Guest Blogger: Green Bay Ghost Tours

It’s that time of the year again when the days get shorter, the nights chillier and Halloween is fast approaching.  Just remember when you are listening to ghost stories and watching scary movies that send a chill down your spine and keep you awake a little longer at night that Green Bay has its share of spine tingling tales and haunted locations. 

     Few people have heard about Baird Creek, where children are heard laughing and playing as well as a man’s spirit who walks the trail. Also the Cotton House located at Heritage Hill, where Pricilla Cotton died and her spirit has never left or the haunted train at the National Railroad Museum.

     People have a few ideas as to why a spirit might linger around. One assumption is that they died suddenly and don’t realize that they are dead, another one is they have unfinished business to attend to. The last assumption is that they are attached to a certain item or place that they loved when they were alive.

There are different types of hauntings; these are the most familiar, one is the residual haunting.  This haunting is where an event is repeated over and over. The spirits are unaware of their surroundings.   They don’t know that we are around and we can’t communicate with them.  The second type of haunting is an intellectual haunting.  In this one spirits are aware of their surroundings and can communicate with us.   The last type of haunting is poltergeist activity. This type of haunting  involves furniture moving around, items being thrown around the room, loud noises  ( like footsteps, knocks, crashes, voices). Ghosts and poltergeists can both cause this type of activity to happen but poltergeists are non-human entities, not spirits of the dead.  Poltergeists are more cruel and destructive than spirits.      

     Recent polls have shown that forty five – forty eight percent of people believe in ghosts. Throughout history well know figures have been believers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a spiritualist and paranormal investigator. He was also a member of Ghost Club. Ghost Club was founded in England in 1862. They are a society for paranormal research and investigations. Other famous members of Ghost Club included Author Charles Dickens, Poet William Butler Yeats and Actor Peter Cushing.

     People have been trying to communicate with the dead for thousands of years. Thomas Edison was working on an electronic device to detect and communicate with ghosts but he died before completing it. Today there are many devices that paranormal investigators use to see if a place is haunted like digital recorders, emf detectors, video recorders, ghost boxes, digital cameras and thermometers etc. A good investigator always has to be a little bit of a skeptic.  Seventy to eight five percent of ghostly activity has been debunked, but tonight when you hear that bump in the night remember the fifteen to thirty percent of hauntings that remains unexplained. This is what makes peoples believe that something is out there.      

     If you would like to find out about the hauntings and history of other buildings in Green Bay, join Green Bay Ghost Tours on a walking or bus tour.  For more information go to www.greenbayghosttours.com.  We are the original and local Green Bay Ghost Tour. We don’t sell tickets on Groupon.