Unexplained Conference doesn't explain anything

When I was young and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered that I wanted to be a Bigfoot hunter. Searching the woods of the Great Northwest for the mythical creature sounded like the ideal job.
Reality set in when I discovered Bigfoot hunter is not a career option, as no one pays people to do it and it is something people with large bank accounts do on their own. So I chose journalism as a career option and although the pay isn’t much better than if I had set out for the woods yelling “Here Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Bigfoot; here Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Bigfoot,” at least I could occasionally write about my Bigfoot passion when something like The Unexplained Conference came to Stevens Point Saturday, April 5.
I interviewed Chad Lewis, a paranormal investigator who organized the annual conference, and wrote a story about the event for the April 4 edition of The Gazette. I also decided to attend it, convincing my wife and two co-workers to come with me.
I went to learn more about local Bigfoot stories, while one of my co-workers went to learn more about the Stevens Point portal to hell Lewis promised to talk about at the convention.
Because I was media I was able to get some of us in for free. This was good because if I had paid the $8 admission cost everyone else was required to pay, it would have been the worst $8 I would have ever spent in my life, even worse than the $5 or so I spent in the early 1990s to see “Joe vs. the Volcano,” the worst movie I ever paid money to see. However, “Joe vs. the Volcano” is “Star Wars” when compared to The Unexplained Conference.
More than 200 people paid to attend the conference; many of them hoping, like me, to learn more about an array of fascinating subjects, like UFOs, ghosts and crop circles. Some of them probably attended after reading the preview I wrote about the conference. I apologize now if you were one of those people and I would refund your money if I had a career that paid more money.
The first clue many people, including us, received that the conference was a sham was found in the lobby of the conference room. Conference organizers and presenters were selling “Vampire Hunting Kits” and ghost-finding equipment, which was similar to the equipment Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray used in “Ghostbusters,” a fictional movie.
Inside the conference attendees were subjected to four presentations. The opening presentation, by Lewis about a variety of paranormal subjects, was semi-good, mainly because he was a good speaker and presented the material in an interesting way. He talked about Bigfoot, which pleased me, and shared a variety of paranormal stories he has investigated throughout Wisconsin.
The second presentation featured Lewis’ partner, Terry Fisk, who spoke about the after-life. A horrible public speaker who used “um” so many times my wife started counting but stopped when she couldn’t keep up, Fisk basically gave an academic lecture on the matter, putting many people to sleep.
I didn’t fall asleep, instead I started passing notes to my wife. “Larry King’s picture is the scariest thing here,” I wrote to my wife after he put the talk show host’s picture up while debunking a debunker’s belief that the after-life doesn’t exist.
“Someone should debunk this guy’s theory that he should be a public speaker,” my wife wrote back. She followed this message with “This guy does radio on a regular basis? Someone pays him to do that?”
Yes, members of the duped public who buy tickets for conferences like this one, along with the books and vampire-hunting and ghostbusting merchandise sold there.
One of my co-workers said it best, “This was basically a couple of former college students who figured out a way to make money doing this.”
Fisk’s presentation wasn’t even the worst the conference had to offer. A werewolf-hunting video shot by Lewis and two other conference presenters took that honor, as the video was nothing but these guys running around in the woods and hanging processed chicken from trees in hopes of finding a werewolf.
I’m sure if werewolves exist, they are probably more attracted to freshly-killed, bleeding animals. I also suspect these guys should have tried their search during a full moon, if that legend is correct.
I don’t know if they ever found a werewolf, since the video was cut short, to the applause of everyone, in order to get to the fourth presentation, which really wasn’t a presentation since it was a question-and-answer session with a warlock and his paranormal-investigating partner.
In order for me to ask questions about anyone, I like to know a little about that person before I ask questions. Attendees got nothing about these two guys, although people did manage to ask some questions about mysterious lights in Upper Michigan.
It appeared as though the warlock and his partner knew a few things, but one of my co-workers correctly pointed out they gave broad answers that people wanted to hear, rather than specific ones that would have been more complete.
We left in the middle of their “presentation,” although we weren’t the first to leave. Nearly one-third of the attendees had left before the werewolf video, wisely saving time that could be better spent.
Even without spending money for admission, I lost $15 spending money for a babysitter and two hours I could have spent playing with my son. The worst part of the whole ordeal is that I’m not a skeptic about the unexplained; I’m always interested in learning more and believe I did not get that with this conference.
Maybe I’m just jealous I didn’t figure out a way to make money hunting for Bigfoot like these guys did.