Blog Archives
Tea’s Weird Week: I’m Going to Talk About my Adventures in Writing at Lion’s Tooth on April 16

My first book, Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement, was published ten years ago. Time flies! That book was followed by Monster Hunters (2015), Apocalypse Any Day Now (2019), American Madness (2020), Wisconsin Legends & Lore (2020), and Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021). In April I’ll be publishing a short e-book, Chicago Mothman: A History and Cultural Study of a Monster Case under my own imprint, Tea Set Press.
I work sometimes filling in at the wonderful Lion’s Tooth bookstore and talked with Cris and Shelly, the owners, about setting up a date just to hang out and talk and have all of my books available. I decided it would be fun to talk about some adventures and key moments in my writing career both in authoring books and freelance magazine writing.
It’s going to be happening Sunday, April 16 at Lion’s Tooth, 4-6pm (5pm is when the storytelling starts). I’ll talk about the time I almost got expelled from high school for publishing my own satire newsletter, an assignment to make the White Pages interesting, both times I got pepper sprayed in Seattle, why the British tabloids were calling me early in the morning for awhile, my story that won a Milwaukee Press Club award, and what I’m currently working on.
I’m really looking forward to grabbing a drink from the Lion’s Tooth cafe and telling these stories to you. Some of these are tales I’ve never told publicly. Check out the list of what I’ll be talking about below!

TEA KRULOS: LIVE AT LION’S TOOTH set list
- I Was A Teenage Underground Newsletter Publisher
- Famous Names
- People Fighting and Superheroes and Pepper Spray and…I Don’t Know
- Pepper Sprayed in Seattle Again
- London Calling
- That Time I Went on a Bigfoot Expedition But Saw a UFO Instead
- Doomsday Bunkers of the Rich and Famous Revisited
- An Award-Winning Idea
- The Phantom Patriot Lives
- How One Mothman Led to Another
- Where is My Mind? 2023 Edition
- Loose Bruce Destroyed My First Typewriter
I’m going to try to get to all of those and I’ll answer questions and of course will be glad to sign books. I hope to see you there!
Facebook event page: facebook.com/events/621847019771594
Please Clap Dept.: The documentary I’m a producer on about Kenosha-area horror hosts, I’m Your Host (which won a Milwaukee Film Brico Forward Fund grant) will premiere at the Twisted Dreams Film Festival, Oct. 20-22, 2023.
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, VA Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: The Chessboxer, Part 2

Last week I wrote about how my wheels were spinning thinking about what my second book might be (it eventually was an exploration of paranormal investigators titled Monster Hunters). One concept I had was learning to be a chessboxer. Chessboxing is a sport invented in the early 2000s that intersperses rounds of chess and boxing. You can win by knockout, checkmate, or by points from punches and captured pieces. In “The Chessboxer, Part 1,” I talked about hiring a chess coach, Aqeel.
My follow up is going to be short. I’m extremely burnt out this week, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain why.
In looking for a place to train as a boxer, I found a unique spot here in Milwaukee, it’s called the Ace Boxing Club. It’s not a state-of-the-art MMA facility, but more like an old garage with well worn equipment. It was mostly perfect. I wrote about the gym for an article in the Shepherd Express back in 2012. I sometimes look back at old stuff I’ve written and cringe to various degrees, but I actually love this one. It’s a solid profile on a place with a lot of heart: Ace Boxing Club and the Porter Legacy – Shepherd Express

I trained at Ace in the ring, I trained with Aqeel on the chessboard, but then something happened: I sold my second book. I now had a big project to work on and between that and trying to balance everything else in my crazy life (a struggle I still have ten years later) the lessons began to be skipped and the idea faded away. That’s too bad. I really enjoyed that period of my life. Maybe I’ll try to bring it back and The Chessboxer will live again.
—
We skipped the TWW podcast this week cause I was too busy. We’ll be back next week.
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: Introducing Paranormal Road Trip

I currently have around 3 books in the development process. I’ll tell you about one of them, cause it’s movin’ along: Paranormal Road Trip, which will be a fun travel guide to haunted locations you can visit, monster museums, and other eerie attractions across the country. This is rare in that this is the first book I am co-authoring with someone else. Jenny Sanchez is a wonderful travel writer from Denver. She works in the travel industry, has her own travel blog/platform (Long Days Travel) and contributes to Atlas Obscura. We met when she visited Milwaukee and we hit it off.

We’ve been working on this project for a little bit, so far compiling entries onto shared Google docs, meeting up on Zoom to talk once in awhile. It’s a big project, but we’re working at a slow but steady pace, looking up entries to get all the information, insider tips, and of course the spooky stuff. Jenny’s been working on some Mountain and West Coast states, I’ve been focusing on the Midwest and New England.
It’s a fun project. We’ve got a book proposal, so wish us luck in landing this with the right publisher, so we can get this guide into your hands! We’ll keep you posted.
Tea’s Weird Week, S5 ep04: Paranormal Road Trip
I talk with Jenny about her travels this year to Idaho and Saint Louis to visit paranormal hotspots and quirky attractions. Then me and Heidi talk about a flurry of squatchy news– Coyote Peterson finds an alleged sasquatch skull, Oklahoma man says he murdered his Bigfoot controlling fishing partner, a classic Wisconsin sighting and more. Plus trivia and we close out with a track from Pretty Frankenstein, “In Mirrors.”
Listen here: Tea’s Weird Week, S5 ep04: Paranormal Road Trip (and Bigfoot news) (podbean.com)
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Tea’s Weird Week: My Favorite Jann Goldberg Quotes

I’m sad to say I lost another friend this year. It’s been a rough one for losing creative, wonderful people. I met Jann Goldberg right at the beginning of working on my second book, Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators (2015, Chicago Review Press). I was looking for a local ghost investigation team to follow around and found the Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee (PIM). I liked everyone I met in that group, but I especially hit it off with Jann. She was really into nerd culture and she was hilarious– easily could have pursued a career in stand up.
I was especially amused by how by how crass and vulgar her humor was. She reminded me of my beloved co-worker Mo ( I wrote about her in my Brady Street Pharmacy book) who made swearing an artform. As such, Jann had some of the most colorful quotes in Monster Hunters. Here’s my favorites.

On her language:
“My sister used to work with me and they used to call us the sailor sisters because of our filthy mouths and shit, but I mean that’s just how we were raised. My mom says ‘God I hate it when people don’t know how to fucking swear,’” she told me, laughing.
Although her feelings on her team later changed, I remember thinking how great this quote was, about being part of a team:
“It’s like a fifteen-hour-a-week job you pay for instead of get money,” Jann told me, letting out a short laugh. “This isn’t a paying job. You travel together, sleep on hotel floors together, you’re eating in crappy restaurants, investigating bat-infested, rat-infested shitholes. In the middle of the night you’re looped up, buzzed on caffeine, talking about your marriage and your kids and all this shit. Honestly, with the exception of my parents and husband, I’m tighter with these guys than anyone else in my family. It’s just…really a different thing.”
This quote was about the trouble the team had when talking to people whose homes had been visited by other investigation teams that would tell them they probably had a case of demons:
“If you’re a group like ours that goes into a place after these groups that have already been there and told all this bullshit and you have a family that’s scared– there was some group that told a family they had a portal to hell in their house—that is shit you have to deal with. And I mean, shame on them for believing it, but you don’t know what someone’s mental condition and for them to go in and say this, it’s like what are you doing?!”
On one of her teammates not being familiar with Yom Kippur:
“Jesus Christ. Haven’t you seen Fiddler on the fucking Roof?” she retorted. “Anti-Semitic, misogynist assholes,” Jann huffed, turning to me. “Be sure to write that down and quote me on it in the book.”
On me joining PIM on one of their investigations of the notoriously haunted Bobby Mackey’s Music World:
“Investigating Bobby Mackey’s this early in your paranormal career is like losing your virginity to Jenna Jameson,” Jann told me shortly before I headed toward Wilder, Kentucky.
When I wrote the epilog to the book, I revisited several people I had written about. But who to give last word to? I decided it had to be Jann. I wrote about her then recent return to Bobby Mackey’s (with a different group) and ended the book with this:
“It was fun this time. That weird thing only happened with my stomach once,” Jann told me. But why would she return again and again to a place where she had such frightening experiences? That was an easy question, she told me.
“To find some fucking answers.”
Tea’s Weird Week S5 ep03: Butterfly Sanctuary Conspiracy Attack
This episode has a short audio clip from one of my interviews with Jann, plus I talked to Eric and Kim Hayden, producers of the American Madness documentary adaptation about their recent trip to shoot interviews at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. Who would be insane enough to come up with a theory that this beautiful sanctuary is really a front for drug and child sex trafficking? Oh right, QAnon.
Plus me and my co-host Heidi Erickson talk about the Georgia Guidestones (I’ll also have a column on that next week) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider and the Mandela Effect. There’s also trivia from Miss Information and a banger from Mini Meltdowns, “Super Blue.”
Listen here: Tea’s Weird Week, S5 ep03: Butterfly Sanctuary Conspiracy Attack (podbean.com)
Spotify//Soundcloud//Google Podcasts//iHeartRadio//PlayerFM//Apple//Stitcher//Pocket Casts
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: A Tale of Two Chupacabras

There are two types of Chupacabras within you. Let’s discuss.
Well, actually, maybe I should back up. When my book Monster Hunters was released in 2015, I decided to celebrate by creating a Milwaukee Paranormal Conference. We needed a snappy logo and I decided on a Chupacabra. But why– Chupacabras has no connection to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right? It’s legend is found in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, and southern states like Texas and New Mexico.
I’ll tell you why. Chupacabras are 100% certified badass, that’s why. That’s it. Plus artist David Beyer had drawn an incredibly badass Chup for Monster Hunters, for a chapter titled “The Slaying of the Chupacabras,” so we recycled that art into the logo. I wanted to switch up art every year, so subsequent MPC Chup logos were designed by artists Catherine Palmeno (2016), Alex Groh (2017), Tim Demeter (2019- we skipped’18), and Estephanie Mendoza (2021- we had a virtual event in 2020, that year we had a Sasquatch/UFO designed by Margot Lange).
I happen to love the word, story, and imagery of CHUPACABRAS. In fact, I have a long delayed fiction that has a trio of Chupacabras in the storyline. I would love to work on that some day (but it won’t be some day soon).
The first Chupacabras reports can be traced back, specifically, to Puerto Rico (let’s call it Chupacabras puertoricanus). In his book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore (University of New Mexico Press, 2011), researcher Benjamin Radford lays out a compelling case that the original Chupacabra case stems from a Puerto Rican woman who had just seen the movie Species (1995) and shortly after claimed to have seen a similar creature on her property. Like the creature in Species (which was designed by the great artist H.R. Giger), this monster was described is looking somewhat like a hunched over Grey alien with rows of long spines on it’s back; later depictions also included bat-like wings and fangs.
The news grew bat wings on the island and soon people were talking about US experiments gone wrong and the creature was blamed for reports of livestock allegedly found drained of their blood. Chupacabras translates to “goat-sucker.” As my TWW podcast co-host Heidi likes to say: “Chupacabras: they really get your goat.”
The second style of Chup comes from the Mexico-US border area (Chupacabras texmexus) some years later. These reports, it was quickly determined, were not of supernatural creatures, but rather of poor dogs, foxes, and coyotes suffering from bad cases of mange. Mange causes animals to lose their fur. Imagine driving under the moonlight on a rural road and your headlights happen upon this poor devil lurking on the side of the road:

The southern Chupacabra has taken on a life as it’s own and sometimes you’ll see a crossbreed of the two– a canine-like animal with spines down the back and extra-terrestrial black eyes. Ah, the life of a Chupacabra breeder.
So now, as we begin planning stages of Milwaukee Paranormal Conference 2022, I asked artist Jill Zgorzelski to design this year’s logo. She asked if I was looking for the Puerto Rican or Southern version, and although our previous artists have gone with the Puerto Rican, I told her either is acceptable, because we need to let all Chupacabras into our hearts and minds. She’s going for the Southern fried version and I know she’ll do something great.
SEE ALSO: My book Monster Hunters is still available here: Monster Hunters | Chicago Review Press
Keep an eye out for the new art and Milwaukee Paranormal Conference updates on our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.
Check out Jill Zgorzelski’s art page here: Jill C. Zgorzelski | Facebook
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: Paranormal Real Estate Mogul

For this week’s TWW podcast I talked to my friend Crystal Schmidt, who is a Tea’s Weird Week Facebook group moderator and was a guest on the TWW podcast back in season one to discuss wrestling and politics (Crystal has a podcast called Wrestling Public Radio, which is absolutely great). Crystal is also a realtor, so I thought it’d be fun to talk to her about something that always captures my curiosity– paranormal real estate. We talked about when you might have to disclose a ghost or murder in your home and some properties that are (or were recently) on the market.
Here’s some notes on these deals that will get scooped up by me after I win a million billion dollars in the lottery and become a PARANORMAL REAL ESTATE MOGUL.

Property: Earlshall Castle
Selling for: unlisted amount
Notes: A 34-acre estate with a 10-bedroom, 6 bath 16th Century castle (and the world’s oldest golf course) visited by Mary, Queen of Scots, and owned by relatives of Robert the Bruce. Also comes with a ghost, “Bloody Bruce,” the ghost of the Baron Andrew Bruce, whose ghostly footsteps can be heard walking up and down a spiral staircase. Sellers don’t want to talk ghosts but obvs it would make the ultimate haunted AirBnB.

Property: Village of Lawers
Selling for: $172, 859
Also from Scotland– an entire haunted village, or at least the ruins of one. Stone ruins are all that are left, part of the three acres of property includes a beachfront on Loch Tay. The Lady of Lawers has been haunting the land since the 1600s– while alive she was a well known soothsayer who accurately predicted local catastrophes and the coming of the railroad. As I discussed with Crystal, the fairly low investment doesn’t take into account building something on the property with running water, electricity, etc. It would well if you could gently maintain the ruins and make a small camping ground/ cabins with a new central building that had showers, a kitchen, etc.

Property: Lizzie Borden’s House
Sold for: $2 million
This Fall River, MA property sold in Spring of 2021, and it looks like it went to the right hands. The home where Andrew and Abby Borden family were murdered with an ax Aug. 4, 1892. Daughter Lizzie Borden was charged, but acquitted. The house has operated as a bed and breakfast and museum since the 1990s, and will continue to serve that function under new owners. They will be adding one new feature, though– ax throwing.

Property: The Conjuring House
Selling for: $1.2 million
This Rhode Island farmhouse is the basis for the story that inspired The Conjuring. It was a story spun by ghost hunter couple Ed and Lorraine Warren, and although their investigation was problematic (see my column “The Conjuring: 1992 Sally Jessy Rafael Edition” for a taste of the insanity) there’s no doubt the house is now a paranormal and horror landmark and as such a good investment to rent out to paranormal researchers and horror fanatics.

Property: Area 51 Ranch
Selling for: $4.5 million
Notes: This 80-acre cattle ranch borders Area 51, so close that the cows often wander in to the mysterious base’s property. Four and a half mill is a lot of dough, but a good investment if you want to run a cattle ranch and have a side hustle of setting up a UFO research center with some observation towers so people can skywatch to look for crafts flying in and out. Also, prostitution is legal in Nevada, so you could open an extra-terrestrial themed brothel. SOLD.

Tea’s Weird Week, S4 ep03, Paranormal Real Estate Mogul: I talk to Crystal about paranormal real estate and what I’ll spend my (theoretical) billions on, then me and Heidi discuss weird news, including a check in on the Dallas QAnon cult, a galldang book burning, Grimacecoin, and more. New trivia from Miss Information and we close out with a track from Mini Meltdowns, “I Wanna Die (feat. Psychey Ikey) [Electronic Remix]”
Listen here: Tea’s Weird Week, S4 ep03: Paranormal Real Estate Mogul (podbean.com)
Spotify//Soundcloud//Google Podcasts//iHeartRadio//PlayerFM//Apple//Stitcher//Pocket Casts
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Tea’s Weird Week: What the Rougarou Do

Tea’s Weird Week, Season 3 starts today! Our previous two seasons were 13 episodes long, this time we’re doing ten episodes (but also a couple special episodes, like a holiday “Radio Krampus” special). This is our first autumnal season, so we got plenty to do and talk about– ghosts and monsters and much more. We’ll be recording live at the Milwaukee Paranormal Conference, September 24-26 and if you’re in the area hope to see you there: Milwaukee Paranormal Conference Returns Sept. 24-26, 2021 | Milwaukee Paranormal Conference (milwaukeeparacon.com)
We’re kicking things off this episode with a talk with Lyle Blackburn, a Texan author, musician, speaker, and narrator of documentary films for Small Town Monsters, a great independent production company that has created a series of documentaries on cryptozoology and other paranormal cases. Oh, and he’s also started his own line of handcrafted hot Monster Sauce!
Lyle has specialized in writing about cryptid cases from the South, documented in his books like Lizard Man: the True Story of the Bishopville Monster, Sinister Swamps: Monsters and Mysteries from the Mire, and The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster, among others. That last title, about a Bigfoot-like creature stalking the Boggy Creek area of Arkansas, led Lyle to his first collaboration with Small Town Monsters. He’s since narrated several of their documentaries, include their new film, Skinwalker: Howl of the Rougarou. It’s out September 14. Here’s a trailer for the film:
As the trailer mentioned, the Rougarou is a tale of Cajun folklore from Louisiana. The word is derived from loup garou, the French word for “werewolf.” It’s said a curse can be placed on you that will transform you into a Rougarou under the moonlight in the Louisiana bayous. Some people have even claimed to have encountered this terrifying wolf creature.
Lyle told us more about the Rougarou legend, his work on the documentary, and the low down on some of the other projects he’s got going on, and let us know about a new destination on the Tea’s Weird Week bucketlist– the Rougarou Fest, which happens every fall (Oct. 22-24 this year) in Houma, Louisiana. It featues live music, delicious Cajun-style food, and they crown a Rougarou Queen– Oooooowooooo!
This episode also features me and Heidi Erickson trying to figure out this week’s weird news– people horsing around with Ivermectin, Christians Against Dinosaurs (“Big Paleo,” LOL), demons sending text messages, an expensive porno stash, and more. Plus original music by Android138, a new trivia question from Miss Information, and we close out with a track from Lyle’s hellbilly band, Ghoultown, “Night of No Tomorrows,” off their latest album, The Curse of El Dorado.
Tea’s Weird Week, S3 Ep01: “What the Rougarou Do,” Listen here: Tea‘s Weird Week, S3 ep01: What the Rougarou Do (podbean.com)
Spotify//Soundcloud//Google Podcasts//iHeartRadio//PlayerFM//Apple//Stitcher//Pocket Casts
Follow me on: Substack//Facebook Group//Twitter//Instagram
Check out my latest books:
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
Apocalypse Any Day Now: Deep Underground with America’s Doomsday Preppers (2019, Chicago Review Press)
Wisconsin Legends & Lore (2020, History Press)
