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Meet The Real-Life Gay Ghostbusters

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Ghosts are gay.

Some ghosts, anyway. Queer activist and veteran ghost-hunter Shane McClelland wants the world to know that not all ghosts are heterosexual. He does this by exclusively hunting down ghosts that he believes are lesbian, gay or bisexual.

He founded the Columbus, Ohio coalition called the Stonewall Columbus Queer Ghost-Hunting Club for that express purpose.

Over the past year, the gay ghostbusters have tracked down spirits in lesbian convents, in mansions, in insane asylums and in prisons. To document their success, they started a web show called Queer Ghost Hunters.

So how do they find these queer ghosts? It’s not always easy, given that the majority of queer history has gone unrecorded – lesbian, gay and bisexual people frequently had to hide their sexuality in order to avoid prison or execution. That’s part of what makes McClelland’s job so important.

Queer Ghost Hunters co-producer Joe Applebaum says, “This is a whole other way to show the history of the LGBT community. In this case, we describe it as the lost history. These are the lost true stories of countless lost lives, lost in the afterlife because they couldn’t live freely in this one. These are not the famous people who we hear about in history books. These are just ordinary people, and they have their own stories.”

They use elongated, flexible metal rods called dowsing rods in order to detect spirits; the rods swivel in the direction of supernatural presences. They also carry spirit boxes, which are radio scanners.

The team searches for clues to the ghosts’ identities. On the transgender prisoners’ floor of an old prison, McClelland found graffiti declaring the love between prisoners named Tommy and Ronnie. He and Applebaum also uncovered a police sting that rounded up sixty gay male teenagers, many of whom had died in prison.

Of course, this is an inexact science, and McClelland readily admits that he operates primarily on instincts rather than hard facts. Regardless, the work he does uncovering queer history is vital, ghosts or not.

Get hooked on Queer Ghost Hunters here, or read more about McClelland’s mission here.

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If only the world was as “open-minded” as us… Alas, matters of sexual identity and equal love, often cause so much friction in the rest of the world. Here, find an open dialogue on the issues facing our LGBT community.

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