Dan Terry

Like many young people in the community, Dan worked as a guide at Meramec Caverns, where he developed an interest in history.

After a four-year hitch in the United States Coast Guard, he began a career in law enforcement, almost as an accident. In 1995, Terry went to work for the New Haven Police Department and was promoted to Assistant Chief of Police in 2006.

Even in his childhood, Dan was fascinated with the paranormal, mostly through such television shows as the Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and Kolchack: The Night Stalker.

When Dan was old enough to drive and managed to get a car, he began investigating local haunted places with a small group of friends. During his Coast Guard days, he continued to go to alleged haunted places, using the old 1970’s ghost-hunting style of stalking the ghost rather than interacting with it.

After concentrating on his career and family for many years, Dan was able to return to ghost hunting after the children were grown. He visited many haunted places and, with the help of Misouri Paranormal Research members, learned new procedures, such as how to get EVP’s and paranormal photography. He is now known as "The Spookstalker". Dan has investigated homes and businesses from Wilmington, North Carolina to Cimmeron, New Mexico, including a very haunted museum in Wichita, Kansas, and the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He was one of the early investigators of the Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville, Kentucky.

After writing a newspaper article for the New Haven Leader about local haunted spots in 2005, Dan began writing for Haunted

Times Magazine and soon became a regular contributor. In 2007, his first book, Beyond the Shadows: Exploring the Ghosts of Franklin County, was published. In 2008, it was followed by Missouri Shadows: A Journey Through the Lesser Known, the Famous and the Infamous Haunts of Missouri. He has also been published in police-related magazines.

His published articles include an interview with Lt. Col. Jesse Marcel, Jr., the last man acknowledged to have touched the debris from the 1947 Roswell crash, and other articles about Roswell and ghost hunting.

In addition, Dan recently served as the narrator/historian for a video entitled, The Morse Mill Project, and is scheduled to be part of a video about haunted places along the Missouri River.

He has spoken at several ghost conferences, including one at Ohio State Reformatory, and at the Mineral Springs Hotel and Spa at Alton, Illinois. In March 2009, Dan hosted the first ghost conference ever held in Franklin County, Missouri, and is planning a second conference in April 2010.

Dan Terry makes his home in New Haven, Missouri, a few miles east of Hermann, with his wife, Sherri.