Okay, color me pathetic.

You're probably asking, "What's with the blurry photo? Where are the vintage ride vehicles and fun pictures of Pam riding a merry-go-round? When's she going to wolf down a funnel cake?". Well, there's a little story attached to this pic.

I've visited Conneaut Lake Park twice, the last time this past early June. The park itself was closed due to the weather (big bummer), but something going on at the Beach Club, something which took me totally by surprise, made the trip more than worth it.

A big event was commencing, wherein members of the Pennsylvania State University Paranormal Research Society were conducting an investigation of the haunted Hotel Conneaut. Folks flocked to the Beach Club, the historic lakeside restaurant and bar, to start off their paranormal weekend, where a variety of lectures and other special events were to take place. I bought an Arch Angel Michael t-shirt and leafed through various books and prints, all paranormal in content. Would've loved to have joined in on the event, but had lots of traveling to do that very day. Besides, I already had my own ghostly encounters at the Hotel Conneaut the previous year. And, unbeknownst to me, I was about to have some more in only half an hour. But more about that later. What you want to know now is why I'm just so very pathetic.

This particular paranormal group has achieved rockstar status with their own show on A&E, "Paranormal State" chronicling their ghostly adventures. Full dork disclosure: I've caught absolutely every episode of the series. The leader of the group is one Ryan Buell, tall, dark, stoic and brooding. And, okay, kinda dreamy. And probably half my age. Still, I felt compelled to snap some photos of the spooky kids playing beach volleyball while I was seated in our car before we left. Like some sort of half-assed P.I. (I'm still embarrassed at my behavior months later...)

(Note to hopefully extricate myself even a little from the depths of patheticness: I did attempt to talk directly with the members of the crew, as I did have my own encounters with the invisible inhabitants of the hotel that past August, but their security folks basically weeded me out, reminding me that when the group investigated the hotel a year ago or so, a different psychic was at the helm, not Michelle Belanger (the woman along for the event), so basically I had no one to corroborate my story with. But they were extremely polite Goth kids, exhibiting a perkiness that belied their pierced, studded, and tattooed exteriors.)