Ken Melvoin-Berg (born 10/30/1968 Grand Rapids, Michigan) is a Chicago area psychic detective, ghost hunter, historian, author, lecturer and co-owner of Weird Chicago Tours.
Ken first displayed psychic ability as a young boy and was subsequently trained by his maternal grandfather, Don Melvoin,who also had the gift. Ken specifically displays the extrasensory perception clairsentience. Clairsentience is the ability to detect energies or ghosts which cannot otherwise be recognized with the five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch or taste.
When he was 29, Ken met world famous Astrologer/Psychic Irene Hughes, who is most noted for predicting the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and the 1967 Apollo I fire, which took the lives of 3 astronauts during ground tests. Hughes became his mentor and taught him her system of Astrological meteorology. Ken also worked psychic fairs with Hughes for several years before branching out on his own.
Ken gained notoriety as professional psychic by performing tarot, palmistry and astrological readings for celebrity and private clients alike. He also owned an occult bookstore, Minor Arcana, located onChicago’s north side. The shop included a learning annex where Ken taught various classes, the most popular being on ghost investigation. C.T. (Chris) Thieme also taught classes at Minor Arcana and later became Ken’s first ghost investigation partner. During this same period, Ken also wrote the syndicated newspaper column ”Horrorscopes” and worked as a psychic detective with law enforcement agencies. to date he has assisted in 29 murder suspect identification cases, including 3 serial killers.
In 2006 Ken co-founded Weird Chicago Tours. Some of the Chicago tours Ken has developed and hosts are, Devil & the White City, Serial Killer, Public Enemies, John Dillinger, and the Red Light District Sex Tours. Notably, Ken’s Red Light District Sex and Serial Killer tours are the first and only of their kind in the U.S. Along with co-owner, author Troy Taylor, he also hosts various pub crawls includingChicago’s first Zombie themed pub crawl.
Ken is frequently consulted by the media and has appeared on numerous local and international TV shows about the supernatural, paranormal, occult and serial killers. Some of his appearances include: 3 episodes of Discovery Chanel’s Ghost Lab, The Travel Channel’s World’s Most Terrifying Places, The Biography Channel’s, HH Holmes and theMurderCastle, Dutch national TV, Blood, Murder and Sausage, Chicago Local CBSand WGN news, Chicago Public Radio. Ken also contributes to podcasts such as Ghost Man and Demon Hunter Show and Weird Chicago Podcasts. In addition, Ken is frequently the subject of articles in local newspapers and magazines such as The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Red Eye, and Time Out Chicago. He is also the subject of a documentary by Matthew Arauz and Brant McCrea called ”Paranormal.”
Ken is currently the Great Lakes Regional Director and the Illinois Director of State Operations for Everyday Paranormal and the President of Everyday Paranormal Investigations Chicago (EPIC). He is the official psychic and an officer for the state ofIllinoisand the city ofChicagoin the American Ghost Society.
Among Ken’s published works are ”Lost Temple of the Incan Blood God” and ”Weird Chicago” which was co-authored with Troy Taylor and Adam Selzer. He also wrote the forward to ”Sex and the Supernatural” and the back cover of ”Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories”, both by Troy Taylor.
In addition to touring, media appearances, private readings, police work, writing/researching, university lectures and teaching various classes, Ken is also a medium who regularly performs seances. One of the most famous is the Houdini séance conducted annually on Halloween at the Lincoln Theater at Spookapalooza.
