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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. Well, last night I got to take a ride and a hearse. That's something you don't usually get to do until the very end. And usually in the horizontal position, probably not sitting upright. And it was a fun time. Let me explain. When I was in high school, I was already publishing books. I think I published my first book when I was in middle school. And so obviously I was already really interested in the business of writing and publishing. And one of my English teachers was a man named David Boyles. And I really enjoyed his class, and we had lots of interesting discussions about writing. In fact, at one point, and when I was in high school, I published an anthology, a book that was a collection of weird experiences that residents of Western North Carolina have had. And I mean it spanned the whole spectrum. Ghosts and UFOs and Bigfoot and Little People and Fairies and Time Warps and you know, you name it. And that book was called Speaking of Strange. So that's where the name came from, that would eventually become the name of my radio program that I hosted for many, many years and still produce, uh, but Vance Pollack is now the host. I don't have time to host it anymore. Um, so David Voyles actually wrote one of the best stories uh in the book Speaking of Strange. It was called Maggie and the Pig Face, and uh it was about this uh weird pig skull that his dog had had dug up somewhere and uh all the odd things that started happening regarding this find, so to speak. Uh, you know that book, Speaking of Strange, is pretty rare. Um, I think I might have just one copy myself. Uh there were only a few short runs or small runs done um in the region. And so uh somebody told me they recently found one in a used bookstore and it was quite expensive. So if you see a copy of the old Speaking of Strange book, better snatch it. So anyway, uh David Voyles, he he has always had this interest in spooky stories. And uh there were times where he would invite me in his class to talk about uh, well, to just really just sit down and read poems and read short stories and Twilight Zone type stuff that I would write. So it really wasn't all that surprising when I was contacted by him a few years ago telling me that uh he and his uh retirement from teaching uh is or is now interested in the ghost tour business. Um and uh of course I've been running ghost tours for a long time now, over 20 years, and I've done all kinds of different tours. Walking tours have been my focus, but uh I've worked with buses, I've worked with trolleys, I've worked with vans. Uh if it has wheels, I've probably done something spooky on it at one point or another. So David decided that he wanted to create Asheville's first and only haunted hearse tour. And so um we chatted a little bit about about the business, and uh, and I told him I thought it was just a wonderful idea. Um and because you know you're appealing to very different types of people. Uh the type of person who wants to get out and walk around downtown for two hours is very different than the type of person who wants to sit in a hearse and ride around for an hour. And so I said, hey, you know, this is uh actually a really good asset to the ghost tour scene. But uh I think he knew that he had uh quite a bit of ambition when he went out and bought this hearse, but he might have bitten off even more than he could initially chew because the hearse that he got was pretty ragged looking. I I just saw the pictures of it on his Facebook page. And the work that that he and his son Josh and their colleagues and associates and hired hands did to transform this thing into its current state is nothing short of miraculous. Uh this hearse now looks like a million bucks, and uh not only does it look brand new, but uh the modifications that they've done to this hearse are just uh extraordinary. For one thing, they had to do some significant reconstruction of the interior to provide the proper seating for people. Nice big uh cushy seats. And then also, uh, without giving too much away, they installed some interesting little bells and whistles to enhance the experience as you go on your ghost tour. Now, let me give you an idea of sort of how the ghost tour uh that uh that David does is set up. Um, it's very theatrical. He is in a character uh call in character mode, um, a character called Virgil, who wears a top hat. And then his driver is uh Sharon, the uh ferryman. You see, this is all referenced to the uh uh the Dante's Inferno story. And so uh we met up at a speakeasy downtown uh next to another fun site called the Conundrum, and actually it's downstairs at the Battery Park Hotel. We met up there, got into the Hearse, and as we started rolling out, uh I think that you know, Virgil, I'll call him at this point, he did a great job of sort of letting everybody know up front what the tone of the experience was going to be. And he said, for example, you know, if you want a more serious treatment of the paranormal, um, take the haunted asheal walking tour because we're all paranormal investigators and and um and we look at this often from a scientific point of view as well as legend and all that. He said, if you want just something that's just outrageously uh entertaining, uh truth be damned, uh go take the Lazoom haunted comedy tour. But he said, this tour falls sort of in the middle between the two. And and he was right about that because as we were rolling through the mountains and going to graveyards and churches and prisons and spooky places like that, he was actually giving a great presentation with some really interesting facts about local history, details that I didn't know myself, uh, even though these are some stories that I've researched. He had done a great job of digging up some actual authentic information that anybody interested in the paranormal would enjoy. But don't forget, this is also sort of like a haunted house attraction on wills. So, in other words, you're guaranteed to see some weird things, nod, nod, wink, wink, right? So, um, so just have a playful attitude when you go in to do it. But anyway, very cool experience. He does a lot of these uh at different times of year at different locations, so you have some variables, and uh it's kind of funny. I got um an email, oh, just recently, from a woman who said, My daughter is really into ghosts. She didn't say how old her daughter is, but she said, for her birthday, we're bringing her to Asheville, and we want to give her this sort of ultimate ghost experience. And she asked if I had any kind of a two-night package available for my haunted Asheville tours. And I explained that we don't really have a two-night package. We do, because she was interested in like a Friday-Saturday thing. I said, Well, we do tours on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. And there is a tour that you can only get on Friday, that you can't get on Saturday, which is the supernatural tour. So we could have mixed it up for her a little bit, but I said, Listen, here's what I would do. I said, come out one night, Friday or Saturday, take your pick, and do the haunted Asheville walking tour, that of course ends in the Asheville Mystery Museum. And then the next night, take her on the Hearse tour, and where it's gonna be again more theatrical and more dramatic, and uh and and that's just a great balance. That's a really nice package. I'm gonna talk to David about um maybe seeing what we can do to arrange a more formal package like that. But anyway, David Boyle's Tours, they are called Dark Ride Tours, and uh, in fact, I have a link to them on my hauntedasheville.com website, or you can go directly to darkride tours.com. Darkrideurs.com. It's very easy to um to book uh a date. But remember, uh, Hearse can only seat so many people. So they are much more limited in what they can do in terms of the amount of people. So that's why I say if you're gonna do the Hearse tour, you better book in advance as far as you can to make sure you can get a seat. So um, what a great experience, though. I'm just delighted to see that uh that David is doing so well. He's an extremely creative guy. He throws his Halloween party every year like no other, where he turns his whole house into some type of amusement park basically, with all kinds of ghoulish decorations. It's just it's just cool that there are people out there who who understand um the entertainment aspect of all this and that we don't always have to take everything so seriously. Uh it's okay to have uh a nod and a wink and a joke sometimes as well. All right, friends. Well, uh I think that's it for now. Uh remember now, if you want to listen to these free daily podcasts, all you have to do is go to joshuapeewarren.com. That is joshua pwarren.com. You'll find the link at the top. You can click, and at this point, you'll find quite a few of these now. I've been uh doing these daily podcasts for probably over six weeks. And you can subscribe via various uh means like iTunes, Stitcher, etc., or follow me on Twitter, and I will uh usually tweet when a new one is posted. So thank you for listening. Thank you for staying curious, and I'll talk to you again soon.