CALL OR TEXT | 407-256-6225

"BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID"
CORPORATIONS IN THE GHOST TOUR INDUSTRY
Posted: 28 NOVEMBER 2025

Main Content

NOTE: Phrases and keywords in this article which appear in BLUE serve as external hyperlinks for further reading opportunities and citation purposes.

A featured article from the American business journal Fast Company certainly made rounds in October 2025, being posted, shared, and re-shared by local ghost tour agencies and paranormal celebrities alike. While the subject wasn't necessarily a new one — especially to those of us already working in the field — the attention it garnered definitely helped to shake things up for patrons and tourists nationwide.

Just as other forms of smaller businesses continue to be overtaken, shut down, or bought out by national or international conglomerates, the same is now occurring within the paranormal tourism industry. However, the overlords behind these attempted takeovers are at last being openly called out for their cagey practices, facing lawsuits in multiple states from long-established regional vendors who have discovered that their customers are being misled by name mimickry — a recurring situation so consistently underhanded that even in the last month (18 Nov 2025) one of the two largest paranormal syndicates announced that they are suing the other over this very issue! — while former employees of the larger entities are also lawyering up, citing situations in which they were unfairly treated or in which they had wages unlawfully withheld.

Image: Fast Company

And these are just the unresolved legal proceedings that have been making the headlines!

In addition to pressuring local ghost tour companies into merger situations, the same syndicates have been caught actively contacting the regional companies' local business partners, openly offering monetary compensation should the partner organizations agree to replace links for the regional groups on their websites with those representing the larger national chains. This ploy was openly documented by Annapolis Ghost Tours & Crawls (founded 2002) on their social media page earlier this year (05 Feb 2025), their group having been previously harassed by the same larger entities over the last two years, watching as the former name of their company was taken and reused by syndicates to generate a false "local ghost tour" billing. As Annapolis Ghost Tours owner Mike Carter is quoted in the Free Company article, “I get calls almost daily from somebody who’s confused or wants to verify which company it is."

For the guides in the streets, still working out in the field, easily one of the hardest difficulties is hearing the factual slander and literal rewriting of (or total ignorance of) historical information. In the paranormal realm, a guide's job is to preserve and protect the spirits' stories. And yet, the same national syndicates have been caught stealing personal accounts from the collected data gathered by regionally-operating investigative organizations, incorporating that previously unreleased content into their own mass-produced and scripted frameworks . . . or worse, embellishing upon it heavily, with no consideration for actual fact-checking.

In Orlando, for example, the localized syndicate subsidiaries are regularly overheard by AGA guides in passing, sharing fabricated stories about fantastical suicides, axe murders, and "secret society" sacrifices which exist absolutely nowhere in the archives, collected verbal accounts, referential data, or gathered spiritual communication records, only in the imaginations of the unscrupulous mother companies who provide this material to their employees.

Sadly, thanks to the immense profits drawn from their hundreds of infiltrated venues, the same national entities have managed to successfully acquire some of the most iconic haunted buildings in America such as the Lizzie Borden House, the Villisca Axe Murder House, and the LaLaurie Mansion, and have then proceeded to strip some of them of architectural elements and/or interior features, before staking copyright claims to the history and names of historical persons associated with these properties . . . and this after syndicate leadership having openly refuted that "no one owns history" when directly questioned about their revisional scripting choices and infringement of personal data gathered. Adding further insult to injury, the new owners of these well-documented properties are now also attempting to stake legal claim over any further evidence captured while exploring these properties.

Image: dbking/Wikipedia

HOW TO COMBAT THIS SITUATION

RESEARCH YOUR DESTINATION! — Learn more about the venues and/or companies before making your reservations. The cheapest deals may be the cheapest for a reason!

READ LOCAL GUIDE REVIEWS! — Compare previous consumer reports, as you would with any other product or service. In the modern age, it's very easy to falsify reviews, esepcially when the mother agency quite literally operates an online all-purpose tourism page!