What about a Ghost Tour?

Well what about a ghost tour?  What about the paranormal? 
Why would anyone go?

It seems the unknown is deliciously, macabrely attractive.  Something you can't take your eyes off of, even if you are unsure or frightened. 

Things that cannot be explained happen all the time.  Is that ghostly?  Is that paranormal? Or is that just something, well, unexplained...yet?

In my many years with the subject I have found it is always best to start skeptically.  Always search for the answers.  Sometimes in history.  You know what they say, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)  So maybe we already know and are just running in circles trying to explain it when it was in front of us all the time.  Skepticism is good as well, as long as it does not come from fear.  Fear of being wrong, fear of what could happen, or fear of being called a nut.

You know, Margaret and Kate Fox, 2 little girls with the help of their older sister Leah, told a story and stuck to it, until their husbands said they would have nothing to do with such nonsense. So they stayed quiet, but the legend grew in leaps and bounds. When they did the impossible in those days, left their husbands, they were offered very big money to tell how it all was a lie.  They had fooled, effectively, the world. 

Other "experts" came out and confirmed what was happening to the 2 girls and made big money and careers based on this.  It changed society as a whole.  You weren't crazy to believe, just one of the "in" crowd.  As usual, scams and scammers appeared, but the world was secure, they still had living proof in the girls that this was real.  After all it had been tested by doctors and scientists.

http://www.prairieghosts.com/foxsisters.html
http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Fox%20sisters.html
http://www.worldspirituality.org/fox-sisters.html
http://www.geohanover.com/docs/fox2.htm

However, fear of ridicule (from their husbands in particular) kept them from continuing and created a drinking issue, and fear of poverty made them give it all up.  For a mere $5000 (in 1888 money mind you) they went on a great stage and told how they had made fools of the world that snapping or cracking were the noises that sounded like "bumps in the night", and poof the popular world of spiritualism faced a large chasm, those who were thought fools who still believed and those who were the intelligent ones and said they had never believed in such tomfoolery.

For their deed which they soon recanted, the ladies died paupers and in pain. Ah, fear...

Hollywood came along and found that sex sells, but so does fear.  Fear of the unknown.  The more dangerous the better.

So, I guess it comes down to this, do you want a thrill?  Do you want to be frightened? Or do you just want to find out for real?  That is how you pick your ghost tour.  That is how you go on your paranormal adventure.  It is anyone's choice. And it is all fun.

As for me, I can go to a movie or rent one for that matter, I want to know the history, I want to find out what is real, what are the secrets, without having to repeat the past.  How about you?