Image Gallery: Ghosts of Phoenix Tour: 2006
Last night, Sarah, her brother Joel, Joel's BFF Kris, and I went on a Ghosts of Phoenix tour through Hotel San Carlos and followed it up with a rather frightening meal at America's favorite restaurant, Waffle House.
The ghost tour, as I expected (especially after viewing the official website) was a little cheesy and offered more stories than anything else. From a historical perspective, I found the tour to be very interesting. And the walking through the hotel was also pretty cool. There really wasn't much to see with respect to ghosts, sightings, whatever (though, that was probably an unreasonable expectation for me to have), and I found it a little aggravating that these tour guides claimed to know the taxonomy, categorization, and habits of these supposed spirits. At the introduction to the tour, one of the guides started talking about how this well in the basement is a "vortex," and that was another immediate clue that this tour was going to be ridiculous.
Aside from the cheesiness of the whole thing, it was a lot of fun and a good excuse to visit downtown Phoenix, which was surprisingly dead (no pun intended) for a Saturday night. Literally, the streets were empty except for the cars parked nearby for shows at the Herberger or the Orpheum. The tour was $10 per person and lasted a little over an hour. The crowd was split into two groups of approximately 20 people each.
Following the tour, we thought it would be fun to go to Waffle House, especially since Joel and Kris had never been there. It turned out to be a rather wild night. One group of people there was constantly sending food back ("This waffle isn't crispy enough," "This bacon doesn't taste right," "My spoon is too big," "I left my brain at home"), cruelly antagonizing the one waitress who was on duty and decided to leave without paying for their meal(s). Then, a vagrant came in and started asking people for money at their tables and no one kicked him out! Further, there was this guy there who spoke like Tom Waits in slow motion. He was asking for "sommmmmmmmmmmme coooooooffffffffeeeeeeeee" and revealed 90% of his buttcrack when he stood up to leave.
Below are pictures from the evening. Enjoy!
Oh, also... they have this idea that "orbs" in your pictures mean that there's paranormal activity where you're photographing. Scientists have come up with a different term for such activity: "Dust on your lens." Anyway, the picture of the staircase is the staircase this actress took to the top of the building to jump off an commit suicide. If you look closely, you can see an orb in that picture.
Could science be wrong?!?! Could it really be a ghost?!?!
2006-10-15 16:23:17
