‘Who knew ghosts could be so boring?’

    

Kalani Ghost Hunter

I am agnostic on the question of ghosts, spirits, etc. being somehow among us. I suppose anything is possible, but I’m wary of most of the living people around me, so maybe I have no interest in co-existing with those who’ve predeceased us. Whatever the truth may be, I want to think a video produced by—cough—“ghost hunters” would entertain with a little suspense, wonder, and perhaps even a smattering of fright, but we’re safe from all that in this recent production of Kalani Ghost Hunter, uploaded to YouTube Sunday.

The team visited the former Huntington Masonic Temple in Indiana which, you may remember, was purchased in 2017 by the Cannizzaro family to be their residence.

The ghost hunters make clear they know nothing about Freemasonry—not only by admitting it outright, but also by demonstrating their nescience through stupid commentary. Did you know the number eight has “significance” to Freemasonry? Me neither. 

Maybe I’m nitpicking, but if you aim to show the world an hour-and-twenty-minute(!) video on ghosts in a former Masonic lodge room, you ought to make some effort to familiarize yourself a little with the Masons. It’s not that the number eight would come up in your reading—it wouldn’t— but you would arm yourself with enough basic facts to inform your questions to the apparitions. Alas, all we have here are a few people trying to converse with an empty room.

I suffered the eighty minutes so you don’t have to. Oh, this episode is titled “TRAPPED inside a MASONIC TEMPLE.” No one was trapped, and it’s no longer a Masonic temple.

     

‘Weird Fact Wednesday: A different kind of Masonic home’

     

Courtesy Freemason to Mansion

I remember reading about this several years ago in a news story, and recently I found a website chronicling the progress made in restoring this former Masonic temple in Indiana. A family from California relocated for the purpose of buying and renovating this building to make it a residence. A different kind of Masonic home, if you will.

Looking at the façade, I recognize similarities to the Trenton Masonic Temple in New Jersey, and I don’t doubt there are many others with the resemblance. This one dates to 1926, during the boom when the fraternity exploded in size. Through World War I and the decade thereafter, hundreds of thousands of men flooded into Freemasonry nationwide, so there was need for who-knows-how-many new buildings for lodges, chapters, Scottish Rite, Shrine, and the rest. That need has waned, to say the least, and consequently these properties are sold, but also sometimes abandoned for want of a buyer.

Courtesy Freemason to Mansion

In 2017, the Cannizzaro family changed their plans to acquire and inhabit some big chunk of farmland somewhere, and instead bought the 20,000-square-foot Huntington Masonic Temple, where Amity Lodge 483 had dwelled.

“It’s going to take us at least a year to get it the way we want it,” Theresa Cannizzaro told a local newspaper then. They’re still at it.

I’m not a big fan of Masonic lodges and other bodies putting all their energy and time into stubbornly trying to continue life in their hundred-year-old buildings. The roof, the elevator, the plumbing, the electric, the boiler, the everything cost too much to upgrade because there are too few Masons to shoulder the expenses. The Cannizzaros seem to know what they’re doing, and I wish them “profit and pleasure,” as we say.

Check out the steady updates of their progress on their blog. Actually, it’s not only the rehab; there are photos of the Masonic sights in the building, plus items they found here and there. Look them up on social media too.

Courtesy Freemason to Mansion

The stuff you find laying around.