Last night I went on a ghost tour. I've become fascinated with ghost tours lately--this was my third in as many months (the other two were in New Orleans and Gettysburg). This was the first that truly delivered what I was looking for: a tour of local ghost stories presented by a guide who didn't take herself too seriously. (My guide in New Orleans spent most of the tour telling us what kind of camera equipment we, as fledgling ghost trackers, really must buy, and told us about all the ghosts real people--just like us!--had seen on his tours.)

My guide last night told us lots of good stories. She told us about the Czech national pasttime of defenestration: The first was in 1419 when religious Hussites tossed town councilors out of the window, the second was when Protestant nobles threw some Hapsburgs to their deaths (these nobles were promptly decapitated for their troubles and their heads placed on the Charles Bridge for two years.) She told us about the ghosts of a Turk who killed his fiance, and the ghost of a priest who killed a prostitute. She told us the tale of the trial of a butcher who failed to go to battle with the rest of the Butcher's Guild because he was in bed with his girlfriend. His defense was that he never wanted to be a butcher anyway and was a vegetarian and a pacificst. None of this went over well, and he was dragged to his execution yelling "Make love, not war!"

I am fairly certain she made all of this up. But she was a good storyteller and it made us all laugh.

One of the girls on the tour--a very amusing, red-headed Aussie named Rachel--pointed out to her friend Glenn a guy she saw standing behind a pillar. He was covered in red stains, carrying a large knife. They asked me a few moments later if I had seen him and I said I hadn't. Glenn said we probably weren't supposed to have seen him, that he was due to jump out at us somewhere along the tour.

The tour concluded with the tale of a barber who became involved with alchemy and quickly lost all his money trying to turn lead into gold. Destitute and obsessed, he sold everything in his shop, then he sold his daughter, and finally his wife committed suicide in misery. All alone in the world, the barber would stand at the door of what had been his shop, sharpening his razor on a leather strap, until one day he finally snapped and began killing people on the street with his razor.

This was clearly the part where the extra, covered in blood, was supposed to rush out and scare us. Rachel, Glenn, and I waited. . . but nothing happened.

The tour ended at a pub where we all sat down for a beer. Here's where the guy is going to pop out, we thought. But still nothing.

It was at this point that Rachel admitted she actually has seen ghosts before--she's woken up with them on her bed and things like that. I would have discredited the whole guy-in-red-with-knife story had Glenn not seen him too.

We came to the obvious answer: I finally have been on a ghost tour that actually HAD a ghost. (The several rounds of beer we'd had at this point should have no effect on your opinion of this conclusion. . . )