Having never experienced a "paranormal event" first hand, the subject nonetheless always fascinated me. I loved watching old reruns of The Twilight Zone and similar programs when I was a kid growing up in Louisville, Kentucky and the 1984 movie Ghostbusters is one of my all time favorite films. So, you could imagine my surprise as I sat in front of a computer screen at a local public library back in late-2002 as I clicked on a web site by the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society. I never knew the group existed, never heard of them before, but within minutes I was ready to join up and explore the supernatural after reading their membership information.

Shortly after attending my first meeting of the group, presided over by President and Founder Keith Age, I was a full fledged, dues paying, member of the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society. I later attended the required workshops sponsored by the group and went on my first official ghost hunt a few months later. Soon I was accepted as a regular member and the people within the group treated me fairly and I quickly made many friends.

One of the first investigations I became a part of was at the Willard Library in Evansville, Indiana. Long rumored to be haunted, it hosted a different paranormal group every October around Halloween and I thought this would be an excellent road trip for the LGHS members and a way to get the LGHS name in the papers and on the local television stations. Taking a week's vacation in March of 2003, I journeyed to Evansville and spoke directly with the library's director, Mr. Greg Hager. Doing this all on my own, I secured the blessing of LGHS President Keith Age before I left as I did not want to bend the rules or doing something I was not supposed to do, especially being a new member. I arrived on a weekday and spent some time talking to the director. It seems I was too late to inquire about the 2003 event since it was already booked up, but Mr. Hager was perfectly fine with LGHS conducting the following year's investigation in October of 2004. So began an 18 month long wait or LGHS and myself to investigate the Willard Library.

In between this time, I grew in importance and stature within the group leading a number of different paranormal investigations for Keith Age and the LGHS. I met my future wife at one of the first workshops and we married in May of 2004. We both became trusted members of the group and many members came to rely on us to answer their questions, provide them with the proper forms and documents, and we would spend hours each night gladly promoting LGHS and with it, Keith Age himself.

The Willard Library investigation went off as planned in late-October 2004 with over a dozen LGHS members in attendance. Several, including myself, were interviewed by the local newspaper there and we all talked up LGHS at every opportunity. The investigation itself was flawed seeing as how other invited guests were constantly moving about the building's interior and the noise level was nearly unbearable. However, we conducted our investigation in a professional manner and in the end chalked it up as one we would pass on if the chance ever came our way again.

The Willard Library investigation became one of the more high profile cases conducted by LGHS. While the LGHS members and myself were busy in Evansville, Indiana during the overnight investigation, LGHS President Keith Age was safely at home in Louisville doing more important things. But Keith Age is the one person in LGHS that benefited from our investigation and the one that could mark it down on his "to do" list as something he accomplished. My wife and I would later discover that Keith did a lot of this. Sitting back and letting others do the real leg work while he seemed to bask in the glory of their endeavors.

My wife and I continued on in LGHS growing more important as time passed. By the fall of 2004 I had been appointed by Keith Age as the group's Case Manager and all investigations were being run through me. At times, by late-2005, I was in charge of nearly twenty separate investigations, each led by a different LGHS member, but ultimately the final decisions and depositions of the cases were my domain for the most part. Keith would have the ultimate control over what was done, but handling the day-to-day operations of LGHS had fallen to my wife and myself. Keith was more of a figurehead than the leader of his own group. He gained the press coverage and the glory, but it was myself and others that made that possible for him.

In late-February 2006, I had been Case Manager for nearly a year-and-a-half and I was tired of it. The position demanded several hours of work each night, and besides handling the individual cases, I was also setting up library and radio appearances for Keith, recruiting new members, answering questions sent it to the group that I would receive direct from Keith, and more or less working endlessly to make Keith Age the most famous ghost hunter in the City of Louisville and the surrounding region.

I finally resigned as Case Manager of LGHS on February 28, 2006 and quit the group altogether less than a week later. My wife Patti, who had taken on the tasks of being Keith's mouthpiece to the newer members and trying to follow his rules, was tossed out of LGHS within days of my departure. After more than three years we were both out of LGHS and the events we were about to uncover would change our attitudes and our beliefs forever.

After we left LGHS my wife began researching the numerous stories and accounts Keith had told us and others down through the years. Many of these stories were relatively useless as they provided no real names or locations. But, every once-in-a-while, Keith would string together just enough information that a person could check into the story if he or she really wanted to. So, one day we sat down and started listing all of the stories we had been told over the previous three year period by Keith Age. We came up with around a dozen or so that seemed verifiable. And then we began checking them out.

The stories we remembered best involved famous persons or important groups. The Louisville Archdiocese, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Actor/Director Kevin Smith, the Stanley Tools Corporation and others headed the list. Keith had claimed an intimate business relationship with all of these aforementioned individuals or groups. These claims were made not only to us, but at open meetings where the public had been invited. My wife started contacting each one of them trying to verify what we had been told months before by Keith Age. The results were amazing. None of them, not one, had ever heard of Keith Age or the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society. We were amazed. We were speechless. But we were not done. We wanted to hear Keith's version and offered him the chance to respond to our information. He declined. In fact, later on he said we were bothering him and "bordering on harassment" when we asked about it.

We found shortly thereafter additional information regarding Keith Age. We heard from former LGHS members who had left the group years before. These members had absolutely nothing to gain by coming forward now, but once they heard we were questioning some of the stories we had heard, they had stories of their own to tell. These stories included their first hand, eyewitness accounts of Keith manipulating and distorting the results of on-site paranormal investigations. They also included first hand accounts of Keith employing LGHS members to infiltrate and destroy other paranormal groups in the local area simply because he wanted to maintain a monopoly of the press coverage and the public exposure as the most significant paranormal organization in the City of Louisville and the State of Kentucky.

In short, after three years in LGHS and serving at the request of Keith Age, we discovered nearly everything we had been led to believe and to trust in was a lie. No one in the "paranormal community" seemed all that interested in what we had learned and the LGHS members that remained treated us for the most part as lepers.

So, in closing, let me offer you this little bit of advice. Be sure of the group and the people you are putting your trust in because, from what we have uncovered, you never know who you're dealing with until you peel away the tarnished veneer and then it might be too late.

About Bobby Zoeller

Bobby Zoeller is a former member of Louisville Ghost Hunters Society. At one time he was the Case Manager of LGHS.

Born in 1959 in Louisville, Kentucky Bobby Zoeller has been interested in the paranormal his entire life. Never having experienced what he would term a "supernatural event" with one minor exception, that nonetheless hasn't stopped him from seeking out and trying to answer questions that have always fascinated him. Raised as a Roman Catholic, his interest in demonic possession has always been foremost in this field of study, but unfortunately reliable documentation regarding those events are few and far between. Researching prior cases that have come to light in recent years has not convinced him to date that the phenomena actually exists to any great degree, and looking over some of the more well publicized cases he tends to doubt most of what he has read and seen from the so-called experts that comment on the events.

He joined a local paranormal group based in Louisville back in January of 2003 known as the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society headed by Founder and President Keith Age. He later met his future wife there and they married in May of 2004. While a member of the organization, he became a lead investigator with the group and was appointed the group's Case Manager in the fall of 2004. Both he and his wife participated in close to two dozen on-site investigations during their time there, and the high profile 2004 investigation of the Willard Library in Evansville, Indiana was his opportunity to showcase the LGHS.

Following several questionable accounts involving the group's president, he resigned as Case Manager on February 28, 2006 and within a week quit the group altogether. His wife was removed from the group by the actions of the president. Upon leaving LGHS and discovering much of what he had been told in the past and been led to believe to be facts turned out to be mostly misinformation or outright lies on the behalf of the group's leader, both he and his wife undertook a campaign to expose what they considered fraud and the scamming of the general public all in the name of making the group's leader famous. Documented evidence was gathered from sources around the country to prove their case and the information was first displayed publicly on an independent web site and later on two Yahoo message groups. The web site was taken down by the actions of the former group's leader and the first Yahoo group disappeared after complaints were lodged against it by the very people it was designed to expose.

He has been fighting what he see's as corruption and fraud within the paranormal field now for the past two-and-a-half years, and has had a very difficult time when it comes to the "experts" in the field as it seems no one wishes to speak ill of the others. In short, he has discovered more deception and more media manipulation over the past two years than most people will witness in an entire lifetime. The "experts" refuse to answer direct questions put forth to them, they in many cases continue to con the public out of both their money and their common sense, and the only reason he continues on at this point is because he does not want the uninformed or the more gullible members of the public and the media conned like he was for three years.

He currently work as the shipping and receiving manager for a large sheet metal fabrication plant in Louisville, Kentucky and spends his spare time researching and exposing what he considers fraud and deception within the paranormal field.

If you have any questions you would like answered or have information regarding any high profile "paranormal experts" that you find troubling, you can contact him at r_zoeller@bellsouth.net

The above article does not reflect the views or opinions of Haunted America Tours and are solely those of the Author

Also See: Paranormal Politics

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