'Be curious': Raleigh group explores paranormal activities in the Triangle

Nelson Nauss was a child when he had his first encounter with a ghost. 

He was climbing the stairs to the second story of his childhood home in Montreal when he said he saw a shadow-like, static figure at the top. 

Nauss ran downstairs to tell his mother, but when the two returned, the figure was gone. 

He said he felt fearful about the encounter. But when Nauss moved to North Carolina, he decided to confront these fears head-on by going to meetings hosted by paranormal groups. 

After meeting Kelly McConkey in a group, the two decided to create their own. They started The Ghost Guild, a North Carolina-based nonprofit dedicated to educating and researching paranormal activities.

“I think most paranormal teams, they're focused on the ghosts, and our paranormal team is more focused on the history, because ghosts are people, they were people who shaped the foundation of the world around us,” McConkey said. “They were the people who built Raleigh.”

The Ghost Guild is the Raleigh Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Department's paranormal research and investigation team for Mordecai Historic Park.  

Nauss said The Ghost Guild takes a more scientific approach to ghost hunting. They collect data about people’s experiences by sending out surveys and trying to find patterns, form hypotheses and test those hypotheses. 

McConkey said she has a personal relationship with spirits.

During her childhood in North Carolina, conversations about ancestors and spirits were always a part of her life and her family. But beyond these conversations, McConkey has a unique relationship with the spiritual realm. 

Empaths are typically considered people who can easily read others’ emotions, and plenty of people consider themselves empaths or at least empathetic. McConkey goes a step further, and said she can feel the emotions of people who aren’t physically there. 

While investigating the historic Mordecai House — where the team is currently based — McConkey had a specifically profound empathic experience. 

She said she was walking up the stairs onto the second story when she was suddenly hit with a wave of emotion, and an image came into her mind of a woman lying on her bed, grieving the loss of a child. 

McConkey later learned that a child had died in the home some years ago. 

While her ability gives her a unique relationship with the spirits and homes the team investigates, The Ghost Guild remains a nonprofit dedicated to research and history, she said. 

The spirits of Raleigh encompass figures from a dark and complicated Southern history, she said, and sharing ghost stories with the public informs them of not only white figures from the past, but of enslaved individuals.

McConkey said her myriad of experiences made her believe a ghost can truly be anything, and everything is possible. 

“I think the main thing is, we have to just have some skepticism, while also just being open to the possibility that people have different gifts,” she said. “And there's a lot about this world that we don't know.”

Nauss said all the research he has done supports different theories on what exactly a ghost is. 

These range from recorded events from the past to deceased people who continue interacting with the land of the living.

Christina Zellis joined The Ghost Guild in 2021, and she said she loves the idea of multiple timelines of history coinciding — ghosts being figures going about their lives, in their separate timelines. 

After winning a guild contest where she got to accompany the group on an investigation, Allison Miller joined The Ghost Guild in February. She said she supports the idea of residual hauntings, where spiritual energy has become a memory that replays itself.

While spirit haunting has a rich history, Miller said ghost hunting is at a breakthrough point, where people are starting to consider ghosts as a part of scientific exploration. 

“This is just maybe science, something that we don't quite understand yet,” she said. “But we're just exploring that curious side, and that these things are happening, and we're trying to put a name to it. Because everything in science starts out as unknown.” 

Zellis said people interested in the paranormal should entertain that curiousity. The more people engage with the paranormal, the more comfortable they will become with it, she said.

“Get out there and explore, ask questions, be curious,” she said. “And don't be afraid.”

The guild is hosting its Haunted Mordecai Festival on Saturday at Mordecai Historic Park, with in-person presentations at noon, 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. The festival showcases data findings and the history of the park.  

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