Most places I travel, I make it a point to do one cheesy tourist thing. I take a guided ghost tour.

In Boston, the guide stopped at a well-traveled common area and wailed like a banshee. Our New Orleans horde was routed to a "haunted" pub which just happened to be offering happy hour specials.

The tackiness serves as the best disclaimer: Don't take ghoulish stories too seriously.

Right before Halloween, the Associated Press and Ipsos Public Affairs released a poll about people's beliefs in a bunch of supernatural topics. One was ghosts.

What caught my eye was the breakdown by religion. The results suggested 26 percent of Catholics have witnessed a ghost, even more than the general public. And, among each of the Christian subsets listed in the results, roughly one-third believes ghosts exist.

Seems like an odd mix, churches buddying up to phantoms. Halloween's popularity has zoomed to the point it overshadows its spiritual origins. Plus, the pop-culture definition of ghosts - souls bumming around on Earth - doesn't jibe with what most Sunday schoolers are taught about the afterlife.

I was curious if people can reconcile their belief in God and in ghosts. Since a co-worker of mine had just written to preview a local All Hallows Eve service, I started there.

"Boy, that's a good question," said the Rev. Peter Irvine, an Episcopal priest and chaplain at DeKoven Center, who organized the service.

The readings had supernatural themes plucked straight from the Bible. Not out of character for a book that features the Holy Spirit and an array of angels and demons. The Book of Revelation alone could inspire a complete Halloween costume party.

Visions of saints or the Virgin Mary still come to people. The famous reports make us wonder. The "See her face in this grilled cheese?" stories make us groan.

While Irvine isn't sold on Halloween-style haunting, he knows people have strange encounters. He felt a spiritual presence while visiting a shrine for Julian of Norwich, an English mystic who had plenty of visions of her own.

"Whether that's a ghost or not, it's almost a matter of semantics," Irvine said.

Definitions differ between people and between time periods. Irvine pointed out what's easily diagnosed as mental illness today had a whole different connotation in biblical times.

"If you took them in a time machine and transported them to first-century Palestine, those people would be viewed as having a demon," he said.

OK, so whose definition can I borrow? As a Catholic, I called around to find out what Church teaching applies. With no handy pamphlet available, the California-based Catholic Answers gave me its interpretation. The group hosts online forums and radio shows to answer worshippers' questions.

"God can do what he wants, so I can't rule it out," Jimmy Akin, the group's director of apologetics and evangelization, said of people seeing ghosts.

That doesn't mean all of those eerie spirits made legendary by tour guides are floating around among us. Just that God could make it look that way when he's got a reason.

Akin made a point to caution people not to take their interest too far. Not to worry, there's no risk of me making the leap from schlocky tours to sacrificing goats.

But maybe the next time I notice a strange flickering light in the next room, I won't be so quick to dismiss it as a dying light bulb.

Mike Moore is interested to hear how others reconcile their faith and supernatural things. He can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or via e-mail at: mike.moore@lee.net