My family and I recently went on the Edgartown ghost walking tour. The good news: it only cost 10 bucks. The bad news: it's not very good.
Now, I have zero belief in ghosts, and am 100% skeptical about all things paranormal. 100% means that I think all of this stuff is complete nonsense. But I am one of those people who, while he may not believe in ghosts, sort of wishes there were, because that would be really cool! So I was more than willing to give this tour a chance to give me some mid-summer entertainment.
Unfortunately, while the two tour guides--a man and a woman--seemed well-intentioned, they really weren't very good storytellers. The pacing of the tour was uneven, and there really weren't enough stories that sounded remotely plausible, let alone actually hair-raising.
By her own admission, the female tour guide was skeptical of ghosts when she began doing the tours four years ago. That made me wonder: why the heck would you start a ghost tour business when you don't even really believe in the stuff?! Doing so seems extremely cynical, at best. And at worst, completely unethical. Regardless, she says that she now is a believer, based on the stories she's since heard. Whatever.
One silly story involved the apparition of a recently deceased woman in the choir loft of an old church in full view of the people down below. Oh yeah, and then she vanished into thin air. Then there's the former editor of the Vineyard Gazette who disintegrated like a Star Trek character being teleported. (That was the actual comparison one of the tour guides made.) I believe his dog was involved, as well.
But the pièce de résistance involved the famous fashionista Donna Karan, who allegedly was visited in her room at the stately Victorian Inn by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five, yes, five ghostly fishermen!! Oh yeah, and some old spirit who reached out and touched her boobies, making for a grand total of six specters in one impossible-to-believe-unless-you-have-suffered-a-head-injury-or-were-raised-in-a-prescientific-tribe-that-has-never-learned-what-critical-thinking-is anecdote. read more