I would do it for free, if it was really haunted. Why? Wouldn’t you want to know if ghosts really existed? And experience it for yourself? Yes, I would be terrified - maybe even scared to death. But if I didn’t do it…I would always wonder.
You betcha I would. For free even. As long as I could bring photo equipement and such to document and record any happenings.
Something to be said about posting this early in the morning. I beat DavidB here and he can put a quick damper on things like this. Ya’ know I love ya’ right?
I do it in a heartbeat! I’m weird in that I kinda get off on weirdness (see, I’m weird! :D)…
I do believe in ghosts, if we define the word “ghost” correctly… my definition: ghost (N): weird stuff that happens around a particular place that SEEMS to have no rational explanation, yet persists in happening anyways (especially if observed by more than one person, to rule out things like LSD flashback, psychosis, ergot poisoning, etc.). I do not believe that “ghosts” are the spirits of the dead, hanging around to jump out and scare the ever-livin’ bejesus out of the living (though, when I die, if I am allowed the option, I MIGHT do just that! Fun, fun, fun! :p). Exactly what they are, I dunno… but it seems to me (from personal experience) that there are “haunted” places! Before you flame me, remember that we do not understand EVERYTHING in the Universe yet, and we can directly percieve/measure only 4 out of the 12-16 dimensions that the Universe appears (according to physicists) to encompass. That, it seems to me, leaves a lot of stuff going on that we can’t see… and maybe, from time to time, some of it leaks over to the 4 dimensions that we CAN see/measure…
I have lived in a “haunted house,” and I loved it! My friends, however, did NOT love it…
Annecdotes:
House in Salem, OR: Roommate (my best friend, an organic chemist) and I rented a house that was one story, with a small attic that was locked off (owner of the house stored a lot of stuff there). Roommate and I worked different schedules, so I slept while he was at work, and visa-versa… Immediately, we noticed that the house was NOISY. We would be watching TV or something, and would hear crash that seemed to come from the kitchen. We would rush to the kitchen to find that nothing untoward had seemed to have happened. Then, later, crash from the basement… another rush to find nothing… These were not quiet crashing noises, either. Imagine that someone in the next room dropped a tray of assorted silverware… that’s the kind of noise we would hear. We got used to this after a few days, and stopped rushing around to see what had happened (oddly enough, it only seemed to happen when we were BOTH there, and BOTH awake…weird).
After a few days there, I noticed that when I was trying to go to sleep (I’m an insomniac, so sometimes sleep is in short supply:( ), I would hear footsteps on the ceiling above me. Remember, the attic was locked, and we didn’t have a key. I told roommate, and he accused me of being nuts! He appologized a few days later when he heard the same thing… As far as “settling houses” go; I’ve lived in a lot of houses, and I’ve heard “settling”. This was not a “settling” sound. Instead of the occasional pop or bang sound, this was a series of soft clomp sounds, in a line, from one side of the room to the other (and sometimes back again, but not always!). Oddly enough, when the landlord came one day to get into the attic, I went up with her, and the footstep sounds seemed to have followed the aisle down the center of the attic, which was the only cleared space… she had a LOT of crap up there!
We had a house-warming party, and a bunch of our friends came. Nothing unusual… a few weeks after, we had a few of the friends back for a party, and one (female) friend needed to go to the bathroom. She insisted that her boyfriend accompany her. He didn’t want to, but she insisted! Later interrogation revealed that at our housewarming party she had gone to the bathroom to rid herself of some used beer, and while in the bathroom had heard a woman’s voice whispering in her ear. She couldn’t understand what the voice was saying, but there was no way in hell that she was going in that bathroom alone again! And over the course of the next year or so, she NEVER did, although she was at our house many times…
Roommate was taking a bath one day (odd, yes, but he is a stutterer, and was participating in a program to cure stuttering. One of the techniques was to relax the whole body by taking a hot bath by candle-light. Didn’t work, by the way. He didn’t follow the program stridently enough, I guess…) Suddenly, the curtains (and curtain rod) covering the bathroom window, flew straight across the room (about 10 feet or so). Later examination revealed that the curtain rod had been anchored with small nails (about one inch long) in the window frame. They had come out and were propelled with the curtain rod and curtains across the room. The nails were still in the brackets holding the curtain rod.
Weird, I tells ya!! (but true! I swear on, uh, (given the multi-cultured and multi-religion nature of the boards) I just swear!)
I’m gonna wager that the show you caught was MTV’s Fear, the episode in Eastern State Penitentiary. Funny thing: just before they showed this episode of Fear, I saw the same prison on the History Channel. They talked about its history and construction, and the various plans for the prison after it was closed (one plan was to gut the interior, leaving only the big exterior stone walls, and turn it into a shopping mall).
Would I do it? Hell yeah! But, I do have a breaking point: on an earlier show, one task assigned to a contestant involved letting a tarantula sit on her hand for two minutes. I do NOT do the spider thing.
[worried, nervous hijack]
But how did they make the tarantula sit there? I mean, how did they know that it would sit, and not get a hankering to start crawling up her arm, to her shoulder, to her neck, up to her face?
[/worried, nervous hijack]
I’m too old for MTV and the FOX people want a family and my family are all chicken.
IF you don’t know MTV’s Fear is a night of a group of college kids having to ‘investigate’ haunted places. But some of their challenges are just things like let a tarantula crawl up you arm for a bit sort of thing. But the FOX Family channel will fly you and your family (teens and adults) to a haunted place (like in Scotland) and you spend the night there.
I wonder if we could set up a ‘family’ of Dopers to go on Fox?
Who’s with me? I’ll be the dad so I’m looking for Mom and two kids.
I’ve always wanted to spend the night in a haunted house. I’m very into the paranormal and that kind of stuff.
Hey, Zebra? I’ll be one of the kids… <smile>
Oh! Zebra! I’ll play Mom!
What are the chances the MTV people mess with them though? How sure are we that any haunting will be real?
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it…it DID crawl up her arm to her shoulder. Uh-uh, not gonna do it, no thank you.
Well, there’s certainly never been a better de-mystefyer of bunk ideas and notions than television, that’s for sure.
My first post after a loooooong delay.
Well…about the topic. Its really been exploited in hollywood. This movie I saw recently…i.e “The house on haunted hill”…the new one and not the one with catherine zeta jones…was pretty cool. Basically this rich prankster gives a million bucks to ppl to spend a whole night in a haunted assylum. Do they do it…willingly of course!
As for me…I am just too much into this stuff to leave a chance of experiencing it for myself…if i were to be paid for such a thing I offer a 10% discount and a money back guarantee 
Its not about money…the real profit would be the chance to experience a haunting first hand…What i wouldn’t give for that.
For money? Most certainly.
For free? Maybe. Depending on the situation I might be willing to debunk a “genuine haunted house.”
I don’t believe in ghosts.
sure i’d stay in a haunted house. money, no money, makes no difference.
all i’d ask for is a chainsaw and a shotgun.
[Ash]groovy.[/Ash]
Well, there is a verifiably haunted rail road crossing, but – I can’t recall where.
A bus of school kids was hit there by a train around 10 or 20 years ago and most died. Ever since then, if you park your car either on or almost on the crossing, put it in neutral, something pushes you up hill and across.
They’ve had documentaries on it because if you powder the back of your car with talc, the hand prints of children show up. They say it is the ghosts of the kids who were killed, pushing you to safety. Hand prints have been shown on the back of the cars, including those used by the TV crew.
Sooooo, that seems like a pretty good indicator that there might be something out there.
Yes, I would do it.
I don’t believe in ghosts and at the same time it would be great to be proved wrong.
I don’t like being alone in my own house.
I don’t like drafts.
I don’t like noises at night, even familiar ones like the fridge.
But a good friend could dare me into it, I’m sure. I don’t like to be challenged.
Punchbowl Shelter–Appalachian trail–Just east of Buena Vista, Virginia.
I stayed there one night camping and saw the only thing I ever took to be a ghost. It was the figure of a little child. The thing appeared in the night and vanished and it really shook me up like hell at the time. It was only later that I discovered that hundreds of people have seen this same childlike figure at this same location. I can’t explain that.
Every summer hikers spend the night in that hut, and most see absolutely nothing. But once in a while, someone does.
Would I spend the night there again? Yes, absolutely.
Would I spend the night there alone? No.
Money would not be an issue.
We have this happen at our house, too. But we have toddlers. 
Okay, I’m reading this thread alone in my apartment at night, and I’m getting serious heebie-jeebies. I’m gonna have to go with a big “no” to spending a night in a haunted house for any amount of cash. (Oh yeah, I did live in a mildly haunted apartment once. There was the occasional weird feeling in there felt by all who visited; no big deal, but I don’t want to mess with that kind of stuff.)
No, what happened is the driver had gotten the Ms. Field’s cookie recipe and was racing home to show it to her friends when she woke up in a tub of ice with lipstick on the rearview mirror that said… awww, screw it. Check here.
BTW, I lived in a haunted house for about ten years.
–Tim