Harden Vegas Vacation, Day 4 (Haunted Vegas Tour Experience)

My birthday started out in true redneck style. The family ate lunch at the Circus Circus buffet. Geoffrey and Joshua whooped it up in the Adventuredome. When mother and I went to the half price show ticket place, there really wasn't anything that interested me. Except the Haunted Vegas Tour. We purchased tickets and walked back to the Adventuredome to see the brothers attempt to get sick on the rides. Mom and I found my dad with one of his co-workers who just happened to be in Vegas. Technically, this guy would also be Doug's co-worker, too. Apparently, this guy was an intern when I was in high school, but I have little to no memory of him. His wife left a lot to be desired in the tact arena. She made no less than 3 snide remarks indicating how much better than us she is. I'd never met her before. Let's see:

* She scoffed at us because we were not staying at a condo like them,

* When we told her about the 99 cent hotdogs, she snottily said "Oh, I don't eat stuff like that." But it wasn't said in a respectful way. Directly after that, she started talking about how she was in search of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the $1.49 strawberry shortcake in the casino. I really felt like chiming in, "Oh, Krispy Kreme doughnuts are so bad. I don't eat those." I didn't, though. Because I'm nice. Usually. And also because I like Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

* Her husband is a teacher, yet they homeschool all three of their children. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that (aside from the fact that it just looks weird), the way she told us was a bit like "oh, we homeshool OUR children." It gave the attitude that it was the only way to go and those who didn't homeschool were evil.

I don't like snobs, especially those that are unjustified in their snobbiness. It would be at least understandable if she were rich. At least it would be easy to see where they snot attitude came from. They are not, though.

That night, mom and I walked to Greek Isles Casino, the departure for our Haunted Vegas Tour. There is a karaoke bar in the main casino. It is here where I saw my very first Elvis impersonator. "Elvis" sounded completely sloshed singing Hound Dog.



Since these impersonators are apparently hard to come by, I took a picture of myself with Elvis in the background.



My hair's all shiny. Yay. Forgive me if some of the details are foggy on this tour. I'm having to regurgitate it three days after the fact.

9:00 couldn't have come sooner after sitting in the karaoke bar. That was my first experience with karaoke. I don't get it. We somehow managed to get VIP tickets. VIP status meant we got good seats in the theater, good seats on the bus, a coupon for buy one, get one free on our next tour (email me if you'd like this for your trip), and a picture of the Zamora, our tour guide, and the regular tourguide/producer of the show.

The tour started out with us all in a small theater. There were a lot of spooky things on the stage and a tv screen that looped a video of goofy faces and music. It got annoying after the first go-round. Smoke came up from the side and a man appeared cloaked in a Jack the Ripper type hat and coat. He opened up a book and said,"The American Heritage dictionary says the definition of spirit is..." I thought, "Great, it's going to be one of THESE types of shows." It quickly got better and stayed that way. Our tour guide brought out Zamora The Torture King. He broke a lightbulb and ate the glass. He also layed down on a bed of nails with a board on top of him and had four guys climb on top of him. I was impressed. I'm kinda wondering how umm...glass works out in the end, though. I must do research to find out if this is an illusion thing or if it's real.

We were shown a video tape of a local news story discussing the Haunted Vegas Tour. Then, off on the bus we went. It would have been helpful for me to bring a pencil and paper because our tour guide was full of so much information it was hard to keep track of. Stories/things I remember:

*People have committed suicide off of the Stratosphere. One haunts it now.

* Elvis haunts the Hilton.

* Bugsy haunts the Flamigo.

*There is a milion-dollar neighborhood in Vegas on Pecos. They had the street lights taken down. That in itself was very freaky.

*Redd Foxx haunts his house that is now a real estate agency. Upon the guidance of ghost hunter or whatever person, the real estate agency leaves the lights on all of the time, has a red fox painted on the sign outside, and they play episodes of Sanford & Sons throughout the night.

*The place where Tupac was gunned down is in a pretty scary looking part of town.

* We went to a park called Green Valley park. It is here where things got a little weird. See picture of our tour guide and a picture of the bench/grill.



So, apparently the ghost of a pioneer woman is seen on the bench sobbing quite often. Our tour guide whipped out a couple of pictures of what was supposed to look like multiple ghosts near the bench. I couldn' t see anything, though. He also talked about orbs and how they appeared in some people's pictures. I'm pretty sure ther's a logical explanation for those, though. Nevertheless, essentially everyone in our group started taking pictures of this bench so catch some orbs. Our tour guide started telling them to take the pictures, blow them up to 8x10, and look for faces in the light. Uh huh. Feel free to knock yourself out with my picture above. I fully expected someone in a ghost costume to jump out at as and scare us at this point. It didn't happen.

*While on the way to another park where a child was killed by a drunk driver and a woman is seen looking for her two children, our tour guide told us that a child is seen swinging and that the swing will go all by itself. He also said that a lot of seances are held. When we pulled up to the park, we looked over and saw...the swing swinging. I just about had a heart attack. The person on the swing was wearing a dark-colored shirt and so we didn't see them at first.

I'm sure there was a lot more, but my memory is foggy on the details.

When we got back to the casino, Zamora and our tour guide were signing the pictures the VIPs received before the bus tour. I asked Mom if she would take a picture of me with Zamora. "Suuree I will." I looked over at her. "Oh, you're really serious, aren't you?" Yup. So, here is my standard stand beside the person picture with waht I will be considering my "famous" person in Vegas. He's been on many TV shows. He totally counts as my famous person. Mom didn't realize that she had to HOLD down the button to take the picture, so on the third time around, I decided to tell her "Hold it down," I think the picture captures me in the hOLd part of that phrase.


Overall, I loved this tour. It was worth the $30 we paid for it, but not the regular $57 for VIP tickets. I honestly think I had more fun doing this than I would have at some Cirque show or even a boobie show.

I don't really believe ghosts exist, but if they do, I really hope one never visits me. I'd be on medication after that for sure!