Giacomo Medaina

Member from 1756 – 1786

Have you ever had the feeling that you are not alone in an empty room? Feeling a cold chill running through you involuntarily? Do you sometimes hear creaking and howling at night, and try to convince yourself that it’s just the wind? Because what else would it be? After all, there is nothing that cannot be explained rationally.
Or is there?

Let’s get to the point: we live in a time when the supernatural is despised. Because it does not fit into the parameters that humans need to feel safe. Because it takes the illusion of control away from us.
And yet there are still things in our world that we can not explain. Abandoned houses where the light flickers at night, even though the power was turned off years ago. Disused hospitals, from which the cries of the sick still ring out at midnight. And simple family houses, whose changing residents over the course of decades all end up in psychiatric wards, all by chance of course.

Let’s be more specific: Have you ever been looking for a ghost hunter? Probably not. This profession has been forgotten. And whoever practices it is considered a fraud or a madman. But that was not always so. There was a time and a place when the ghost hunter was the city’s most sought-after man, even more than the doctor.
The name of this popular man was Giacomo Medaina. And the place was Verona, Italy. He was born there in 1727 and even at a young age defined himself, above all, with a single extraordinary character trait: his hatred of ghosts. He blamed them for driving his mother to madness, and finally suicide, when he was only 10 years old. He was sure that it was them who made the noise when, as a teenager, he secretly sneaked out of the nursery at night and was discovered. And he imagined they were behind every failed harvest that befell the peasants, and every outbreak that killed the population.
His hatred was so strong that he devoted every free minute of his life to the fight against the spirits. And when he was just 28 years old, he was to become a legend…

Dozens of independent records have revealed that in 1755, a phenomenon occurred that in northern Italy is referred to as just ‘the Ghost Plague of Verona’. Countless locals from business, education and politics seemed to lose their minds within days. The politicians made confused speeches, the traders burned their goods, the professors babbled confused nonsense in the universities. From the grand buildings of the city came bloodcurdling screams of unknown origin. Political decisions, trade, teaching – all of it had become impossible overnight. In short, the inhabitants suffered terrible fears and Verona was facing a collapse of unprecedented proportions.

The events of 1755, there is no evidence to support it. Let me just tell you so much: Ask some of the old ladies around the Piazza delle Erbe today. They all know it very well, because they have been telling each other there for generations: it was a ghost plague.
– Franco Iacci, Paranormal Researcher

Alone, Giacomo Medaina went in search of the cause of all the evil and found it, it is said, in a forgotten dungeon under the Arena di Verona, where Roman gladiatorial fights were once held. As it turns out, the dungeon served as a morgue many hundreds of years ago for all those gladiators who had not survived the fierce battle in the arena. The dungeon had recently been broken during construction and thus the peace of the dead gladiators disturbed. Even today in Verona there are drawings about what happened then: with fire and smoke, light and mystical songs, Giacomo managed to first collect the spirits and finally banish them back to the dungeon.
Only a few days after the outbreak of the ghost plague, he was able to announce its end. And indeed: All the insane people came to themselves again. The echoing screams stopped.
Giacomo Medaina was celebrated throughout the country and henceforth traveled through Europe to free homes and neighbourhoods of ghosts. This is what first brought him to the attention, and gained him membership of the ACE.

Only the great love for his wife Marisa in 1762 led him to relocate his center of life to Verona. Through her, it is said, the once so eager ghost hunter calmed down.
The two spent wonderful years together, until their luck abruptly ran out with Marisa’s death in 1770.

Giacomo was devastated. How could he live without his beloved? But one day, according to the diary of a friend to whom he confided, Marisa appeared to him as a ghost. And suddenly his entire value system was turned upside down. The hatred of all ghosts gave way to his longing to see his wife again.
– Franco Iacci, Paranormal Researcher

From then on, Giacomo changed sides. He no longer tried to drive away spirits, but to conjure them up, hoping to understand more about them and one day bring his wife back from the realm of the dead to our world. For more than fifteen years he searched desperately until finally in 1786 he introduced a machine with which a change between this world and the Otherworld should be possible. But after the first test attempt in his laboratory, Giacomo disappeared forever.

Since then, there are only rumours about what has happened to Giacomo. Some said he had killed himself. In mourning for his lover. But ask the old women from Piazza delle Erbe. They are sure: Giacomo and Marisa are reunited. And when you sometimes hear the wind whistling in the corners of the square at night, it’s almost as if Giacomo’s name can be heard every now and then.
– Franco Iacci, Paranormal Researcher