A Supernatural Day

Saturday we got up and drove to Bendigo, picking up Tara along the way. Shelley was hosting the first get-together for her ‘Australian fans of Supernatural’ group. There were 8 of us all together, all local to Bendigo. She made goodie bags for us to take home. We watched a couple episodes, watched the blooper reels, played some trivia games, and had lunch. She also showed us the website she’s going to start.

At 4, Caroline and I picked up her mom from the train station. We brought her back to Melbourne because Monday Chris is taking her to the Gold Coast, sightseeing. The highways were packed; the local racing group, the Crusty Demons, was having a show and since they just broke a motorcycle jump record a few days ago, the show was sold out. We dropped her off and stopped back at home for a few minutes before heading into the city for our ghost tour.

After a quick dinner at McDonald’s, we found the Haunted Bookshop and bought our tickets inside from a guy in a long black trench coat and black hat. The store was small and crowded with about 20 people. The place is decked out; there was incense burning, tarot cards on display, and a coffin was being used as a display case. All the books were shrink wrapped. The subjects ranged from angels to devils to aliens to shamanism. Then the store’s owner (the guy in black) said it was time to get started, so we headed back down the stairs to the street.

A mob of people were gathered around, waiting. There must have been about 100 people, seemingly out of nowhere. We started to think that this might not be the tour we had imagined it would be.

The two-hour tour was decent enough. We walked from building to building and our overly-theatrical guide would tell us the history of each place through a microphone. We followed him like a herd of cattle through dark narrow alleys, across four-lane intersections, through parking lots and gardens. Some of the early stops were uncomfortable as everyone tried to squeeze in close enough to hear. Some of the stops were disappointing: we were told we’d ‘go through a haunted building’ when in reality we were led into a dark, abandoned parking garage. We were told we would walk through a cemetery and in reality we walked through the empty market place, which had been built on top of an old cemetery. Our large group attracted a lot of attention as we were led past night clubs and bars and I’m sure some people just joined in part-way through. At one point, we were waiting to cross an intersection and a police car pulled up beside us and asked what were doing. The reactions were consistently entertaining.

Soon after that, we came to a stop in front of some old hotel. While we were half-hearing how it came to be haunted, this good-looking, young guy behind us started yelling and walked up to his buddy and hugged him. All of our group was distracted for a moment. Then the tour guide made some smart comment to regain attention and continued with his story. But the two guys continued being boisterous. They were dressed in jeans and tight t-shirts and stood at the back of a van, getting things out and talking about us—loudly—and laughing. Like, really laughing. Like, under-the-influence-of-something laughing. Eventually they closed the van and headed off down the street towards another hotel, and that was the last we saw of them. But, when we looked back at their van, written across the window was: www.aussie-spunks.com.au.

Strippers.

Heh heh.

That was probably the highlight of the tour. It was good, I don’t understand how it can be so highly rated. I think it might be a case of greed: at $20 a head, the bookstore owner made a pretty fine earning for two hour’s worth of walking and talking. His information was good, but I would’ve liked to heard more and been less crowded.

After a quick drive around Cobart cemetery to look for a glowing blue tombstone (and not finding it) we dropped Tara off at her house and went home, exhausted.