NORTH MANKATO — For 11-year-old Jayde Hedinger, the paranormal is an intense draw.
“I have a great-grandma in Nebraska,” the Mankato girl said. “I swear she has a ghost in her house. I really want to get ghost gear so I can explore her house and find the ghost. That would be interesting.”
The Dakota Meadows Middle School sixth grader has found a home for her interest in all things ghost in the Paranormal Club at the North Mankato Taylor Library. The group meets monthly and is aimed at kids ages 10 to 17, said Jeremy Freeman, teen outreach librarian.
“Some kids are naturally drawn to monsters and scary things,” he said. “There’s a fascination with monsters and cryptids in general that draws them in.”
Freeman launched the club about a year ago. It was initially called the Cryptid Club. As of this month, he changed the name to the Paranormal Club in hopes of drawing more attendees.
Cryptids, for those who don’t know, are animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the yeti or Bigfoot. When Freeman expanded the concept of the club to paranormal, he also set out to include “spooky stuff like ghosts and UFOs. That sort of thing. Hauntings and old cemeteries are some of the topics.”
“I thought it would be a fun thing to start,” he said. “I thought I’ll see what happens and then I just kept going with it.”
Only a handful of kids have come to the club meetings in recent months. But Freeman hopes to see attendance increase with the new paranormal focus.
During club meetings, he asks attendees if they’ve witnessed anything that falls under the category of unexplained phenomenon. “I ask them the question and it starts a conversation.”
They also watch documentaries and do some activities. He said the kids “sure come off as serious about it. I’m not sure if they’re finding it fun or if they really, really believe this stuff.”
Hedinger said she enjoys attending each month.
“Every meeting it’s unexpected what we’re doing,” she said. “I’m excited to see what we’re doing next. In the past we’ve played games, watched some paranormal videos and done color sheets about different cryptids.”
In her free time, Hedinger reads up on paranormal activities, saying the book “Ghost Hunters” fascinated her. She also watches a show called “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch” and has visited a haunted hotel in Colorado that “I thought was really cool,” she said.
North Mankato’s Thomas DeMaster, 11, is a fifth grader at Monroe Elementary School and discovered the library’s club after seeing a poster about it. He’s been to several meetings.
“It’s pretty fun,” he said.
His mom, Amy DeMaster, chimed in: “They did a ghost hunt around the library one time. He has a lot of fun connecting with other kids who are interested in the things you can’t see. It stimulates his imagination and gets him to look at things in a different way.”
The next meeting of the North Mankato Taylor Library’s Paranormal Club is 4 p.m. Oct. 30. No registration is necessary. More information can be found at northmankato.com/library.php.