The answer is no, of course; I've had some decent dealings with writers. But now I find that for the THIRD time this year, a friend has been ripped an undeserved new asshole by a feature writer looking to stir up controversy where there isn't any.
On the Naperville Ghost Tours, people were asking about the Lemak house. The response was basically, "Yeah, this is it. Bad things happened here, it's not haunted, let's move on." In the Chicago Tribune, this was translated into, "Hey, this is the LEMAK HOUSE!!!! Lotsa cool murders going on here and maybe some ghosts!!!! Give us your money!!!!" Then the son of a bitch went to people in Naperville with that bullshit and said, "How do you feel about that?" Guess what the response was.
I received the following e-mail from a mutual friend:
"I don't know if you know, but Diane Ladley's facing a difficult time with this whole ghost tour fiasco. She was interviewed for the Trib and they basically turned her into a money grubbing witch who is capitalizing on the Lemak tragedy for her personal gain. Truth be told, the house is quickly mentioned in her tour (or WAS) and it's said it isn't haunted. She basically brought it up because people were asking about it and, well, it's the elephant in Naperville's living room.
"Her sales have plummeted. It's horrible. This woman is trying to make a living at her tours, she's great at them, and people are canceling left and right. This is her sole means of income and now, because of an unscrupulous Trib writer, she's had death threats, lost business, etc.
"I don't know what you can personally do, but if this is something you can help with, if there's something you can say to Diane, I'm grasping at straws here. But I just thought I'd pass this all along to you.
"The Naperville Ghost Tour website is:
Naperville Ghost Tours
"If you click on the Lemak house info, you can read Diane's reply."
I've known Diane for twenty years and she is NOT CAPABLE of what's she's being accused of. Even if you have no interest in Ghost Tours, please check this out and in the interest of fairness, either buy some tickets or at least pass this on to everyone you know in the area.
A wonderful person is being royally fucked, and not in a good way.
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ October 19, 2006 07:54 PM: Message edited by: Sgt. Bilko ]</font>
