Lance Zaal is turning ghost tourism into a scaled US business. Over roughly five years, his company, US Ghost Adventures (USGA), has expanded into more than 250 cities and towns, employs over 1,000 guides and has acquired landmarks including the Lizzie Borden House in Massachusetts and Iowa's Villisca Axe Murder House. The expansion has also brought repeated disputes with local operators over trademarks, tour content, review traffic and employment practices, with several cases still moving through the courts.
From a GPS app to 250-plus markets
Zaal, 42, now lives at the Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans' French Quarter. The property is associated with historical accounts of enslavement and violence. Visitors have described hearing unexplained moaning inside the house and smelling what they believed was burning meat. Catie Santos, a New Orleans guide who briefly worked as a content creator for Zaal, said she would describe the mansion's former owner to tour groups as a "real-life Marvel supervillain."
In a personal biography, Zaal says he had an unstable childhood in Southern California. His parents divorced when he was six, and he sometimes had nowhere to live, sleeping in the family van. He has also described childhood experiences involving unexplained footsteps and doors opening and closing on their own, which he says helped fuel his interest in the paranormal.
After the September 11 attacks, Zaal joined the US Marine Corps at 17. He completed three overseas deployments, including two in Iraq, and was at one point stationed in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. He later earned an MBA from the College of William & Mary and held short stints at Booz Allen Hamilton and Mythics Inc. before being laid off in 2012. He then developed ItourMobile, an audio ghost-tour app with GPS navigation.
The US paranormal tourism market has grown since then. A Gallup survey found that 11% of Americans said they believed in ghosts in 1978; by 2025, that share had risen to 39%. Television programs including "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Adventures" also helped push supernatural themes into the mainstream during the 2000s. Grand View Research estimates that the broader dark-tourism market, covering disaster sites, locations associated with historical tragedies and haunted houses, was worth $32 billion in 2023 and could reach $39 billion by the end of the decade.
How USGA replicates local tour brands
Walking ghost tours generally have relatively low operating costs. Guides typically lead groups through public areas, limiting the need for large fixed assets. USGA's website says guides are generally paid a flat $40 to $50 per tour, plus tips. When dozens of visitors pay $20 to $40 each for admission, revenue can build quickly on a single outing.
During the pandemic in 2020, many tourism businesses suspended operations. USGA continued expanding into new cities and arranged for guides to resume tours once restrictions were lifted. That year, Zaal unsuccessfully challenged Massachusetts' pandemic ban on walking tours in court. By 2021, USGA had entered 33 cities, generally operating under names tailored to each local market.
In Baltimore, Melissa Rowell has operated Baltimore Ghost Tours since 2001. She says USGA entered the market using names such as Baltimore Ghosts and later used Baltimore Ghost Tour in some materials, creating confusion between the two businesses. Rowell received a message from a visitor who said they had paid nearly $100 for a tour but could not find the booking location and could not reach anyone by phone. The visitor had actually been trying to locate a newer USGA offering.
Rowell and Zaal exchanged emails and cease-and-desist letters for an extended period. In a 2024 email, Zaal said he wanted to end the hostility and wrote that "the spirit of Halloween" should remind both sides that there were enough tourists in the market. Rowell denies taking part in an alleged "coalition" targeting USGA, although local guides in cities across the country have created private Facebook groups to share information about the company's operations.
Mike Carter, a guide in Annapolis, Maryland, also registered the domain USAghostadventures.com. The site urged visitors to choose local ghost-tour companies rather than Zaal's business. It was later taken down, and Carter was sued over defamation claims. Some operators have also declined to work with USGA as a show of support for local guides.
Similar names lead to multiple lawsuits
USGA's expansion model has produced legal disputes in several cities. The operator of Austin's Booze and Boos Tour sued after USGA launched a similarly named Boos And Booze Tour. The case was settled in 2024. In Savannah, Georgia, Ghost City Tours sued over USGA's Savannah Terrors Ultimate Dead of Night Haunted Ghost Tour. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Queen City Tours sued over Zaal's Queen City Ghosts project. Both cases remain before the courts.
In court filings and public statements, USGA has generally argued that the disputed names are too generic to be controlled by one business. Zaal has also brought copyright and defamation claims against competitors and has repeatedly threatened legal action. In a comment beneath a YouTube video criticizing USGA's business practices, the company said its rivals were the ones trying to restore a monopoly by excluding competition.
Some guides have also accused USGA of using similar names to affect competitors' online ratings. Angela Taverniti, who operates Colonial Ghosts of Williamsburg, said a USGA customer, Samantha Butler, mistakenly left a negative review on her tour's listing. Butler later checked the review link sent by USGA. When she selected a four-star rating, the page directed her to the USGA tour she had attended. When she selected two stars, the link instead took her to Taverniti's Google review page.
Taverniti says roughly 98% of her business comes from Google reviews. For local tour companies that rely on search platforms to attract customers, the ownership of review pages and the way customers are routed between listings can directly affect the flow of new bookings. The issue has become one of the central operating disputes in the competition between USGA and local businesses.
Landmark acquisitions and ghost-hunting products
USGA also operates beyond walking tours. Through its Ghost Daddy brand, it sells devices marketed as ghost-detection equipment, including the Sinister Speaker, Medusa's Net and Devil's Marble MK2. The Ultimate Ghost Hunt Kit For Two is listed at $629.99.
In recent years, Zaal has continued acquiring buildings associated with paranormal stories or controversial histories. The properties include the Lizzie Borden House, the Villisca Axe Murder House, McInteer Villa in Kansas and two historic homes in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Diane Student, host of the industry podcast History Goes Bump, said Zaal had spoken about building an empire, and that his acquisitions were moving in that direction.
USGA's growth has also brought allegations involving borrowed content, similar merchandise designs, workers allegedly misclassified as independent contractors and customer confusion caused by closely related company names. Zaal did not respond to repeated questions about the matters discussed here. He has consistently denied operating in a predatory manner and has emphasized his interest in historic preservation.
The disputes over tour names, review routing and worker arrangements remain subject to the pending lawsuits and any related regulatory or judicial findings. For local operators, the immediate concerns are more concrete: how customers identify a tour, where a review is posted and how guides are classified and paid.