‘Ghost Hunters’
Discovery TV show checks out Church Brew Works
Sean Casey knows his Church Brew Works is haunted. Although the brewery and restaurant owner hasn’t experienced much supernatural activity himself, his staff constantly mentions tools going missing, chairs moving by themselves, and the occasional sighting of a young girl in a white dress in the former church and school in Lawrenceville.
“You would hear some things off and on from the employees, more from the people in the brewery,” Casey told the Post-Gazette. “Those guys are there earlier in the older part of the school. There just seemed to be more occurrences there.”
It took a heater magically plugging itself back in and the flipping of a difficult-to-reach switch for Casey to email a few paranormal groups suggesting an investigation. A few months later, Casey got a call from the “Ghost Hunters” team at Discovery+. They showed up in June and spent almost a week searching the giant facility for evidence that the place is haunted.
Now you can see what they found. On Saturday, “The Haunted Brewery” episode of “Ghost Hunters” started streaming on Discovery+. Investigators Jason Hawes, Steve Gonsalves, Dave Tango and Shari DeBenedetti swept the place for signs of an otherworldly presence.
“People there were having experiences,” said Hawes. “You had a cook who was kind of fearful being in the kitchen and other employees having issues as well. The whole story behind it being a church and school and the possibilities of the type of activity ... was an opportunity we couldn’t turn down.”
The “Ghost Hunters” team have done multiple investigations of potentially haunted sites in Western Pennsylvania, including a 2004 stop at a Pittsburgh residence and a 2011 exploration of the Carnegie Library of Homestead. Gonsalves grew up in Harrison City and reminisced about all the time he spent at Monroeville Mall as a kid.
Church Brew Works opened as a restaurant and brewery in the former St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and School in August 1996, which means a lot of folks have come and gone without experiencing anything unusual. The fact the building is so well-trafficked and yet its employees keep having unexplainable experiences intrigued Hawes and Gonsalves.
“You can have all of these different eras of time and all these different people passing through places ... but none of that ever means that a place is going to be haunted,” Gonsalves said. “You really have to figure out what are the best techniques to use, what’s the best equipment to deploy. You really have to think and investigate. It’s not just observing what’s happening.”
The episode features Hawes, Gonsalves, Tango and DeBenedetti interviewing Church Brew Works staff and other local people as part of their investigation. Without getting into spoiler territory, they do stumble across a few weird phenomena that may or may not be supernatural in origin.
Hawes said that the “Ghost Hunters” squad goes into every investigation with the knowledge “that over 80% of all claims can be disproved.” Their goal isn’t so much to definitively decide whether a space is haunted but rather to see what they can find.
“People get this idea from movies that things are out to hurt them, but that’s not the case,” Hawes said. “If there’s an intelligent haunt, it’s them trying to get people to acknowledge that they’re actually there.”
That’s what Casey has always assumed was the case with whatever spirit (orspirits) exist at Church Brew Works. He believes it’s a “somewhat playful” ghost who just doesn’t want to be left alone. He hopes the “Ghost Hunters” gang comes back at some point to check out nooks and crannies they didn’t get to explore in the large building.
Casey was impressed by how professional and COVID- conscious the “Ghost Hunters” crew was. Because he wasn’t allowed to be there during their investigation, Casey has no idea what the episode shows. He had planned to hold a watch party at Church Brew Works with his staff, but the omicron variant nixed those plans.
Once the virus dies down, he hopes “Ghost Hunters” viewers will stop by for a visit.
“Hopefully we get past this COVID and the people that are curious about this can work their way to Pittsburgh over the next year,” Casey said.
As for Hawes and Gonsalves, they’re pretty sure they will be back to hunt ghosts in the Keystone State.
“Stick around,” Gonsalves said, “and you’ll see some more Pennsylvania cases for sure.”