When In Doubt, Blame The Ghost Hunters

According to KYPost.com, just before midnight on June 13th, two men broke into Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky, making off with around $1,500.00 in alcohol. The pair, who were captured on multiple surveillance videos, apparently used a rock to break out a glass pane in the front door. Once inside, after failed attempts to get money from the register and a nearby cash machine, they filled their backpacks with liquor from the bar and fled. Police are currently investigating, but have no suspects in custody at this time.

And those, dear readers, are the facts in this case. So could someone please explain to me why the good folks at Cincinnati.com felt the need to report on the case and use the headline “Suspected ‘Ghost Hunters’ Make Off With Lots Of Liquor”? I’ve read the article several times and have yet to find any reason why “ghost hunters” should be considered suspects here. In fact, if you look at screen grabs from the actual surveillance footage, there’s a lot of things that would suggest they are not ghost hunters.

Case in point, the two suspects cannot be ghost hunters since they:

• are not wearing matching black t-shirts and/or baseball caps
• do not, upon noticing the cameras, immediately strike the standard Ghost Hunting pose: spreading your legs wide and crossing your arms
• are not wearing headlamps
• don’t take the time to set up their Base Camp
• both appear to be lanky, clean-shaven, and devoid of tattoos. Everyone knows that to be a ghost hunter, you need to be portly, have facial hair, and be tatted up…or all three, if you want to be taken seriously
• do not stop the robbery to ask “is there anyone here with us tonight?”
• were able to leave the premises without being scratched, groped, or sucker-punched by a demon

All joking aside, I really do take offense that ghost hunters are being accused of doing this. Granted, the Cincinnati.com article states that R.J. Seifert, a man “who does marketing for Bobby Mackey’s”, said that the “culprits may have been ghost hunters”, but he’s basing that solely on the fact that Bobby Mackey’s has a reputation as a “ghost place.”

So let me see if I get this straight: if I’m understanding Mr. Seifert correctly, he believes two people broke into the building and stole a bunch of liquor because they knew the place was supposed to be haunted.  Forgive me if I have trouble following the logic there. But interestingly enough, the KYPost article doesn’t include Seifert’s quote or even any mention of Bobby Mackey’s supposedly being haunted. In fact, that article clearly states that Bobby Mackey himself thinks the pair broke in specifically to steal the liquor and/or money.

The way I see it, two young punks decided to break in and steal whatever they could jam into their backpacks. They clearly wanted money, but when they couldn’t get that, they stole the next best thing: the liquor. For me, despite Mr. Seifert’s claim, there is zero evidence ghost hunters are to blame and Cincinnati.com did some pretty lame reporting by deciding to go with that headline. If they were looking to be wacky, the reporter could have gone with a headline like “Spirits Stolen From Haunted Honky Tonk” (spirits=liquor, get it? I’m so clever) or the never-gets-old “Who Ya Gonna Call When Spirits Go Missing?” But to just throw out the claim that ghost hunters did it based on one man’s unsubstantiated claim is just plan lazy reporting.

So please, Cincinnati.com, leave the ghost hunting community out of this one. We’ve got enough problems of our own already with in-fighting, phony psychics, and “experts” who can magically get ghosts to perform on command.  We don’t need to add “felonious theft” to that list.

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To read the entire KYPost.com article, which includes links to the actual surveillance video, click here.

To check out Cincinnati.com‘s article, which alleges that ghost hunters may be to blame, click here.