Ghost tours could make county a spook-tacular getaway

Ghost tours could make county a spook-tacular getaway
June 29, 2009
By Leah Boyd
LivingstonDaily.com

A spooky discovery in one of Howell’s downtown shops could be the ghosts of commerce yet to come.

Barb Barden, director of the Livingston County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she is exploring the possibility of launching ghost tours in the county to boost tourism and draw business, particularly to historic downtown Howell.

She said a recent investigation by a paranormal group that claims Howell’s MainStreet Winery is haunted sparked the idea.

“From a tourism perspective, this is a growing phenomenon,” Barden said. “We can’t afford not to explore any tourism opportunity that could potentially bring business to our community.”

Barden said the visitor’s bureau still has to meet with city officials to collaborate on the idea, which could include tours based on alleged paranormal findings, historic events and even current ghost hunter investigations.

Danny “Big Dog” Holroyd, founder of the Southern Michigan Paranormals group that investigated the winery, said tours would be a great match for Howell.

“Ghosts can be anywhere, but historic places have more opportunity,” Holroyd said. “If these disembodied spirits are hanging around, they want a voice.”

Holroyd said his investigation of the wine shop included several methods, including magnetic monitors and a psychic.

“We definitely picked up some strange activity,” he said. “Our belief is that the wine shop is haunted.”

Sandy Vyletel, co-owner of Howell’s MainStreet Winery, said she never believed in ghosts until experiences at her shop. She said electrical switches are often turned off and on without human contact and that alarms have been set in the building without her or her husband’s knowledge.

“They (the investigators) think there are several spirits here,” Vyletel said. “We’ve never believed in anything like this, but now we are complete believers.”

However, Pat Linse, co-founder of the California-based Skeptics Society, said science does not back supposed ghost-discovery methods. The Skeptics Society is a national scientific organization that lobbies for accurate representations of science in the media.

“Chamber of commerce ghosts are fun as long as people understand they aren’t real,” Linse said. “Ghost hunters like the authority of science without the discipline of science. If you could detect ghosts, there would be a Nobel Prize for that.”

Barden at the visitors bureau said she hopes people will judge for themselves whether ghosts are real by checking out the potential tours and paranormal investigations to come to Howell.

For information on the Southern Michigan Paranormals, visit www.smparanormals.com. For information on the Skeptics Society, visit www.skeptic.com.

To contact the Livingston County Convention and Visitors Bureau, call (517) 548-1795.