Ghost Adventures

I'm not saying I necessarily believe in ghosts, the kind that evolve from the lost souls of the dead, the wispy white barely-visible entities that sometimes get caught on camera and appear in photographs of otherwise typical family living rooms. I'm not saying I think orbs are the manifestations of spirits or ghosts. You can't say I ever claimed to buy into that whole thing.

However, I absolutely love being scared out of my wits by a good ghost story, and I adore the television series Ghost Adventures, Celebrity Ghost Stories, and Haunted History.

When the Ghost Adventure team captures a voice on their Ghost Detection Device (available here: https://www.ghostoutlet.com/), I often think there's no way a digital recorder can possibly translate random sounds into words from beyond the grave. Sometimes I scoff at the ghost seakers' fear, and I often think, "Yeah, right. Looks like a speck of dust to me," but more often I am swept away by the mania and excitement that comes with searching out a ghost.

Celebrity Ghost Stories, which is now on its fourth season on Biography, never fails to entertain me. I saw the late Rue McClanahan's account of watching her friend die, and in his final words, he said he would "come back" through electricity.  Sure enough, Rue was later accosted by an unexplained blinking light bulb in her kitchen. Movie director John Waters claimed to have a supernatural experience while at summer camp when he was a boy, and Mickey Rooney, the most adorable man alive, was startled awake by an entity that shared a life-changing message.

My earliest memory of hearing a ghost story was at 4-H camp when I was in middle school. Our teen counselor led all of us to a campfire one evening. We all gathered round the fire, and the counselor asked if we wanted to hear a scary story. A few kids confirmed that, yes, a scary story was just the thing. I was a little worried that such an experience would cause me to develop a sleep disorder, but I acquiesced. The young counselor proceeded to tell Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" with such practiced fludity, that I felt I was in Prince Prospero's castle, staring into the bloody face of death itself. From then on, I was hooked.

My brother and I shared an LP (which is the way my generation refers to a record) titled  Haunted House. One side contained a terrific story about a ghost who causes the untimely death of all who see her. The opposite side presented scary sounds, such as howls and screams. When the record received its first inevitable scratch, it caused the scream of a woman to repeat, and that was a neat effect. We played the record all year long; it wasn't just for Halloween.

When I visited my friend Trisha in 2009, she drove us to Savannah, Georgia, where we reluctantly boarded a hearse for a haunted tour of the city. It was fascinating. Our tour guide knew so much about Savannah's history, and I really felt that I might see a ghost at the next turn. We had a great time, and I highly recommend this type of tour to anyone who loves a good ghost story.

While on the tour, I made the mistake of saying, "Orbs? Aren't those just flying insects or specks of dust?" The tour guide replied, "Well, I've never seen a speck of dust with a demon face on it, have you?" I had never seen an orb with a face in it, but I've been looking for one ever since.