the consumer point of view," she said. "How can you tell the difference between someone who's fake and who's real?"
One giveaway, she said, is someone offering to teach you how to be psychic.
You can't learn how to be psychic any more than you can learn to have brown eyes. Either you have it or you don't, she said.
"You can learn to be more aware of the energy around you, and also how to raise the energy around you," Muntz said. "But you can't learn to be psychic."
Muntz said she doesn't try to prove what she's saying is true.
"My goal isn't to prove myself or make someone believe," she said. "People come to their own conclusions."
In preparation for a reading, she tells clients to look through old photos and reminisce. She also suggests they put out an actual invitation with the date and time of the reading, so the spirits can plan to be there.
"We're never alone when we're here," Muntz said, adding that spirits are around everyone, all the time.
She will only read a client every eight to 12 months.
"(Readings) can be very addictive," she said. "But it can also be something that keeps people from moving on."
Helping others
Muntz may soon post her evening interactions with spirits on her Web site, in hopes the messages will reach their intended recipients.
Besides psychic readings, Muntz conducts seances, energy healings and is a reiki master.
She has worked with police to successfully find missing people, and is still helping on one active case. Avoiding news reports improves her accuracy, she said.
She has not been contacted by police on two high-profile missing person cases -- Stacy Peterson and Lisa Stebic -- but said she would like to help.
"I don't solicit my services," she said. "But I feel like I would be able to give some information on (those cases)."
This time of year isn't busier than others for Muntz, despite Halloween's focus on the ghoulish.
Requests for seances pick up in October, she said. Oddly, some businesses use them as employee team-building activities.
But Muntz never works on Halloween. Oct. 30 and 31 are two days the couple always sets aside to relax.
Photograph of Cindi Muntz with a "spirit on top of her," indicated by the red glow on her face, the Bolingbrook resident says.
(Michael R. Schmidt/Staff Photographer)  |
Aired October 28, 2009
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