A spooky Halloween while finding ghosts at the Reno County Museum

This is the spookiest time of year, filled with horror movies, ghost stories, jumpscares, and increasingly unlikely pumpkin-spice flavored things. They tell each other (or gullible younger siblings) ghost stories, and suddenly every sound could be a creature of the night sneaking up close. 

But what if you could experience the ghost story? Not in a horror-movie-brought-to-life kind of way, but in a building’s-haunted kind of way.

Old buildings have history, and it’s not an uncommon belief that this history sticks around, haunting the place. Ghost hunting happens all the time, and there are plenty of shows about it. There’s the original “Ghost Hunters”, or there’s “Watcher”, previously “Buzzfeed Unsolved”, among others. Both of these are still in production, and many more shows exist. Clearly, people like watching other people hunt ghosts from the comfort of their couch, whether they believe it or not.

Around this time of year, you can join ghost hunters in your area on their investigations. Joining can be a fun way to learn about a local building’s history and meet new people. 

Last Saturday, there was a ghost hunt at the Reno County Museum that a friend and I went to.

Suspend your disbelief for a moment. If you don’t believe in ghosts, fine, read this like any other ghost story. I don’t really care.

We started with a briefing on the building’s history. Part of it had been apartments for eligible bachelors, and that was where our group started investigating. We hadn’t officially started yet when we were seeing shadows move in impossible ways with no one around. We heard voices, screaming, and people were touched. I personally felt like I was getting choked at one point.

It was a long night, but fun to see the history of the building and artifacts of the area.

During this, the spookiest time of the year, ghost stories, folk tales, and horror stories are common. 

Let’s be honest, it’s fun to scare your friends with stories. It’s the perfect time of year to investigate supposedly haunted buildings and possibly experience a very real scare.

Lynn Spahr is a Hutchinson sophomore studying journalism and the Opinion Page Editor.

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