Selling You a Bill of Ghouls

Everyone likes a good ghost story. Even if people don't believe in ghosts, they see it as entertainment. A lot of this has to do with Hollywood, but there is something else, too: a trigger in the psyche that makes something much more interesting if it’s labeled as “haunted.”

Is it really anything more than a marketing hook? A lot of cities offer ghost tours or candlelight walks through old cemeteries. A lot of people want so badly to believe in the paranormal that they’re willing to buy into the story. Case in point: a few years ago my family and I were on vacation in Savannah, Georgia, a city that likes to advertise itself as “the most haunted city in America” (take that, New Orleans!). A quick search at the visitor’s center turned up about twelve brochures for ghost tours and walking tours of the city. There was one in particular that caught our attention: one that advertised the fact that they were the ONLY ghost tour in Savannah that was allowed to actually go inside a real haunted house. How interesting, and, of course, that was the one we went on.

The house itself was the Sorrel-Weed House and outside of the house, a small plaque proudly proclaimed that it had actually been certified as “haunted” by T.A.P.S. (the guys from the show Ghost Hunters). This was a fact that was also used in the brochure. On the outside, the house looks quite similar to the houses around it. Pre-Civil War architecture, sort of a gothic feel to it.

I remember standing there on the sidewalk waiting to go inside and looking at all the houses around it. What made the Sorrel-Weed house “feel” different? A psychological seed had been planted. I had been told before I ever saw the house that it was haunted. Suddenly, the house seemed different. I started looking for things: shadows in the windows, perhaps, or small noises, or flickers of light. My brain had been wired to start interpreting this house as haunted, and therefore, I started looking for signs of it. (on a side note, the house itself was neat, but the owners of the house had obviously made the house feel like what a normal tourist group would expect a haunted house to feel like: dim lighting that threw strange shadows around the rooms, a lot of mirrors that threw reflected light from camera flashes, etc).

But to my original point, and I do have one. Selling something as haunted is a good way to increase business, no doubt, but how different does one react when one is standing outside a quaint little bed and breakfast and says, “it’s nice.” Someone else says, “yes, and it’s haunted.” Suddenly the interest factor increases tenfold. What’s the story behind it? (and the more gruesome the better). There is usually a tragedy involved as in most good ghost stories. The point is that a perfectly normal building or house changes once that “seed” is planted. All perceptions of the house are changed. Your brain is now told, “this place is haunted. Look for signs.” Every bump becomes a poltergeist. Every wind draft is a spirit moving through. Every flicker of light is a ghost communicating.

This is the problem with a lot of paranormal investigations. One has to be able to separate that power of suggestion from “it’s haunted” to “just the facts.” Granted, it’s hard to do. Once someone tells you something, you can’t exactly “unhear” it. Many scholarly articles have been written on the power of suggestion (which is something I won’t go into here.)

At the end of the day, everyone just likes a good ghost story.