Indianapolis Ghost Tours

I learned of the Historic Indiana Ghost Walks and Tours a while ago, and I remember thinking: who would put on these tours, and do people still believe in ghosts? Because to be honest, when I think of ghosts it’s probably in relation to Ghostbusters.

But I was genuinely surprised to learn from a 2003 Harris Interactive poll that 51% of adults believe in ghosts. Another study reports that in one group of college students, the more educated they became, the more likely they were to believe in ghosts. Nicole Kobrowski is just one of these well-educated believers, and she’s parlayed her paranormal beliefs and research into a part-time business with her husband (in addition to working as an educational consultant, teaching at IUPUI, and pursuing her educational doctorate.)

Could 51% of people be dead wrong about ghosts? Well, yes, but I try to keep an open mind, and I was interested to meet an avowed paranormal researcher, so I decided to give the Nefarious Noblesville tour a try.

The first stop on our tour was the old Sheriff's residence and jail right next door to the courthouse. It’s no longer in operation, but is still open to the public as a historical preservation and museum. (The jail has held at least two infamous inmates: D.C. Stephenson of the Ku Klux Klan, and Charles Manson.) After providing some historical background about the jail, Nicole delivered the first ghost story of the evening, which involved several museum workers who believe to have heard clicking sounds they thought were doorknobs opening by an unseen hand. Nicole explained that "We have that on tape from when we were talking, and we had just finished talking about [the clicking], and then we heard it..." The audio snippet of this is available on the Unseenpress web site.

Nicole’s belief in ghosts stems from several experiences she had growing up with her family in a converted one-room schoolhouse. Her first encounter with a ghost was actually second-hand: her sister’s vivid descriptions of a "figure with a cape" or "monk" that visited her bedroom one night, spoke to her, and seemed to cause a picture of Jesus to glow. Despite her sister’s sincerity about this story, Nicole remained the "biggest skeptic around" until several years later when she personally saw what she believed to be the same ghost. From that moment on, Nicole has continued to see ghosts. In a recent Noblesville ghost tour, Nicole says that one even "slapped her on the neck."

In addition to telling stories, Nicole also undertakes more formal research into paranormal activities. To wit, she uses audio and video recording equipment (while downplaying the value of EMF detectors). Despite this empirical bent, she admits that there may be inherent difficulties in the scientific study of ghosts. "I’ll be the first to admit it, everything we deal with in paranormal research...we can’t test anything against anything else because for the most part...we can’t get things to recreate. ... I think we would like sometime to be able to carry on that conversation and 'pick the brain of a ghost,' so to speak, and to ask what is it like over there, and why can’t we capture you on film definitively, and why can’t you do the same thing twice, and why aren’t you guys coming out here to prove that you’re real..."

After our stop at the jail we circled the downtown square and Nicole told us similar ghost stories in front of businesses like Syd’s bar, Alexander’s ice cream parlor, and the Antiques Mall. In spite of the growing number of supernatural occurrences we heard about, it turns out that corporeal hazards are of greater concern to Nicole. "There are a lot of areas that we’d love to do tours in, but there are some areas that we will not walk in. And there are some areas that if we have not investigated something, or if we don’t have a first hand account of a fairly recent haunting, we’re not going to do a tour there. ... There are a few areas of Indianapolis that I would not take people through." I asked if she gets any unsavory characters on the tours, and she made it clear that the majority of people were quite friendly, but "We did have one group of people, near Halloween our second year, that came absolutely crocked to our tour, and they were very very 'happy' drunk, but they decided they would be 'non-rule-following' drunks, and so we have a very strict policy: if we think you’ve been drinking, and you’re going to be a problem, we have the right to kick you off. ... Yes, you do get some crackpots out there."

From the square we headed south towards a residential area. While stopped in front of a home to hear a story, a cat suddenly materialized and became interested in our group. A bit too interested, perhaps? I wondered aloud to Nicole: was there any significance to this? Nicole demurred, saying that there was nothing to it at all — it was just a cat. I must have been under the influence of Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery, thinking that this cat could have been like "Winston Churchill" (AKA Church), back from the dead. Despite Nicole’s reassurance, I still found this cat’s sudden appearance uncanny. But then again, I’m a dog person.

By then it was quite dark, just in time for a stroll through... a graveyard! Because really, what ghost tour worth its ectoplasm would not include a graveyard after dark?! This was my favorite part of the tour for several reasons:

As a favorite horror movie trope, graveyards are places foolish people go when they are about to be killed. Not that I wanted to be killed, but I had some fun imagining that I was unwittingly in a horror movie, and I could almost hear the voices of the audience, imploring, don’t go in there! And yet I still did, just like they do in the movies. Go figure.

Graveyards are inherently spooky. I don’t care if you’re Michael Shermer, walking into a graveyard after dark will get a few hairs to stand up on your neck.

And perhaps most obviously, there were dead bodies decomposing directly under our feet. Yes, yes, I can coolly claim skepticism, but standing in that graveyard after dark really did conjure up a wicked pastiche of b-horror movie scenes, imagery from gothic horror novels, and other macabre visions from what I’ll confess is a slightly overactive imagination. Despite all of this, I didn’t see any ghosts, or feel anything except the itch of mosquito bites on my legs. But Nicole later relayed to me that someone from our tour contacted her and said that she "saw something" while they were investigating a gravestone.

As I walked back to my car after the tour, I had the chance to talk with the "skeptical" mother and son on our tour about their experience. They were unconvinced, and remained deeply skeptical. I must admit, I too share their skepticism. But despite this, I still found the tour to be an enjoyable, offbeat way to spend a summer night in Indy.