From the Busboy to the Boardroom (and the Basement): How a Lifetime of Ghost Stories Built a Haunted Business

Haunted Beginnings: My First Job and a Ghostly Orientation

When you’re 18 and starting your first job, you expect a rundown on the dress code, maybe a tour of the break room. You don’t expect to be warned that you might get pushed in the basement by a ghost or hear your name whispered by a disembodied voice.

But that was my introduction to the working world.

It was the 1990s, and I had just graduated from Mukwonago High School in southeast Wisconsin. I needed a summer job and found one at a restaurant called Heaven City. It had a wild past that included rumored gangster connections and a stint as a hippie commune. I thought the manager was joking when she told me the building was haunted. Turns out, nearly everyone who worked there had a story. And for me, that was less of a warning and more of a calling.

Because I’ve always been into ghosts.

How a Childhood Love of Ghost Stories Sparked a Paranormal Career

Richard Crowe on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers

Those stories made the world feel deeper and more mysterious. They helped us see the Midwest not as flyover country, but as the center of something strange and magical.

By the time I got to college, I was a psychology major running ESP experiments in the dorms. My sister and I were devouring issues of Strange Magazine and Fortean Times, watching The X-Files, and keeping up with regional legends like the Beast of Bray Road and the Tallman House haunting. It wasn’t a phase. It was a shared fascination that kept growing.

Launching a Ghost Tour Business in Wisconsin

In 2008, Allison decided to take that fascination further. As a teacher with summers off, she launched a ghost tour in Milwaukee to explore haunted history and teach others about it. Her idea was to do for Milwaukee what Richard Crowe had done for Chicago. I thought it was a great idea, but I was still on the road with my band at the time.

Then one summer, I came home from tour broke and unemployed. Allison said, “You should start a ghost tour in Madison.” Within a few weeks, I had researched enough stories, mapped out a route, and launched the first Madison Ghost Walk by October 2010.

It worked. People showed up. They were hungry for local legends, true history, and a little bit of spine-tingling fun. I discovered that I loved the performance of it. I loved digging into stories that were real, uncanny, and unforgettable.



Growing American Ghost Walks Across the Country

Here's the TV news report from when the tour launched.

Since then, American Ghost Walks has grown into a multi-state, multi-city operation. We’ve led tours in places like New Orleans, Minneapolis, Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, and all across Wisconsin and Illinois. We’ve brought legacy operations like Chicago Hauntings under our umbrella. And we’ve shared haunted history with tens of thousands of guests.

But it hasn’t been easy.

Some challenges are expected, like finding qualified guides in small tourist towns or dealing with the maze of permits and taxes in cities like New Orleans. Others are more internal, like maintaining the authenticity of the storytelling as the company scales up.

Swimming With The Sharks

Then there was Shark Tank.

They reached out looking for businesses to feature in a Halloween-themed episode. I thought it could be great exposure, so I went through months of applications, auditions, and producing a pitch. Being in the tank itself was surreal. The segment they aired was just five minutes, but I was in there for over thirty. It was intense, but absolutely worth it. It showed me that a weird little business from the Midwest could stand toe-to-toe with major national brands.

What Makes American Ghost Walks Different From Other Ghost Tours

So why choose American Ghost Walks over all the other ghost tours out there?

Because we care about telling stories that matter. We don’t recycle what’s already on Wikipedia. We go into bars, restaurants, hotels, and theaters and talk to the people who live and work in those spaces. We gather new stories and cross-check them with the history. We aren’t chasing shock value. We’re chasing something stranger, more personal, and more profound.

To us, ghosts aren’t just entertainment. They’re memory. They’re connection. They’re how people who built and lived in these cities still leave their mark. If you walk away from one of our tours with chills and a new appreciation for your city, that’s a win.

I used to think being into ghost stories made me weird. Now I think it made me early.

And if a kid from Mukwonago can go from ghost-obsessed busboy to running haunted tours across the country, maybe there’s a lesson in that. Sometimes your strangest interests are the ones most worth following.