Just home from the once-a-month Martinez Ghost Walk Tour, given by a group Central Valley Paranormal. I went with a girlfriend, and we didn't really know what to expect. I was surprised to see that there was a pretty big group (20+) also signed up for the tour (maybe it is because it's so close to Halloween, I'm not sure). Let me just say: I wanted to believe. I'm not a skeptic. I know there are paranormal activiites occurring in the world. I wanted to have faith in these people. Unfortunately, I felt like they were a bunch of sham artists. The woman leader said she was " a sensitive," and able to connect with spirits easily - Better, I guess than her husband his buddy, who claimed also to be "ghost hunters" but did little more than hang around and help to herd people, make a few jokes, and add to the general lack of professionalism of the whole deal. It was excruciating to listen to this woman talk about vague firsthand or secondhand accounts of encounters they'd had in certain areas of the downtown. Really, I could have come up with more entertaining stories - or told her stories in a more engaging way. Some vague recollection to a guy who seemed to have a connection to the old Amtrak station, or a prostitute who worked on the boats offshore during the Gold Rush days, or a guy who owned a business on Main St... You're going to have to bring up the storytelling detail a lot more if you're going to expect to keep making any money off this alleged ghost tour. A stop in front of the Martinez Museum with a plug as to how much history one will find inside isn't that exciting. And standing outside the old jail and the old Amtrak station, isn't going to keep this tour going either. There IS a lot of interesting history in Martinez, and probably a lot of interesting stories of people who lived and died. No disputing those points. But if you're going to tell a story about whomever and you think you've made contact with an individual, then do your backstory research to find out who that person might really be. By the end of a half hour, I was thinking, "Is this all there is?" After about the first hour, I was greatly tempted to walk over to the local bar where I could hear a band playing. I wouldn't recommend this tour to anyone, and I could tell by the looks on the faces of the people around me that they were all disinterested and disappointed in the whole deal. Never again. read more