> [snip multiple ghost sighting stores from
Ayako's father]
>
> Aya"I shouldn't have waited to post on this
until 3:30am... late night always makes things
seem more freaky and unreal"ko

This is only marginally relevant to the thread,
but I'll post it here anyway. Last night we were
flipping channels on the television looking for
something to watch. We ended up putting
_The Mask of Zorro_ in the VCR and watching
that instead, but before that, we watched a
little bit of the show "Spy TV."

Spy TV is like Candid Camera...they have
hidden cameras that record people's
reactions to various practical jokes and/or odd
situations that the show plays on random
people. I had never watched the show before,
but according to my wife, the show is different
from Candid Camera in that the jokes they
play are often meaner and/or in poor taste
compared to Candid Camera's.

Well, last night on the show, they had set up a
joke to fool people into believing they were
being haunted by a ghost. They had "hired"
two different women as secretaries to work at
a "business." First, the phone would ring, and
a woman named "Mrs. Something" would ask
to speak with the secretary's boss, but when
the boss picked up the phone, she'd pretend
the line was dead, and tell her that "Mrs.
Something" was the company's owner who
died two weeks ago.

They had rigged up a portrait of "Mrs.
Something" and a set of windchimes with
magnets so they would appear to move by
themselves, and they used these to freak out
the innocent victims as well.

Then "Mrs. Something" started walking by
outside the window, and when the secretaries
pointed this out, the other "employees"
pretended not to see her.

Finally, "Mrs. Something" actually came into
the office and stood in front of the victim's desk
with a blank stare on her face. The secretary
would be pointing and crying ("CAN'T
YOU SEE HER SHE'S STANDING RIGHT
THERE!!!") while the other "employees"
continued to pretend she wasn't there.

We turned it off at that point, so we didn't see
the part where they reveal that it was all a joke.
One of the women was in tears, she was so
scared. We thought it was cruel. It made us
wonder how many times those practical jokes
backfire on that show. With our society as
lawsuit-crazy as it is, I wonder how many of
their victims have been angry enough to sue
them?

Gri"thread diverter"shny