Bump in the Night Society members are a "bunch of weirdos" who love the paranormal

At Bump In the Night Society, a Pittsburgh paranormal investigations team, not every member believes in ghosts. In fact, the nature of each spooky encounter — in which the BINS team explores historical sites using cameras and "spirit box" radio scanners to purportedly pick up on ghostly voices and other spiritual cues — is a subject of debate.

The paranormal community is far-reaching and open to a spectrum of beliefs, BINS says, something on full display recently at the group’s first annual paranormal and metaphysical fair, Specters in the Spring, where they also gave a keynote.

“We’ve run into prominent historical figures, criminally insane individuals, demonic princes that fell from heaven with Lucifer, and even a kitty whose … disembodied meows were not heard live but showed up on camera during evidence review,” BINS lead investigator Jenn Ghelarducci says, reading remarks prepared with fellow investigator Mikey Bowser. Ghelarducci adds that while she initially denied the otherworldly meows — captured at Ohio’s Bellaire House, rumored to be the site of a deadly coal mine explosion — Bowser insisted that they keep filming.

“But what are we truly interacting with? Is it the energy from the dead or other realms? Is it dimensions on separate timelines temporarily merging together?” Ghelarducci asks.
Another lead member, Troy Baumgartner — wearing a T-shirt that reads “Eat. Sleep. Ghost Hunt. Repeat.” — says he approaches the paranormal from an “energy theology,” believing that locations retain energy regardless of who’s presently inhabiting them.

“Your 5-year-old self is still in the house that you grew up in when you were 5 years old,” Baumgartner says.

Specters in the Spring at Velum Fermentation brought together 40 vendors including psychics and mediums, paranormal teams, oddities and trinket makers, bath, body, and wellness shops, a reiki practitioner, owners of a haunted attraction (for entertainment) — West Mifflin’s Portals of Fear — and representatives from properties believed to actually be haunted; these included the Bellaire House, the Ross House — like Bellaire, said to be located on a “ley line,” heightening paranormal activity — and Wildwood Sanitarium, a former tuberculosis clinic and “medical missionary institute” in Salamanca, N.Y., all of which BINS regularly investigates.
Though the group leads several public ghost hunts each month, their first “convention” was a charity event benefitting One Day to Remember, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit helping children of a parent with terminal cancer. The organization was chosen in honor of Baumgartner’s husband who’s facing terminal cancer.

“Getting weird to give back to something special,” Bowser said of the all-volunteer event, which saw many vendors travel from out of state.

True to form, the day-long convention pivoted to an investigation of Andrew Bayne Memorial Library in Bellevue later that night, where the BINS team stayed until 3 a.m. (The group later posted a video showing a light-up cat ball, another common ghost-hunting tool, moving on its own.)

Asked why certain people are so fascinated by the paranormal, Sean Bowman, BINS founder and lead investigator, echoed Bowser, saying, “We’re a bunch of weirdos.”

Though described as the group’s “resident skeptic,” Bowman had his first “experience” at age six, when he and his older brother saw the specter of a man in a trench coat darkening their basement door.

Bowman is married to Ghelarducci, who told Pittsburgh City Paper she grew up in a religious household where her mother practiced deliverance, which is said to cleanse believers of demons similar to exorcism. (The couple got engaged on Devil's Night in a New Orleans cemetery, later getting tattoos of its coordinates.)

“I think we all have different origin stories,” Ghelarducci says. “I wouldn’t say I’m religious, but I'm spiritual in my beliefs, but other people … might be atheist [and] have different ways of doing it. But we can all appreciate each other, everybody… As long as we're all being respectful to the spirits. That's the main thing.”
Bump in the Night Society formed in 2020 with Bowman, Ghelarducci, Bowser, and Baumgartner as full-time members alongside several “associates” and camera operators. Far from being a secretive middle-of-the-night organization, the group posts its investigations as well as haunted histories and folklore on social media, earning it a City Paper Best of PGH Readers Poll nomination for Best TikTok Account in 2022. CP also recognized it last June as a Pittsburgh TikTok account you should be following.

Upcoming investigations include the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie, Pa., and the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber, Pa., which boasts one of the world’s largest Ouija boards on its roof.

Ghelarducci emphasizes that, if you watch BINS’ content, “[Ghost-hunting] TV shows are not accurate. It’s not that crazy.”

Though investigators sometimes get spooked, there’s not screaming and objects constantly flying but instead “a lot of downtime where you're basically talking to yourself.”

Diverging from other investigators, BINS members tell jokes and play music — Ghelarducci brings a recorder — while they wait on apparitions.

“The paranormal is just a really great excuse to go into creepy, fun, abandoned locations that you can't get into very often,” another self-described skeptic and part-time BINS member, Ryan O’Shea, tells CP. “I’m a huge history buff, and a lot of these places have historical stories associated with them. And I love experiencing the history around me.”

“Don't be afraid of ghosts,” Ghelarducci advises any newbies and aspiring investigators, with Bowman adding, “Everybody needs a little bump in the night.”