Even though she had already been traveling for six years pursuing ghosts, it was a tour of an 1821 building in Savannah, Georgia, that left registered nurse Ashley Wiseman scared to tears.

During an organized ghost-hunt weekend in 2018, the 41-year-old Connecticut resident was already feeling uncomfortable during the group’s exploration in the city’s historic downtown of the building that housed the Moon River Brewing Company, which has since closed. But it was when she reached the second floor of the building, which was once home to the City Hotel, that she says she heard disembodied footsteps behind her, followed by a glimpse of “what appeared to be a haggard — nearly ancient — old woman,” she remembers.

When she caught a glimpse of a separate shadowy figure in the corner, she says she knew “something was brewing.” The sighting was almost immediately followed by what Wiseman describes as a featureless “dark, mad mass of energy” that rushed through a doorway with what she thinks was an intent to harm others.

“Remember, I’m a woman of science, [but] it scared me so badly, I cried later,” says the 13-year veteran nurse. Despite the fright, Wiseman has continued her pursuits into the strange and unusual, and estimates she has spent well over $100,000 since 2012 on approximately 80 trips revolving around ghosts.

Wiseman is not alone in her enthusiasm for this experience. She is a paranormal tourist, a member of an unofficial club of “spooky explorers,” as they are colloquially called. These travelers are not content with taking a two-hour ghost tour when they visit a city, but instead plan entire vacations, spending not-insignificant amounts of money, for a chance to encounter the unexplained — and maybe even get the bejesus scared out of them.

Since the rise of unscripted paranormal TV shows in the early 2000s and the proliferation of paranormal-themed Y