NEW ORLEANS --
New Orleans idiopathic, off-kilter preoccupation with the spirit
world may get the validation it never asked for in the form of Gray
Line New Orleans newest tour.
The given name of
the tour is Ghost Expeditions, and its billed as the worlds
original paranormal/ghost investigation venture -- so tour hardly
describes it (and the word does raise a prickly frown from its
promoters).
What makes Ghost
Expeditions (GE) different from other spirit tours is its feel of
authenticity: It turns curious tourists into hands-on participants
in a parapsychological field investigation, according to Daena
Smoller, a field investigator and business partner of
parapsychologist Larry Montz, founder of the International Society
for Paranormal Research (ISPR), which in turn created Ghost
Expeditions.
In other words,
scoffers can get the sarcasm scared out of them during a three-hour
nighttime tour of actively haunted properties while field
investigators record the experience.
Guests also take
part in psychic exercises and monitor paranormal activity using
hand-held instruments under the watchful eye of the investigators,
some of whom are clairvoyant, she said.
GE provides
equipment (or you can bring your own) that includes something that
reads atmospheric fluctuations associated with the presence of a
ghost (the temperature drops), and something called L-Rods, which
you hold in your hand to communicate with one of the houses
earthbound entities. L-Rods can tell if the entity is male or
female, although why it matters now hardly seems
relevant.
The rods also
help detect residual energy, which, according to Smoller, is energy
left behind from some kind of event that happened at the site. In
everyday life, for example, energy from a family argument might
linger and be detected as an oppressive feeling by later guests,
she said.
In the GE
properties, many participants describe different feelings and
different events in different rooms, but its the same thing over
and over, night after night, Smoller said. These participants are
reading residual energies from previous events.
Another concept,
Smoller added, is residual hauntings, which manifest themselves in
visuals, smells, sounds or a combination of each, from an event in
the past. For example, at the Gettysburg Battlefield, people hear
screaming, smell cannon smoke. Entities dont come back or stay
around to re-enact bad things. These are residual
hauntings.
Whether GEs
claims of entities and residual energies are authentic or just a
lot of mumbo jumbo, the venture, powered by Gray Line New Orleans
since Oct. 1, is a huge success, having reached sell-out status on
Nov. 19, six weeks after launch, according to Smoller.
A number of
hotels are implementing packages centered on Ghost Expeditions
ventures. Frank Quinn, sales director for the Decatur Hotel Group
in New Orleans, said he will have a paranormal package at his
hotels, all including Ghost Expeditions, by the first of the
year.
The hotels are
the Lafayette, Le Parc St. Charles, Hotel Le Cirque, the Pelham,
the St. James, the Historic French Market Inn, the Cotton Exchange,
Chateau Dupre and the Holiday Inn Express.
The package
includes a Ghost Expedition tour; a tour of the Pharmacy Museum and
the Wax Museum; dinner at the Court of Two Sisters, which has been
ISPR-certified as haunted; drinks for two at a select bar and a
copy of the book, ISPR Investigates the Ghosts of New
Orleans.
Rates start at
$199 per person, double, for two nights and $249 per person for
three nights. Smoller said GE expects
to become involved in a similar package with the Bourbon Orleans.
(See related story, Bourbon Orleans gets in the
spirit.)
Each expedition
is managed by an ISPR-certified researcher, inside a noncommercial
property validated by ISPR as actively haunted, Smoller said.
Expeditions are limited to 24 persons.
The location of
the property is kept a secret, although it does lie outside the
French Quarter and within a 10-mile radius (15 minutes or less) of
the pick-up point, and Gray Line New Orleans provides
transportation to and from the site. Departures are at 8 p.m. from the Jax Brewery shopping
malls information desk, at the Toulouse Street entrance.
GE suggests that
participants wear comfortable clothing (there is no heat inside the
ISPR research properties -- and no rest rooms). Sneakers are the
recommended footwear.
Participants may
be videotaped for research purposes, and the data gleaned may be
released at a future date without compensation to participants.
(Now that even the most skeptical of skeptics can
believe.)
For those who are
afraid to participate, a spokeswoman suggested taking a Gray Line
Ghost Tour in the French Quarter. Or
they can buy the book.
ISPR Investigates
the Ghosts of New Orleans, by Montz and Smoller, is available for
$14.95 at bookstores throughout New Orleans, at Amazon.com and directly
through the ISPR at (323) 644-8866. In addition, a new, one-hour documentary, ISPR Investigates New
Orleans Rich & Haunted, is available on DVD through the ISPR
office for $19.95.
Ghost Expeditions
operates nightly year-round, except from December through Mardi
Gras, when it assumes the Gray Line seasonal schedule of Mondays,
Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The tour, which is
commissionable at 15%, costs $65. Reservations are required. Group
rates are available for 10 or more. Gray Line New Orleans Group
Sales will schedule special times for charters.
For reservations
and gift certificates, call Gray Line New Orleans at (800) 535-7786
or (504) 569-1401. ISPR can be contacted directly at (323)
644-8866.
To contact
Destinations Editor Margaret Myre, send e-mail to [email protected].