Supernatural site encounters success
Jeff Belanger needed a fix. Newspaper reporting didn’t pay the bills, and a stint in public relations left him hungry for more time spent writing. The Bellingham resident did what any person in that situation would do - he started a website about ghost sightings.
Belanger’s homepage, www.ghostvillage.com, features a full-fledged community offering visitors access to ghostly phenomena, which collected its 500th submitted encounter this month. The web destination lets viewers read of supernatural incidents from around the globe, and blatant skeptics interact freely with devout believers on the site’s message board, which has over 12,000 members.
What began as a career as a beat reporter for a newspaper in Connecticut lead to his current occupation. After reporting for the Halloween edition on local haunting grounds, the newspaper’s website recorded numerous hits on Belanger’s story. After the paper folded, Belanger had the freedom to post his stories on the web. He taught himself HTML coding, and the rest is history.
"I started with six webpages - two of which were my stories," says Belanger, who has six books published on the subject. "Now, there are 34,000 indexed pages and it’s the most popular website on ghosts."
Google.com verifies its status as the number one site for the paranormal, receiving between 4 and 6 million hits per month. The site’s monthly newsletter goes to 23,000 inboxes, and that number is growing. This Monday, Ghostvillage Radio launched a downloadable podcast of interviews featuring experts on all things supernatural, setting the stage for another medium to gain ghost knowledge.
The goal is clear, says Belanger: "I want to be a one-stop shop in the supernatural."
Jeffrey T. Lavery can be reached at jlavery@wbjournal.com
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