Is a St. Cloud Skating Rink Haunted?

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — It is arguably a somewhat unusual location for a ghost story. However, an observant customer of the Skatin’ Place might notice a sign that alludes to something beyond the flashing lights of the arcade and rink. A sign that displays “Gilbert’s story.”

“The Jacksons, they’ve ran the rink for the last 40 years, this place has been here for 50 years. And ever since they’ve been managing it, they’ve known of Gilbert,” said Skatin’ Rink Manager Matthew VanderLinden. “This is a low-lying area. There’s a swamp here that we built the building upon 150 years later. So about 150 to 200 years ago, there was a little boy named Gilbert who was hopping from rocks to rocks and then slipped, hit his head and passed away.”

But some people believe he may still be here.

“[There have] been spooky things that have been happening here forever. Sometimes games will just shut off in the middle of a session for no reason. You’d go back and check the breakers, breakers are just fine, there is no reason for them to just all flip off.”

VanderLinden said footsteps have also been heard on the ceiling and music has suddenly played when there’s no DJ. He says once an employee heard “Ghostbusters” playing when he arrived to open the rink.

“I remember when my first few years DJing, we had some girls say they could see a face in the vents,” recounted VanderLinden. “Those vents open up into a closed room, doors locked, no one can go back there. Yet these girls claim as they were skating around to the ‘Ghostbusters’ song, they saw a little boy’s face inside the vent. There’s no way that could have happened, so naturally we think it was Gilbert.”

Apparently, Gilbert’s favorite place is a storage room customers can’t access.

“So, we actually have a sign on the door that says this is Gilbert’s bedroom. That’s where most of the sightings are, so that’s where we suspect he…resides,” said VanderLinden.

VanderLinden said not everyone believes in ghosts, but that doesn’t bother him.

“Sure, yeah, there’s always people who doubt what happens. I believe that Gilbert’s real. I think all of our staff believe that Gilbert’s real. So, we’re not skeptics here and we’re here all the time.”

And because he said Gilbert is friendly, he’s not worried about him scaring people away.

“We haven’t seen a noticeable impact and we think that Casper the ghost shouldn’t scare away people. If anything, it’s interesting, it’s cool… I wanna go there and meet Gilbert.”