Meet Ghost Tourist

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ghost Tourist a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ghost, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

When we first started our spooky travel YouTube channel “Ghost Tourist,” we had no idea what we were doing… or why we were doing it. So our confidence level was NOT five out of five ghosts. But over time, with the help of our still-living friends and the benefit of some hands-on spooky experience, our self-esteem in this paranormal endeavor has grown.

That said, we were not professional videographers, interviewers, or on-screen talent and had never so much as posted a video on YouTube before. So we were complete newbies and unsure where to start or what to do. With any new project, the first step is to do some research and see what was done by those that have come before you. It helps to give you ideas of what you might do, and more importantly, the things you definitely do NOT want to do. Confidence rises when you’re more informed. Secondly, we reached out to friends that we knew had some experience doing weekly podcasts and TikToks for advice on how to proceed. We got so much input that it was a bit overwhelming at first, but again, it’s much easier to be positive about a project when you have all the information as opposed to staring fearfully into the vast unknown. And finally, the biggest boost to our self-confidence came from doing the work. It sounds obvious, but often times physically doing something is the best way to learn it. What seems intimidating at first becomes much less daunting when you’ve seen you can do it, maybe not always fully successfully, but that you can do it and come out the other side in one piece.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

A bit of backstory on our YouTube channel “Ghost Tourist”: Whenever we went on vacation or even travelling somewhere for the weekend, we always sought out a ghost tour of the city or we would try to visit the supposedly haunted spots in the area. What can I say? We like the spooky stuff. Now, taking prearranged ghost tours is the easy and inexpensive way to go, but often times they spend 90% of the time talking about true crime and 10% of the time talking about ghosts. Boring. So, if we wanted to hear the local ghost stories and visit the local haunts, we had to do the research ourselves. Books. Internet searches. Google maps. Travel info. It could be a lot. And we thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a place on the internet that told you where to go and what you might see? So something like: if you’re heading to Boston, here are the four haunted sites you simply must visit and here’s what you need to know to survive the experience.” Since that resource didn’t exist, we thought it might be fun to put it together ourselves. And that’s when we started our YouTube channel “Ghost Tourist” where we visit different cities and tell the viewer which supernatural hot spots are worth their time.

Each city that we go to has enough material for eight to ten videos which range in length from 5 to 10 minutes each. So far, we’ve posted all of Las Vegas and Washington D.C. and started posting San Diego. Our upcoming seasons include: Seattle, San Francisco, Carlsbad, Hollywood, San Miguel de Allende, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, Maui, Downtown L.A., Denver Colorado, and Pasadena. (You wouldn’t believe how many unearthly specters haunt Pasadena!)

One of the things that’s special about it is that we get to see places that we never would have stumbled across if we weren’t doing this project. Just as one example, we’ve been to San Francisco a dozen times in our lives and have seen Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge on almost every trip, but we hadn’t even heard of the Sutro Baths until we started researching ghost stories. It’s a cool, abandoned health spa right on the beach with soaring cliffs, crashing surf, rainbow-colored graffiti, and ostensibly, ghosts. We’d never heard of it and never would have gotten to see it if not for this project.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Consistency. Everyone told us consistency is key. So we made sure we had about fifteen videos fully edited completed before we ever uploaded the first one. We didn’t want to fall behind on our weekly posting for those folks who were following us.

Flexibility. No matter how much planning you do and no matter how clear your vision of a project is, there are always going to be hiccups. And unexpected turns. And spectral entites sucking all the energy out of your phones and devices. So it is key to remain flexible and be willing to pivot when something doesn’t work the way you had hoped. It sometimes helps to think, “The people watching this show aren’t going to know that we forgot to turn the camera on for an entire interview.” Unless we decide to tell them, because it’s funny. Either way, it’s key to adapt to the circumstances that life throws at you.

Psychic Abilities. Okay, maybe you don’t HAVE to have psychic abilities to do a show about haunted hotels and abandoned asylums, but it helps!

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

When we’re making “Ghost Tourist,” the traveling is fun. Visiting new places and asking folks about their creepy experiences is fascinating. And even though it takes a long time, researching the areas and editing the videos can also be interesting. For us, I think the most difficult challenge is getting the word out to people that our show even exists. Once folks take a look at our videos, they really tend to enjoy them and then come back for more. But there is so much content out there now that it’s nearly impossible to make a big enough splash to get people to notice.

So far, we have taken three specific steps to overcome this challenge. One, when we posted our first video, we reached out to everyone we knew who might possibly be interested in ghosts, travel, or the two of us, from friends and family to coworkers and facebook contacts. We figured that it made sense to start with people that know us and that might give us a shot out of loyalty or guilt. Two, we knew that the mysteries of social media were not our forte, so we hired our daughter to do some of the artistic and promotional work to get the word out there. And three, we’re talking to people about the show in any medium that will welcome us. Cindy was recently a guest on a paranormal podcast and Scott is being interviewed by Bold Journey AS WE SPEAK.

I think the biggest take away for us in this project is that it takes a combination of patience and persistence. The show won’t go viral overnight and we have no control over that, so we just need to focus on the parts that we do have control over and make those the best they can be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ghosttourist.net
• Instagram: ghosttourist2023
• Facebook: 61552777571139
• Youtube: @GhostTourist2023
• Other: Tik Tok: / ghosttourist2023