Spooky Scares at a St. Augustine Ghost Tour

The idea that's there's something more than this mortal existence is what makes belief in ghosts so appealing. Sure, they're scary, but ghosts give us hope that death isn't the final act.

When I'm around, ghosts don't tend to do those little scary things they're known for, and they certainly don't appear before me, grinning in graveyards and waving. I went on the Ghost Tour hoping to learn a little history, but I wasn't, like many people who go on the tours, expecting a ghostly encounter. I've been to my share of haunted sites and never seen or felt even a shadow of the dead, much to my disappointment.

I'm pleased to say that this time, something freaky did happen.

I use my trusty Olympus Digital voice recorder to record interviews. I used it to interview the folks giving the ghost tour prior to the tour and also during the ghost tour. The recorder can take as much as sixteen hours of recording time, so it was perfect for the walking ghost tour, which is over an hour. At the end of the tour, I looked at the recorder, stopped recording and noted the file it was in.

The next day, when I went to transcribe the tour, the file was just gone. I checked all the other folders because I was sure it couldn't possibly have been erased. Erasing anything on this recorder is such a pain that I actually have to follow the manual's multi step-by-step instructions and it always asks "are you sure" before you press the final, fatal button. Despite that, it just wasn't there.

Luckily, the preliminary interview in which I asked the ghost tour guides about their history and experience was still there. I went to get a snack and when I came back, the file on the ghost tour guides was gone. None of my other files were erased and nobody else was in the house. Maybe something followed me home.

I did check for mundane explanations, like a recorder malfunction. First, I called another reporter who uses the same voice recorder. I asked her if she'd ever had a problem like this, but she hadn't. Then, I combed through all the Amazon reviews of the product and Googled it to see if any other users had experienced similar problems. The only thing users complained about was the transfer software that uploads the digital recording to your PC. Since I hadn't uploaded any files since recording the ghost tour, that couldn't have been the issue. It wasn't a battery problem either. This particular recorder is known for its long lasting battery and the battery icon indicated that the battery was still full. Spooky.

The recorder has not malfunctioned in this way before or since these incidents. I've used the recorder for several years.