Ghost guru lectures about local phenomena
John Tenney researches conspiracies toinform, engage others
By Melissa Giannini
C & G Staff Writer
A few years ago, John Tenney watched a black object move across a starless black sky. Immediately, his mind started to rationalize what it could be — it’s a kite, a bird, some kind of airplane, he thought.
“I didn’t even think it was a UFO until after I couldn’t see it anymore,” he said. “As soon as it was out of my field of view, I realized that it was none of those things (kite, bird, plane) and that’s why I couldn’t figure out what it was. As soon as you can’t identify something that’s flying, it becomes an unidentified flying object.
Most people have seen weird things overhead, but rarely do they start ghost-hunting societies, lecture about government cover-ups and keep file cabinets stocked with conspiracy and natural phenomena research. And most people don’t offer answers to questions before they’re even asked.
Lifelong Royal Oak resident John Tenney does all of the above.
“In 1989 or ‘90, I met a conspiracy researcher,” Tenney said. “I started doing footwork for him, filing Freedom of Information Act requests, following up on research and news articles.”
The researcher, Craig Ciccone, had a specialty in assassinations of the ’60s and ’70s.
“When you investigate government conspiracies, you will eventually find yourself in the realm of UFOs and Area 51,” he said. “When you start to investigate UFOs, you find yourself falling into all of the other realms of paranatural phenomenon — ghosts, cryptozoology, which is modern-day monsters like bigfoot and Loch Ness monster. And I’ve just always just had such a passion for things that were unknowable. I wanted to know them so badly, that I just kept reading. And eventually, I started lecturing on it.”
He formed the Michigan Anomalous Information Network in 1997. There was a large contingency of people contacting him wanting information about ghosts that he formed a branch group — the Great Lakes Ghost Hunters Society.
“In the late ’90s because of things like the X-Files, people got this interest in paranormal phenomena,” Tenney said. “So you started seeing ghost groups and paranormal researchers pop up all over America.”
Although there’s not as overwhelming an interest in the subject these days, Tenney says that his phone rings a bit more around the Halloween season.
“Basically, the point of being a member is just to become organized with more people who are like-minded,” Tenney said. “For a long time, people who were interested in paranatural or heterodoxical phenomenon have been classified as low-intelligent or not the most stable of people. But when you join something like MAIN, you realize that a lot of people that join up are college-educated; they’re stable; they have full-time jobs, families.”
The southeast Michigan chapter of high-IQ society, Mensa, is hosting a “Weird Michigan” lecture by Tenney at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 18 at the Southfield Civic Center’s Parks and Recreation Building, 26000 Evergreen Road.
Harley Berger, vice president of the chapter, said that he found out about Tenney online while searching for information on parapsycology. The group hosts a series of lectures that cover “just about everything you can think of that tells us something unusual or enlightening about the world around us,” Berger said. “These are people who are interested in learning. They have diverse interests. The point is to enlighten and entertain people.” He also thought that it might put everyone in a good Halloween mood.
“People think that when you research this stuff, that you run around fields or cemeteries with flashlights,” Tenney said. “They think it’s very exciting. But the majority of the time, you’re sitting in a library basement, looking at microfiche, going through the archives of a newspaper, submitting Freedom of Information Act requests. For me, the fun is in collecting evidence and archiving it so that later generations can have a solid record of things that have occurred.”
More information about the groups can be found at the MAIN site: members.tripod.com/~mainorg or the GLGHS site: www.ghost.web.com. For more information about the Mensa lecture, e-mail semmemail@aol.com.
You can reach Melissa Giannini at mgiannini@candgnews.com