The intersection of the living and the dead is a crossroads that might be found in downtown Butler.

A walking ghost tour will visit 10 city sites where, if the stories are true, the other side has slipped through to trouble the city's living residents.

The tour will be given by Bill May of Butler, an amateur historian. Starting in Diamond Park, the tour will visit addresses that may be home to more than living residents.

May said he would recount the ghost stories associated with these locations.

“In 1915, there was a body found in Connoquenessing Creek at the corner of West Cunningham and Chestnut streets,” May said.

“The body was taken to the coroner's office at the corner of Vogley Way and Jackson Street. A man identified the body as that of Kelly the Bum, a vagrant,” said May.

“The coroner had the body buried in one of the local cemeteries,” the historian said.

“Six months later there was a knock at the coroner's door. The coroner was at his desk and yelled for the guy to come in,” said May.

The coroner looked up from his paperwork to see the dead and buried Kelly the Bum standing before him, according to May.

“'I'm Kelly the Bum and I came to thank you for burying me,' the figure said. The coroner just about died from fright,” said May. “The figure turned and went out the door.”

May's stories may find a receptive audience, according to Dr. Catherine Massey, associate professor in the psychology department at Slippery Rock University.

Massey said researchers in paranormal beliefs have reported an increased interest in the phenomena.

Nearly 66 percent of Americans believe in some form of the paranormal, according to sociologists Christopher Bader and Carson Mencken of Baylor University and Joseph Baker of East Tennessee State University in their recent book “Paranormal America.”

May said he amassed his stories from different sources.

“For some, I found family members. Others I got from old newspaper accounts or from people telling me the stories,” said May.

“There's not a common theme or thread that runs through Butler's past and the ghosts that still linger,” he said.

Not all his tales are about ghosts. Some are just creepy.

Like the incident that took place in the old Butler Hospital building that can be seen at the end of the bridge leading onto Main Street.

According to what was told May by his granddaughter, Frank Sheptak was working as a janitor at the hospital.

One day he went to the morgue to clean. One body under the sheet started to move.

“He ran and got a doctor. That person was still alive,” said May.

Other stories on the tour didn't have such harmless endings as the titles, “Ghost with the Fractured Skull” and “Chinese Laundry Murder” indicate. This is the second year that May will stage his ghost walk.

“I had 110 people on two nights,” he said.

“That's why I expanded it to four. The interest exceeded my expectations. Many people told me they were coming back this year.”

Massey pointed out research evidence dismissing paranormal activity as legitimate has not decreased the interest that people have in this phenomena.

<B>WHAT: </B>Bill May will present an hour’s ghost walk through downtown Butler.<B>WHEN: </B>Beginning at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and Oct. 26 and 27<B>WHERE: </B>The walk will leave from Diamond Park and cover about a third of a mile, stopping at addresses and locations associated with the uncanny, such as the present-day PNC Bank at 106 S. Main St, which was once the Butler Savings and Trust Building and reputed to have a haunted elevator.<B>COST: </B>$10 per person<B>WHO: </B>Sponsored by the Butler County Historical Society. Reservations are required and may be made by calling 724-256-9026 or visiting butlerghostwalk.com.