Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble!

I'm just gonna say it- witches are cool.

My little sister and I shared not only a room, but also a love for all things witchcraft from a young age.  I think it started with our obsession with Joss Wheadon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer t.v. show.  Buffy was, in fact, a vampire slayer- but her best friend Willow was a witch!  We always thought she was way cooler.

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Then Charmed came out.  They're three sisters, all names starting with the letter "P," we're three sisters, all names starting with the letter "K." We were hooked!

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Sabrina the Teenage Witch- every Friday night!

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Hell, we would even watch Bewitched on Nick at Night!

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(We watched both the black and white and color episodes)

We were pretty obsessed, but I will admit that she took it a bit further than I ever did.  In fact, she was so into it, that my mom would take her to a "witch store" a few towns over, where they actually sold crystals and incense and spell books.  (My mom is really cool like that.)

So imagine my pure joy to find out that the third installment of Ryan Murphy's super creepy series would be American Horror Story: Coven.  I can't wait to see Jessica Lange as a witch- she's gonna own it!

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While on our ghost tour in Scotland we heard a ton about witches.  (They usually come up at some point in every ghost tour, just so you're prepared.)  In the U.K., they had their fair share of witch hunts, and we learned some really interesting facts about that time.  Here are a few for your enjoyment:

-Witches were mostly women, but a few men were accused of being witches as well.

-Witches were believed to hex someone by pointing at them.  This is where the whole "pointing is rude" thing came from.

-Pretty much anyone could be accused of being a witch at any time, for any reason.  The hysteria was so insane that people wouldn't think logically about why someone was being accused of being a witch, and just believed that they were one.

-Some places burned their witches.  Others hung them.  But in many places, to find out if someone were a true witch, they would chain their hands and feet together (or in Scotland, they would nail their hands to their knees...) then toss them off into the nearest body of water.  If they floated, they were certainly a witch!  They would be fished out, and properly burned/hung.  If they sunk, well, then, they weren't a witch after all.  The townspeople would fish out the body and give the family a proper burial. As you can imagine, most of them sunk...and as for the floaters- most weren't witches.  Air would get caught under their large dresses as they were tossed into the water, and kept them afloat.

Rough, huh?

Anyway, I'm so excited for AMH: Coven, I just can't wait.  I taped it last night and plan on watching it later tonight with Indy and our favorite Halloween cat:

Ghost Tours - Strange Happenings in a Town Near You!

Indy and I love to travel.  We try to save up for a "big" trip (international, or at least, on the west of the country) and a "small" trip (nearby states) every year.  We started back when we met in '07 and haven't been able to stop!

If there's one thing Indy loves more than traveling, it's Halloween and History (in that order).  And leave it to him to find a way to combine the two- even outside the month of October!  Since '07 Indy and I have been on six, yes six Ghost Tours.

What's a Ghost Tour?  Allow me to explain...

Whether you believe in them or not, almost every small town across the world has some type of ghost story.  And if every small town across the world has some type of ghost story, you can imagine how many more ghost stories there are in the biggest towns and cities across the globe.  Go ahead, Google, "Ghost Tour" and the name of the largest city near you, and I'll bet something will come up.

From my experience, almost all ghost tours are set up similarly:  You meet your tour guide (sometimes dressed in period clothing, usually wearing a dark cloak, and almost always carrying a lantern of some kind) in a public area where they begin the tour with a super creepy introductory tale, or a big, boisterous welcome speech.  Then, you spend between an hour and a half to two hours on a walking tour of the area, stopping intermittently to hear a little bit about the historical importance of a particular street/building/person, followed by stories about the ghostly encounters that are rumored to have happened there.

Some ghost tours are ultra creepy.  Some ghost tours are hysterically funny.  All ghost tours that I have been on have been very informative, entertaining, and a fantastic way to learn more about a new city.

Here's a time line of the places we've been and ghost toured, along with a link to the company we used (although, for most major cities there are at least two companies that do this):

’07 -Philly, Penn:  http://www.ghosttour.com/philadelphia.html 

’08 -San Francisco, California: http://www.sfghosthunt.com/fatcow.com/Welcome.html

’08- Salem, Massachusetts: http://www.spellboundtours.com/

’12 -Brisbane, Australia: http://www.ghost-tours.com.au/Pages/tour_list_ghost_tours.htm

’13 -Edinburgh, Scotland: http://www.witcherytours.com/

’13 -Portland, Maine: http://wickedwalkingtours.com/

I can honestly say we only had one ghostly encounter in all six of these tours, and fortunately I've got the photographic proof to share!

While we on our ghost tour in Salem back in '09, the tour guide kept asking us all to snap photos at each site, explaining that some ghosts will manifest on film/digital screens better than in real life.  Those little dusty orbs you always see in movies, or in an "ectoplasm"- kind of a smoke-like trail of light.

On the tour I'd been snapping and snapping away, chimping at my camera after every shot with nothing to get excited over.  Yeah, there were dust balls or orbs here and there, but nothing big.  Then we reached the end of the tour- a big parking lot that was once a prison yard for a prison that at one time held Massachusetts most gruesome, soulless criminals (yeah, that's what they all say!).  Our guide was telling us about the ghost of one particularly scary criminal who stabbed his victims and often appeared in tourist shots.  I was snap, snap, snapping away- 5 shots in a row.  I took a minute to look back through my photos:

Nothing:

Nothing:

GHOST:

Nothing:

Nothing:

When I saw that "ghost" shot on my playback screen, I nearly pooped myself!  I seriously got a pang in my chest and felt like I was having a hot flash.  I quickly called Indy over and his eyes grew wide as saucers!

Just after this spot, our tour guide lead us a block or two away to thank and dismiss us, offering to check out anyone's photos to confirm/deny ghostly activities.  We hopped online and heard him dismiss everyone, "Nope....Just some orbs....Nah....Nothing....Orbs....Nope...." Then we we handed him my camera and he freaked out! "Oh my god!" He yelled, "Everyone come back, look at this- THIS is a ghost, see all the ectoplasm?!"

His excitement made me laugh, but also scared the crap out of me.  He begged me to send him a copy of the photo so they could post it on their site and insisted on giving me his business card.  I never did get around to sending it to them, and every October I feel badly about it- but I'm sure they've gotten plenty more since '08.

We've got plenty of time left in October for you to find and book your first ghost tour.  Do it! Maybe you'll come away with a ghost photo like me! One that you can whip out every October to scare the heck out of your Photography students!  More than likely you'll just have an awesome time.