WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Many cities around the country offer ghost tours. Until recently, most have been around for years, or are new, started by some of the more quirky and colorful locals who love their town or city’s lore and history. The owner of the local tour business is often also the researcher and writer of the tour, the guide, and customer service person. In bigger cities there are more guides but one constant is the people giving the tours have done their local research to proudly tell their city or towns unique history.
That is until US Ghost Adventures ( copying the newly formed Ghost City Tours business model) began replicating and exploiting the local ghost tour businesses. Leaving from the same location at the same time, and using the exact name of the existing local tour company to intentionally confuse the customer. The reason they use the local company name is because they have optimal SEO, having been in business for a long time. Spies from the franchise ghost tours take the local tour, record them, and send the stories to the out-of-state headquarters. Literally copying the same stories and going to the same locations. The tragedy is the guides hired through Indeed and trained remotely can’t seem to tell a story or get the facts correct.
The local tours are used to grappling with the unknown, but this was an entirely new dark matter. US Ghost Adventures was far more cutthroat, using deep pockets from investors to blanket the internet with their information, especially using third party platforms that are easily manipulated such as TripAdvisor, Viator, Groupon and Google ads. Out of the country tech individuals are paid to spend the day leaving fake 5-star reviews on those same platforms. Even when an advertised tour never took place or no guide appeared, the companies still make money because if you read the disclaimer in small print there are no refunds.
Unbeknownst to us he had paid someone to take our tour which he then replicated remotely and trained the guide through Indeed – but did a really bad job.
