Halloween graveyard tours and a graveyard joke

by Jamie Rhein on

There are haunted prison tours and haunted hotels to sleep in. Here is another way to traipse through some haunts for Halloween.

Graveyards that can seem peaceful during the day are perfect settings at night for finding chills and thrills. If there is a graveyard in a town or city near you, I bet there’s a tour. Regardless of the season, graveyards offer a span of history that includes triumph and sorrow. Each one hold clues and mysteries to the people who have lived before us.

Here’s a Halloween graveyard joke you can say when you are going past a graveyard: “How many people do you think are dead in there?”

(**Continue for answer and a sampling of graveyard tours.)

  • In Alexandria, Virginia, walk along the six blocks on the Ghosts & Graveyard lantern tour with a costumed guide who transports visitors to the 1800s through tales of ghosts and unsolved mysteries. The tour ends in the graveyard. Although Halloween inspired, it goes through November.
  • There are several ghost and graveyard tours in Nova Scotia. Several are offered year-round.
  • Ghosts and Gravestone Trolley Tours of Boston, Massachusetts goes through November 2. This tour is hosted by a 17th century gravedigger who tells tales of Boston’s murderous past. Two of Boston’s oldest graveyards are included.
  • The same company that offers the tour in Boston has similar tours in Savanah, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida. The Website has a link to haunted tales and while you browse ghost type sounds put you in the mood.
  • In Charleston, South Carolina, there is a tour company that specializes in creepy, scary places. The Charleston Ghost and Graveyard Walking Tours brings people through graveyards where tales of love, loss and prominent people can be found.
  • San Antonio, Texas has several ghost tour options. Many included graveyards, whether you walk or take a vehicle. These tours are also offered year-round.
  • Like San Antonio, San Diego has several ghost tour options. Several include graveyards. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see many links for other ghost and graveyard tours throughout the United States.
  • To amp up a graveyard ghost tour, here’s one that combines a stay in a haunted hotel with a ghost and graveyard tour. This version is in Columbus, Ohio. The Lofts, a boutique hotel that was once a warehouse in the early 1900s has a ghost called “Lady of the Lofts. There’s a package deal that includes a night in the hotel, breakfast and two tickets to “The Haunted Columbus’s Best of 20 Years Bus Tour.” If that tour is sold out the Columbus Landmark’s Foundation has other ghost tours and guided visits through Greenlawn Cemetery. Greenlawn Cemetery is where humorist James Thurber is buried. Perhaps he’d appreciate the graveyard joke.

** Answer to graveyard joke: “All of them.”

This joke gets people every time. Here is the joke in its entirety if you forgot the question.

If you are passing by a graveyard say, using a voice that evokes the idea that you are looking for a number: “How many people are dead in there?”

Answer: “All of them.”

Undiscovered New York: Getting Your Dance On

by Jeremy Kressmann on

For a town that has a reputation as “the city that never sleeps,” it’s not surprising to discover New York has an astounding array of nightlife options. From swanky cocktail lounges like Angel’s Share, to cutting edge indie rock clubs like the Bowery Ballroom, to legendary performance spaces like the Apollo Theater, New York has nightlife pretty much down to a science.

But like just about everything else in New York, nightlife hot spots fade in and out of fashion faster than you can drink that $12 cocktail. For every place that’s “in” today there are dozens of famous spots that had their moment in the sun (or dark?) and have long since faded into obscurity. Ever wanted to know about the sweaty Jazz dens where legends like Charlie Parker first cut their teeth? What ever happened to that lighted dancefloor where John Travolta strutted his stuff in Saturday Night Fever? And what’s this you always hear about CBGB and The Ramones?

Click the link below to learn the history of NYC nightlife and see where you can go today to get a taste of the city’s many bygone nightlife eras…The “Jazz Age”
A new form of music began sweeping the United States at the beginning of the 20th Century. Characterized by its emphasis on improvisation and drawing its origins from the American South and African and European music traditions, Jazz took New York nightlife by storm beginning the 1920’s.

Starting in the bars and cafes of Harlem, Jazz began to migrate further south into Manhattan, eventually congregating along a strip of 52nd Street known as “Swing Alley.” Everyone from Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker played gigs in the narrow, crowded basement clubs that lined this famous street. Though many of the hotspots along 52nd have long since shuttered their doors, Jazz is alive and well in 2008 at venues like the nearby Jazz at Lincoln Center as well as downtown institutions like Blue Note and the Village Vanguard.

The Disco Revolution
Arguably no image defined a night out in 1970’s New York quite like John Travolta and his white polyester suit. But Travolta’s rise to fame was just one small part of the emergence of Disco, a New York musical movement whose influence is still felt today. Before Travolta, the first stirrings of Disco arguably occurred at the The Loft, a series of alcohol-free, non-commercial parties hosted by nightlife legend David Mancuso. Mancuso’s technique of blending one song into the next on his high-end audio system arguably kicked off the trend of DJing and beatmatching as it is still practiced today. Soon The Loft had spawned a whole series of more decadent imitators, including the disco-debauchery of Studio 54 and Disco’s musical successor, House music, at the Paradise Garage.

So what happened to the disco history of New York? The famous club featured in Saturday Night Fever was known as the 2001 Odyssey, and was located in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn at 802 64th Street, until it was torn down in 2005. The famous lighted floor was put up for auction shortly thereafter. The Studio 54 building is still around in the guise of the Roundabout Theater, while the famous Paradise Garage at 88 King Street is now parking for Verizon trucks. And David Mancuso? He’s still throwing occasional Loft parties today! Ask a local and cross your fingers, this is one tough invite to get your hands on.

NYC Punk Bares its Teeth
By the mid 1970’s, the beginnings of a new underground rock movement were stirring in New York. Along a rough stretch of the Bowery, a rock club called CBGB’s was opened in 1973 by owner Hilly Kristal. The club’s acronym, standing for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues,” was intended to signify the type of music Kristal hoped to host at the club. But soon the club was taken over by bands like Ramones, Television and Blondie, who didn’t exactly fit this criteria, playing an aggressive, fast new style of rock called Punk.

So can Punk fans still head down to CBGB to check it out today? Sadly the answer is no. Due to a dispute with their landlord, the club was forced to close for good in 2006. Today it has been replaced by a rock-themed John Varvatos clothing boutique which has generally been met by New Yorkers with a mixture of either indifference or disdain. But don’t despair, other second wave Punk landmarks like ABC No Rio are still very much open for business. If you’re really looking to get a little taste of that old Punk attitude, visitors can also head to the strip of shops that line St. Mark’s Place, in Manhattan’s East Village, the unofficial hangout of modern day punks and the place to buy that Ramones t-shirt and maybe an impromptu nose ring.

Visit haunted prisons for a Halloween creep out

by Jamie Rhein on

Old prisons look creepy in the day. In the dark, they can really spook you. Perhaps it’s those rusted locks, the way cell doors sound when they clank shut, the stairs where people don’t tread anymore. Add a hangman’s noose or an electric chair, and you have a real chills up your back shudder.

Pair a trip to a prison on Halloween and you’re in for some screaming good times.

Or, if you can’t swing by one of these prisons before Halloween, take in a night tour when you get the chance. Each of the these three prisons featured offers night tours year round. And each have tales of being haunted.

Haunted or not, I can vouch for their chill factor. I’ve visited each of them.

(photo of stairway at Mansfield Reformatory taken by thadman.)

My most recent visit was to the Mansfield Reformatory. In its heyday, the prison was a reformatory for boys but was closed in the 1980s.

This goreous gothic building that looks both elegant and forbodding even in daylight acquired its most recent fame as the setting for the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Through Halloween weekend there is a haunted house here that is a guareenteed screamfest. People under 13-years of age are not allowed.

The reformatory’s Night of the Evil Dead haunted house experience takes in most of the prison that is now a museum. I met some folks who had been on the tour the night before I visited here during the day. They loved it and mentioned several times how they felt hoarse from screaming.

I’ve been to Alcatraz Island in San Franciso twice. Although haven’t been on the night tour here either, in the daylight wandering through the rooms where the likes of Al Capone hung out creates a chill factor straight off.

Add in the tales of the guys who tried to escape by swimming for the distant shore but never made it, and you have another creepy detail. There’s also the soliary confinement cell where you can experience the dark in a way that is different than perhaps you are used to.

The night tours at Alcatraz are Thursday through Monday and include special talks around certain themes. How about the Shadow of Death? There are others from which to choose. A bonus of Alcatraz’s night tours is the view of San Francisco.

The view was terrific by day. If you do go on this tour any time of the year, whether during the day or night, make sure you bring warm clothes. Even in the summer it gets chilly.

I did take the night torchlight tour of the Fremantle Prison in Perth, Australia. Very cool. I was hanging out with a group of adolescent boys as a field trip chaparone. This age is a hard crowd to please, but I promise, they were pleased big time.

The Fremantle Prison, built in 1850 by convicts, was a place where British citizens who committed crimes were sent along with people who already lived in Australia and were naughty. Later the prison was used as a military prison.

The night view of this prison is quite imposing. Of all the places we visited in Western Australia, this was one of the highlights.

Obama to hold election night party at Chicago’s Grant Park

by Meg Massie on

Want to spend election night with Barack Obama and thousands of his closest friends? The Obama campaign announced yesterday that the Democratic nominee for president will be hosting what he hopes is an election night celebration outdoors at Grant Park in Chicago.

Obama will appear at Hutchinson Field at the south end of the park, which is often referred to as Chicago‘s “front yard.” The park is often used for major events like festivals, sporting events, and concerts. Pope John Paul II held a mass here in 1979 that drew a crowd of nearly 1 million people.

The Obama campaign has not yet announced ticketing details, but those who wish to attend will likely need to register online or get tickets in advance, as the Illinois Senator and Presidential hopeful has been drawing huge crowds throughout his campaign.

If you’re going to attend, be sure to dress warmly. The windy city can be bitterly cold in November.

Civil War driving tours in Southeast Tennessee

by Jamie Rhein on

Here is a part of the U.S. that makes travel to it easy–and inexpensive with planning.

Southeast Tennessee tourism has handily divided aspects of travel to this region of the U.S. into various themes. There’s the Music Trail, the Farm Trail, the Artists and Fine Crafters Trail, the Religious Trail, and the Civil War Trail.

Each theme highlights a unique aspect of Southeast Tennessee culture, traditions and history. Click on the Music Trail link and there you are in a history lesson from Blues to Bluegrass. A calendar provides info about where you can hear the area’s music and purchase music-related items.

The Civil War Trail is a do-it-yourself driving tour that takes travelers past the places where soldiers traveled. There is a mix of museums, battlefields, railroad beds and historic houses that span 10 counties. (Click here to order a brochure.)

Even if you don’t have the chance to head here any time soon, the Web site offers a fascinating trip into the past.

For example, did you know there was a group of female rebels who made up an all female unit? Click here to find out more.