There once was a time when ghost hunting brought up visions of Scooby Doo and his gang driving around in their Mystery Machine to solve a ghostly case, only to find that “old man Jenkins” was behind whole thing.

Ghost hunting is now mainstream, the makings of everything from television shows and movies to date night activities to side jobs and downtown tours. Silver screens flickered with “Ghostbusters II” this summer, for example, while television, Netflix and Hulu offer “Ghost Hunters,” “Paranormal State,” “Dead Files,” “Ghost Adventurers,” “Ghost Whisperer” and “Haunted History.”

But there are also options to get your local fix of all things ghost either as a group or by yourself.

Tacoma Ghost Tours
Tacoma Ghost Tours formed in 2012 and offers walks around downtown and the Stadium District. Photo credit: Steve Dunkelberger.

Tacoma Ghost Tours

Tacoma Ghost Tours started in 2012 as a father-son project that has become the longest running ghost tour in the city. The guided-walking tour features haunted locations in downtown Tacoma and covers some of Tacoma’s more eerie bits of history that include mysterious flying objects, a mummy’s curse, a sunken ship, Native American lore and tales of ghost sightings.

Owners Charlie and Andrew Hansen have grown the operation from one tour to a roster of three separate offerings, two covering just downtown and one for the Stadium District Thursday through Sunday evenings. Tours are picking up with Halloween on the horizon and the tours shifting to more ghosts, less history tours to match the season.

“It’s really starting to get more attention,” Andrew Hansen said.

Attendees range from tourists and conventioneers looking for something to do after dinner to local residents who either are interested in ghosts or just want to learn more about the City of Destiny. Some people walk the 90-minute, sidewalk tours several times since they are constantly evolving with the addition of new information or the interests of the participants.

“We cut a lot of things out,” Hansen said. “We always have more information to talk about.”

Ghost Hunting Classes

People more interested in ghosts than one-off tours can learn the craft and equipment of ghost hunting by joining a local ghost-hunting group. At 15 years old, the oldest among them is AGHOST, Advanced Ghost Hunters of Seattle-Tacoma.

Ghost Hunting App
Got App? The proliferation of cell phone apps to check for ghosts has made ghost hunting a bit like playing Pokemon Go. Photo credit: Steve Dunkelberger.

Members record sounds, shoot video and use psychics to gather evidence about potential hauntings or ghostly activity. The group’s founder, Ross Allison, offers classes and lectures around the nation on everything paranormal as well as tours and hunts through Spooked in Seattle. He is finishing his fifth ghost-related book, a collection of stories from around the world about haunted toys.

While he appreciates the growing interest in paranormal activity, he worries that the popularity has become over saturation with the addition of spoofs and increasingly scripted ghost-hunting shows that focus more on the investigators screaming away or talking about themselves feeling chills than actually searching for proof of paranormal activities.

“It’s a joke half the time,” he said. “It’s gotten out of hand.”

People view such shows and think they can simply walk into a dark house with a phone app – yes, there are actually several of them – and find chairs moving by themselves and chatty ghosts talking from the great beyond.

“Everybody thinks they can be a ghost hunter,” he said.

Ghost hunting takes training, not just on how to use the equipment but on how to collect and research “evidence” since most seemingly unexplained orbs and mystery voices can be debunked, Allison said. Orbs, for example, are often just dust particles a camera records that novices first think are manifestations of ghost energy.

Phone apps, which note in their terms of use as “for entertainment only,” often display a radar screen with blips of “ghost energy.” Some apps use the phone’s GPS locator to add local references to the screen or even have voice-recognition software that pulls words spoken by the ghost hunters. The app can then repeat those words – names and locations – as “ghost communications.”

“People don’t realize that,” Allison said. “Technology has been changing at a fast rate, and it is really easy to manipulate it. It is so easy to hear what you want to hear.”

Hunts can gather a lot of information, from video, audio and still photographs, that then all has to be reviewed. Little survives the process, but people who want go on an actual hunt think they will see ghostly images and hear beyond-the-grave voices the entire time.

“Having those experiences in pretty rare,” Allison said, noting that he has researched paranormal activity for 30 years and conducted some 600 investigations and has yet to see a full-body apparition. “Maybe I’m just not ready to see it. I’m envious.”