Ghost Tours
Here in Hollywood, we are experiencing a huge growth in the business of ghost walks. Anyone can do it. Pick a Hollywood star, a lurid death scene or just set up a hike to Hollywood Forever Cemetery “The Resting Place of Hollywood’s Immortals” and hang around the tombstones of luminaries from Cecil B. DeMille to more recent unfortunate arrivals like Lana Clarkson. I suppose celebs like these wouldn’t be quite so “immortal” if they had just been cremated and tossed over the side of some Poseidon Society boat, would they? But then that’s a whole other scam we won’t go into right now.
The exact lure of this macabre tourist activity has always alluded me despite my leanings towards the darker sides of entertainment. It’s not like buying a “Map to the Stars’ Homes” and taking a look at Jack Benny’s front lawn. There’s something more than just creepy about it. I suppose that’s the draw.
Ghost walks, hunts and tours are big business. Never mind all the hyped up story telling, Goth costumes or over the top hearses and carriage’s that cart curiosity seekers around from Edinburgh to Cairo, it’s all supposed to be in fun. No intentional disrespect is meant even if some of the top woo peddlers happen to be on hand to spread whatever extra special effects they might add in to ante up the fear factor. I’ve been on quite a few ghost tours and there’s no lack of obvious forced creativity in what passes for “historical re-enactments” in most of these places. Promoters of these attractions will go to any extreme to sell tickets, rain or shine. In fact, rain at some of these venues is preferable. Edinburgh features no less than 6 different ghost tours, each one showcasing a separate haunted house or ghost.
Closer to home here in Hollywood, I have been booked to provide seances for jaded after-tour party folk who didn’t get enough cheap thrills looking over the grave sights of people like Fay Wray or Rudolph Valentino. Of course, I’m only too happy to oblige. That’s what I’m hired to do. I must admit there have been times when I felt I might have been treading my insolent boots over sacred ground. Certain uncomfortable moments have occurred when I have had a hard time separating my respect for the surviving works of such stars and the scenes taking place at the final resting place of their remains. It’s not their fault – they’re dead. Revelers who imbibe large amounts of adult beverages and what they do in such cloistered situations are the stuff of tabloid myth and a whole other story. Decency forbids me to reveal too much about what goes on between the clustered tombstones. It just rings a little crass to call back the spirit of Mel Blanc and then fake Bugs Bunny’s voice so close to where the guy’s skeleton lies mouldering away. Am I being superstitious here? 
It’s not that I’m thinking this macabre sensationalism is anything that invokes anything particularly religious – or sacrilegious, rather that sometimes these soirees descend to something annoyingly distorted and ugly.
I know I might be largely alone in this sentiment. Perhaps one has to have worked behind the scenes at some of these events to fully comprehend the tastelessness of the agents and party planners involved. Each succeeding year since I first started doing seances, event entrepreneurs in Hollywood fight a never ending battle to try to out-do each other with new and more grotesque displays of morbid spectacle. One year, Hells Angels for Jesus provided a black draped hearse and droves of top-hatted bikers to accompany a seance I did for Sharon Tate.
I have witnessed the most outrageous exploitation of cemetery plots and funerary decor anyone could imagine. Respect be damned. If there’s a buck to be made and even the slightest sign of a shadow cast across a past death or the hint of occult historical significance, like magic a dozen “Spirit Experts” will materialize to further elaborate on the most lurid details they can summon. If there’s no haunted history already on the books, it won’t take long for the enterprising tour honcho to cobble something together by making fiction up from what little fact they may find by pumping a gullible neighbor or local looney. Soon central casting is called in and the agents and party planners get busy dressing everything up in black crepe, hiring cadaverous looking waitresses and preparing to serve after-tour drinks and hor’s d’oeuvres off the tops of rented caskets. Charles Addams would be proud.
So-called “Ghost Historians” have set up their businesses in every conceivable place from Gettysburg to Las Vegas. Even Haunted Haight Street in San Francisco has an expert. I realize it’s a capitalist sociatywe live in and places like Gettysburg are fair game, but it does seem a bit premature to hype a place like Las Vegas with it’s gleaming skylines as being a particularly haunted city. But then again – I’m an old fashioned mage with an old school sensibility of haunting. I have to face the fact that even if Las Vegas is a relatively new haunting ground, people have certainly died there. There are haunted people there – no doubt about that. Some even look like they are dead long before they stop breathing. So naturally these folks are just as apt to have their graves trampled, desecrated and glamorized by glitzy show biz antics as anybody in Gettysburg or Little Bighorn. The same goes for Haight Street. Who am I to insist that the ghost of Jerry Garcia might not wander the Panhandle or Golden Gate Park? As Jerry himself so wisely opined:
” I mean, whatever kills you man, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.”
How true.
So what’s the ultimate response from society to these tours? They love it! They can’t get enough of it! Ghost touring has become yet another safe way to face our deepest darkest fears in the carnival like atmosphere of a trumped-up world where life has become cheap and skulls decorate every childs’ hoodie. There’s no one who likes a good ol’ ivy covered crypt and the uneasey sheen of a rain-soaked mausoleum more than me, but isn’t partying there a little like yelling in a library? Have we reached a point where as in Ray Bradbury’s story; “The Life Work of Juan Diaz, ” it’s become acceptable for human beings to realize an even greater earning potential after they are dead than when they were alive? Elvis is making more money now than he ever did when he was alive. Ghoulish isn’t it?
My questioning of this burgeoning trend has little to do with science or skepticism and more to do with a general observation of where we seem to be heading with contemporary directions in entertainment. I’m a part of this scene too so it would be hypocritical for me to attempt to totally distance myself from the Haunt Industry. Halloween approaches and soon I too will be taking my own dusty gargoyles off the shelf, packing-up my wares to prepare for another hopefully lucrative Season of the Witch and trying to sleep soundly in the bed I have made for myself.
That said, I’m becoming increasingly skeptical about drifting just a little too far down the river Styx and further and further downstream from the Science Museum. With an almost unending barrage of dreary woo from programming like “Supernatural,” “Ghost Busters,” “Ghost Whisperer” and every other ghost this and ghost that including the latest; “The Ghost Channel,” …even I’m growing weary.
Isn’t there a place for something or someone to inject just the tiniest pin-spot of bright humanity in there among all the damp, pitch-black moroseness of American television’s Gothic obsession? Someone tell me there is a light at the end of this dark Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole we have fallen into! Why isn’t there a place for us to see The Other Side of The Other Side now? We don’t need more mindless sitcoms; a new Lassie, Muppet Show, Waltons or Father Knows Best reunion…
We need The Skeptologists!
*Black & White photos courtesy of The Simon Marsden Archive: www.marsdenarchive.com
I understand exactly what you mean by the words “something annoyingly distorted and ugly”, and I also have mixed reactions to such crass displays. On the one hand, it’s important to honor the dead; on the other hand, it’s also important to not revere the dead. Every generation should learn from the past, but they also must eventually turn their back on the past and make their own way.
And yes, we need the Skeptologists.
I think this is just one of the worst case examples used to make a point. I’m sure it’ll turn up on “what’s the harm?” some time, tho I have yet to see a ghost tour segment there.
Personally – I don’t believe in ghosts, but I have been on a ghost tour. My wife, her cousins, their friends all love ghost stories and spooking each other. I don’t see anything wrong with this. The tour I went on was entertaining, and I got a bit of a history lesson while I was on it.
Like magic shows, ghost tours are a form of entertainment. I hold disdain for musicals, but I wouldn’t lobby to have them stopped, because they are a popular form of entertainment. Can the skeptologists go to a musical and shed the light of reason on them, and show people that they’re idiots for finding stories sung at them silly? I’d watch that ep, for sure.
Ah, good old Noel Coward:
The stately homes of England
though rather in the lurch,
supply a lot of chances
for psychical research.
There’s the ghost of a crazy younger son
who murdered, in 1351,
an extremely rowdy nun!
Who resented it,
now people who come to call
meet her in the hall.
The baby in the guest wing
who crouches by the grate,
was walled up in the West wing
in 1428.
If anyone spots the Queen of Scots
in her hand-embroidered shroud,
we’re proud
of the stately homes of England.
Auug. Please, ‘eluded’, not ‘alluded’. When in doubt check the dictionary.
Okay flawedperfect, I got your point, but I think you might have missed mine. Sure, I love a good ghost story as much as the next guy, In fact as I wrote; I write them myself and incorporate them into seances performed for the same crowd that go to ghost tours. The harm done, if any, is that in a lot of ways; like seeking a medium instead of a grief couselor, they can seem to cheapen what should be (only my viewpoint mind) held in some cases honorable. I fully realize this is a long shot. I suppose it’s purely a matter of taste, which here in Hollywood is frequently at a premium and nearly non-exsitent. Let’s put it this way, if you had a young daughter who had just tragically died for whatever reason, would you feel good about seeing people traipsing around her grave dressed like Beetlejuice and leaving behind a trail of plastic champagne glasses, party napkins and shrimp tails? Maybe that might be a turn on for you, but I doubt it unless you are perhaps holding a wild wake or seriously disturbed. Of course cemetaries have people to clean up these messes pretty quickly, but as I wrote, you have to have worked these types of events to begin to understand how I have at times come away feeling a bit haunted myself. I know it’s a silly sentimental mental construct on my part, but all my posts can’t be sucessful diatribes on matters of world destiny and critical masterpieces.It would be a different story altogether if things were kept strictly in a historical context, which I’m sure the lion’s share of these tours do, but in the worst case scenarios where ghost tales are made up pretty much on the spot purely as a scare tactic, I find it a tad offensive. As I said, this is not a skeptical or scientific issue; just an observation of where we might go to see what has become of what was once a venerated locale and in many cases how we seem to have left behind any tradition of respect for the dead. I’m all for the blackest of humor, but I’m a skpetic and not a widower or childless parent, etc. Must go now and look at more pictures of Lynn Collins….
To Mad Scientist – touche, quoting Noel Coward. I have been “Sideshow Bob” shuddering all week.
Mark – I did get your point, but thankyou for clarifying. I do agree, respect for the dead is a touchy subject. Enjoy Lynn!
As a former resident of Gettysburg, and current weekly visitor to the town, I am very unhappy about what the ghost tour industry has done to what was once a place to honor our past. The ghost tours began after Mark Nesbitt, a local historian, published some of his ghost story books. Someone in the town government asked him to start a tour to help bring tourists back into town after dark. He began his walking tours, which were a success. His good business sense, along with his penchant for weaving historic fact into the stories, spawned a multitude of knock-off tours, to the tune of 15+ tour companies operating in town now. The offerings range from ghost bus tours to train tours to walking tours to mourning theaters to trolley tours to carriage tours to “hey, why don’t you walk around with this EMF meter and actually experience a ghost” tours. Yes, it is entertainment. I love a good story as much as the next person. However, people are quick to take what they hear on a ghost tour and parade it around as fact, especially when it is presented to them in that manner in the first place. I could even live with that, but frequently the history that goes along with the ghost stories is skewed at best and completely fabricated at the very worst. Tourists are getting two brands of mythology on many of these tours: the paranormal stories and the history. What gets under my skin the most, however, are the tours that offer customers the opportunity to experience scientific proof-positive of the afterlife by waving an electromagnetic field detector around underneath the town’s power lines and along the busy shop-lined streets. These tours have helped transform the battlefield into a veritable circus of gadget laden orb thumping ghost-hunters screaming out into the darkness as they click their digital cameras, “I’ve got another one, Mabel! I’m gonna be on television after I put it on that there internet thingie!”
Yes, ghost tours are entertainment, but they are also purveyors of bad history, bad science, and bad judgement, all in the name of expanding the wallets of hauntrepreneurs.
Thank you TonyaK. You got it in words better than I could have said it; From someone who lives there.
My take on Ghost Tours…
Eh, it’s cheaper to buy a movie ticket, a large popcorn, pepsi and choc-top (mint). You walk in expecting fiction and walk away reasonably entertained depending on the movie. Even if the movie was half arsed, you still get the popcorn, pepsi and choc-top combo meal. If there’s a promo deal, you get a toy. A junky toy, but a toy nonetheless.
Why don’t ghost tours offer combo meals and toys?
Obviously not a Scottish site you write here, but I felt moved to chip in. I personally work on a Ghost tour in Scotland. We are run by a published and creditable Edinburgh Historian, and we work in a very historically ‘busy’ graveyard.
While I totally agree that respect for the graves you stand above should be foremost in an operators concerns; not all tours are the same. In my own company we are very clear that we use the word ghost to describe a phenomonon that we have no other word for – and it does not necessarily imply ‘the soul of a dead person’ or anything else – we try to be as open minded as possible as to what causes ‘paranormal’ events – but if wierd things keep happening in a particular place it is worthy of interest.
At the same time we like to think we are in our own small way seeking to document and record a very unusual sequence of events that I’ll spare you the details of – since I ain’t trying to sell our tour here.
As storytellers we feel a strong sense that the stories we tell are either the accepted history as recorded by official sources; or else a suggestion of something different which we, and our boss, research and have been able to defend using genuine historical sources and the rich story telling culture we have here.
These stories are in all cases, important: as stated earlier; something which should not necessarily be revered, but certainly remembered. In all cases these stories (a christian concentration camp, an abandoned poulation at the mercy of the criminal underworld, us burning Rome that one time, social darwinism and indeed – religeous intolerance) have been ‘glossed over’ or forgotten by most people living in the places where they actually happened just a few hundred years ago.
All these problems seem to remain with our country in some form or another, and paranormal activity is reputed all over.
The ‘paranormal’ events: whatever their cause: never mystify me – in some form or another ‘damaged’ places echo with a sense that affects people in different ways – and some people call it ‘haunted'; others just ‘moving’ or ‘eerie’.
I’d also point out that we work very closely with our City council and the Kirk of Scotland to keep the graveyard secure, tidy, locked and maintained. We are always mindful that we stand on soil that holds great meaning to some, and the ancestors of others.
Personally I strongly doubt anyone in socltand would do a ghost tour into a cemetery currently in use!
Storytellers (as opposed to historians) have a tough job – while the historical facts are vital to our tales, the tales have a point, or a purpose, or an issue that is the more important thing to communicate.
You will get charlatans who would literally dig up the dead for a quick buck; but you also get people who care greatly about the lives and deaths that shaped the present.
Some tours use capes and costumes, and do indeed offer refreshments (lots of haunted bars all of a sudden), because there is an entertainment industry too and some people just want to be scared. Other tours do focus on the historacy and the story itself and leave the spooky stuff up to the location. Sometimes nothing happens, and people complain. Sometimes something happens, and people complain.
You can’t please everyone; and you can’t convince everyone – and if you try to do either you’ll become either a stand up comedian or a gothic wierdo.
Unfortunately, there is room for both types along side the few that simply tell the tale; take people there and see what happens, and (hopefully) work with mediums, scientists and (oddly) the military to try and figure it out.
Best suggestion so far is low frequency sound waves – but no luck picking them up when we actually look for them. Then again we never have conclusively ‘found’ a black hole either.
Skeptics should be encouraged because best case scenario they are right; and it’s just a cheap fright for people who want that; and worst case scenario the dead have some power over us – and they shouldn’t. Bloody parents, eh? Never letting go.
Long post, sorry.
Gerry
I know exactly which company you work for and do agree that you and your company are very good and accurate historically. Yours is always the company I recommend if people want to do a ghost tour.
However, I do find the abundance of the ghost tours in Edinburgh unsettling. One or two is fair enough, but including the variations that exist with styles and content the above blog is a little shy when they mention there is just six.
You cannot walk down the Royal Mile without being accosted by various students and resting actors trying to sell you their tour- be it spooky graveyards or The Underground City (which you and I both know is not a city, and for the most part is not underground, in fact on one tour you go UP a flight of stairs)
Edinburgh is home to the Enlightenment, a critical thinking capital, and now, thanks to the ghost tour market it has become synonymous with ghosts and ghouls destroying a historically important city and turning it into Disney’s Haunted Mansion.
I agree that your company does a lot to promote the accurate history of the city, but others are not so caring. If you include the paranormal as a side story to the main event there is no problem, but the supernatural has become the big selling point.
I have worked for some of the Ghost tour companies and find what they do to be distasteful- I see little difference between them and the fraudulent mediums out there. Both make money from peoples beliefs and fears. You know as well as I do that many of the people paying as much as £12 to come on these tours believe the supernatural stories they are being told and these stories are either complete fabrications or there is no non-supernatural explanation offered for the occurrences (with one or two minor exceptions).
The city needs a bit of skepticism. I applaud you and your company for their devotion to historical accuracy, however, one good point does not cover up the bad.