Confessions of a Ghost Tour Guide and Skeptic

I've often argued that some of us skeptics and atheists could do a much better job in communicating to the general public, without, shall we say, always being such a buzzkill. I'm going to point you now to a great article from CSICOP that shows you how it's done. Philip Howard is a skeptic - and a ghost tour guide in North Carolina, in Blackbeard territory. He tells a great narrative about the tours he gives to tourists. Here's the great thing at the end that some of us skeptics can learn from:

And a skeptic I am. I’ve never seen a ghost. I am convinced that spirit sightings and mysterious events can all be explained by natural causes. I live in a 150-year-old house where at least seven children died. Even so, I sleep soundly every night. When opportunity arises I speak out for critical thinking, warn against generalizing from anecdotal evidence, and challenge superstition and blind faith.

So how do I reconcile these tales and my core values? I have asked myself, am I aiding unreason and fostering pseudoscience by leading Ghost Tours? Am I encouraging people to uncritically believe in ghosts and spirits?

Finally I have come to a realization. I can simply tell the stories (they’re good tales, you know, and nothing is quite as refreshing as a good tale) and weave them together with fascinating local history (pirates, shipwrecks, war, geology, and numerous other entertaining legends).

Now and then someone will ask me, “Have you ever seen the ghost of Mad Mag?” or “Do you believe the dead can contact the living?” I’ve even had one man, with a decidedly perverse look in his eye, ask me if I thought demon spirits haunted our world.

Usually I turn the inquiry back on the questioner. “Walk back down this lane, alone, later tonight,” I say, “and let me know tomorrow what you experience.” Or, “It doesn’t really matter what I believe, does it. You need to make up your own mind. I simply relate the stories.”

For a while I toyed with the idea of handing out a disclaimer at the end of the tour. I wondered if it might assuage my conscience. But I soon thought better of that idea. There is no harm in sharing ghost stories, I decided. Anyone who can’t appreciate an Edgar Allen Poe tale, for instance, probably needs to get a life. I’ve realized that the participants in my tours are certainly able to make up their own minds. I maintain my integrity by never claiming that any of the ghost stories are evidence for the supernatural. The folks who listen to them can be the judge of that. I just tell the tales as I’ve heard them, although I agree with one wag who said, “It’s a damn poor piece of cloth that can’t take a little embroidery.”