As my little sister is getting married on my birthday this year, my husband and I decided to go do a weekend away to Orlando, FL, mostly so we could take part in another Halloween Horror Nights, and originally, I was going to share with you about this experience from the stance of someone who is blind. But we picked up a ghost tour the following night, and this is the experience I care to share instead.
This was not our first ghost tour. In fact, our oldest son has gone on a few of them with us, his first being in Branson, MO when I believe he was not quite two, and most recently in St. Petersburg, FL on our 2021 trip to Florida. These were different, however, as they are basically just walking history tours. While they do ask you to record things and share any pictures you may have taken with orbs or unusual things, this time, our tour of downtown Orlando was an investigative tour where we were allowed to use their EMF detectors and a few other paranormal investigation tools.
I want to stop here and share that I do find myself to be Christian and find a lot of “ghost stories” to be simply that and not much more. That being said, I find there are energies and demons we simply cannot explain. I feel this tour provides a fantastic balance of this level of skepticism and takes the safety of the guest into consideration.
We started off in an old train depot. This is one of the indoor locations the tour has access to and where we were introduced to many stories of what they call the “residence of the space.” This is also where the spirits – or residents – were asked not to harm us and where only friendly spirits were granted permission to interact with us. This was not the part of the tour that left a big impression on me, but I mention it so that you may understand how well I think this was handled.
After leaving the train station, we walked only a couple of blocks during the whole tour. We got many more interesting stories about the spaces and buildings there and history to go along with it. Did you know there is a building in downtown Orlando that was shipped from New Orleans? Also, there is a place where Walt Disney himself saw a spirit down there, and that became a major feature in the Haunted Mansion. Again, this was fun. I always enjoy the history lessons as I feel nobody can see that exact thing today, so it puts me on a very equal footing with the sighted members of the party. I mean, it would be nice to see some things that were up a few stories, but we still got to do plenty of touching things that were on our level.
The fun part of this adventure was when we got to go in the old theater. Actually, I don’t know for sure if it was always a movie theater, but it is one today. We were allowed into a space at the end of the hall, and this is where we did our “investigation,” well beyond just seeing lights change on the EMF detectors as we were told stories. In this space, we pulled out dousing rods. The spirits were told if they wanted to answer “yes,” to a question that was asked, to cross the rods, and to separate them if “no.” After my husband only could get what they call a “hug” from the rods, our tour guide used another set and did her own asking. We did get some of this on video so that you may see or hear the results. My description is as follows:
The guide asks if any of the spirits were attached to anyone in the room. When the rods indicated “yes,” she asked them to point to whom. They pointed to me. Then she asked if they were friendly. This got a “yes.” Then she asked if they were protecting me. This also got a “yes.” then she asked if they were family. Family was also a “yes.” Then she asked if they were on my mother’s or father’s side. “Yes” was for mother’s and “no” was for father’s. This time, the rods changed and indicated they were on my dad’s side. Something similar was done for male or female, which they indicated male. Then she starts to go through the alphabet to try and identify the first letter of their name. To be honest, I don’t have a real good knowledge of the names of the males on my dad’s side. I know some living people, but as my dad is from Chile, I have never been physically close to many of them, so I was interested if this would line up at all. At first, we got the letter E, but I absolutely have no idea of anyone who would fit that. However, in the Spanish culture, it is very common to go by your middle name and not go by your first name, or a nickname. She then restarted the alphabet. This time, we stopped on J. Now my first thought was my uncle who lived in Florida at the time of his passing a few years ago; however, his name, to my knowledge, does not contain a J. However, I did have a grandpa named Juan, and at first, I thought this must be it. It would be perfectly reasonable to believe my guardian spirit is a grandparent I lost when I was just over the age of four. Then we had to move on from this space, so we got no chances to get more information about the spirit attached to me.
One last thing happened, though, as we were closing things up. There is a cell phone app that acts as a spirit box. In basic terms, this is something spirits can speak through, and this app then puts words on the screen of what the spirit says. So, the guide goes to turn off her phone, and it says “cat.” After reading our tour guide’s bio, I am sure she thought this was related to her; however, I think this was still the spirit attached to me and trying to tell me my first impression was wrong. The short side of the story is that, in many cultures, you may give the title of uncle to someone who isn’t actually a blood relative of yours. My dad had one of those friends. They lived in the town I grew up in, and actually there is more than one instance I can tie him to the word “cat.” I grew up knowing him as Uncle George. See, I was a terrible speller, and even though he was Hispanic, I never saw his name written, so I assumed it was the normal “George” spelling. It was actually after my sister got a cat that she named George that I learned his name was actually Jorge, and this is because one of Uncle Jorge’s daughters worked at the vet my sister took the cat to for care, and the daughter hearing George assumed the cat was named after her father. Many years ago, we also got a kitten from my Uncle Jorge, but that seems so much less compelling as to why the spirit would have chosen one word, and that word would be “cat.” (I should mention that Uncle Jorge did pass on a few years ago.)
This was the middle of our tour, but nothing else was all that remarkable about the other events of the night. We heard more heart-wrenching stories and even got a tour of their haunted objects they have in their office. I was sure not to touch anything in that space. At the end of the night, they did say a few words about making sure nobody followed us home, to which I had to add, “unless you came here with me and are protecting me” because I appreciate all the protection I can get.
***Below is the video Moe captured during her “spirit investigation” on the ghost tour in Orlando.***