People travel around the world to see and do all sorts of interesting things: some go in search of great art, others in search of spectacular scenery or interesting wildlife. Another group goes traveling in search of an altogether more mysterious quarry: ghosts.
Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, ghostly goings-on hold a continuous fascination for people from all walks of life - and there are many places in the world where you can go to find out about hauntings and even try and spot a ghost yourself. If you live in the US or the UK you're particularly fortunate, as these countries have as many reports of hauntings between them as the rest of the world put together. The rationally-minded tend to point out that this is evidence for the fact that ghosts don't really exist, but stories that and beliefs about them are especially prominent in Anglo-Saxon cultures - hence the higher apparent incidence of hauntings.
For many years the most reputedly haunted city in the USA has been New Orleans. Although the city is undergoing some pretty serious reconstruction right now in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina, it is once again open for business, and the city authorities are encouraging tourism as a means of boosting the hard-hit local economy. The concentration of alleged hauntings in the city is in the old French Quarter, which is where you'll find many of the city's other historic attractions. You can sign up for one of several ghost tours that incorporate the sites of famous hauntings in the city cemetery and around famous thoroughfares like Bourbon Street and the riverside Decatur Street.
Ghost tours have exploded in popularity in recent years in the UK, where there is hardly a medieval city that doesn't have a company running supernatural-themed guided walks around its historic center. The atmosphere medieval architecture of cities like York contributes to the haunted feel of these places - and obviously, the more history a town has the more haunted it is likely to be! The city of York claims to have a denser ghost population than any other settlement on earth, although the midlands city of Derby, to the south, has also made a similar claim. Tours are usually led by young, enthusiastic and friendly guides who have a very thorough knowledge of the local haunting situation!