Horsefly History Tours owner Laine Johnson said her small tour company was born out of a love for Western mining. When the COVID-19 pandemic threatened her business, she thought she found a solution with an online platform for hosting virtual tours.
Now, she’s haunted by the consequences of entrusting her original ghost tour material to another service provider.
Johnson said a nationwide ghost tour company called US Ghost Adventures, acting locally as Durango Ghosts, is using her original content – unique stories that are the product of countless hours of research and interviews with local sources – and content from her friendly competitor Durango Ghost Walk in its tours.
During the days of social distancing, she began hosting virtual audio tours online using a service called Junket, which was founded by Lance Zaal, who also founded US Ghost Adventures.
Her requests for the virtual tours on Junket to be taken down have been ignored, she said.
US Ghost Adventures isn’t just taking content created by local tours, she said. It’s also embellishing stories, posting fake positive reviews and manipulating search engine optimization to appear at the top of Google search results, pushing down results for Horsefly History Tours and Durango Ghost Walk, founded by resident Joe Nelson.
“They are a really bad company,” Nelson said, describing US Ghost Adventures as cliché “bad guys in a formulaic B movie.”
He said US Ghost Adventures “review bombs” competitors and has a reputation for suing mom and pop ghost tour companies for copyright infringement. He also suspects the company is using his original material in its tours.
Nelson, who is also an advertising representative for Ballantine Communications Inc., which owns The Durango Herald, said he found out about US Ghost Adventures’ foray into Durango as early as May when it began popping up on Google, claiming to be Durango’s oldest and highest rated tour in town.
“I wasn’t as disappointed as much as I was blinded by rage,” he said.
A records request to the city of Durango revealed US Ghost Adventures obtained a business license on Aug. 19.
US Ghost Adventures also makes ethically questionable business decisions, Nelson said, such as opening a tour in Maui after more than 100 people were killed in a historic wildfire in 2023.
“A rule of thumb is the events on ghost tours need to be at least 75 years ago,” Nelson said. “If not, it’s called ‘trauma porn’ and considered bad taste in the community.”
US Ghost Adventures indeed faced criticism from Lahaina residents earlier this year. Lopaka Kapanui, a ghost storyteller, told KITV Island News that opening a ghost tour two years after the devastating wildfires is inappropriate.
“If we wanted to do a ghost tour, like say 50, 100 years from now when all the devastation and the heartbreak has sort of, you know, for lack of a better term, died down, maybe,” he said. “But to do it two years after the devastation is completely disrespectful.”
US Ghost Adventures said in a news release that Zaal committed to donate 20% of revenues to Maui charities and communities for the first three years of operation in Maui, that tourism is a cornerstone of Maui’s economy, and criticisms of US Ghost Adventures are part of an online smear campaign to damage the tour company’s reputation.
Zaal was similarly critical of Johnson.
“If a competitor has a concern, they should put on their adult pants and reach out to us, providing clear examples of their claim,” he said in an email to The Durango Herald. “Are we using their material, or are we embellishing history? They do not own history, and they are in the wrong country if they want to control the speech and content of others.”
He denied that US Ghost Adventures has ever stolen content from another company, and said it is not using Johnson’s work.
“Other companies or individuals do not own history or the right to tell stories. History belongs to and should be shared with all people. She does not own the exclusive rights to tell stories or history,” he said. “We have done nothing illegal or unethical, and if copying was how we operate we wouldn’t have significant content creation expenses and would have opened years earlier.”
Likewise, US Ghost Adventures does not pay for reviews, he said.
Johnson said her artistic and literary work product is on display on US Ghost Adventures’ Durango Ghosts tour. Anecdotes, facts and even the sequence of the tour resembles her original work.
In researching Durango’s history, Johnson said she has delved into out-of-print books and newspapers and interviewed families who have shared photographs and other information. Much of the content in her tours is unique and unpublished information, she said, and she questions how US Ghost Adventures could have that information if it didn’t get it from her.
Attorney Jesse Blopp, hired by Johnson, said Zaal’s statements were “predictable” and reflective of US Ghost Adventures’ standard playbook.
He said the dispute is not about competition or storytelling, but rather about US Ghost Adventures’ “unethical and unlawful conduct” that generated a negative reputation for the company well before it expanded into Durango.
He said the Durango Ghosts tour resembles Johnson’s in “route, number and order” and uses Johnson’s “words, phrasing and content.”
“We know this because much of my client’s tour derives from unpublished interviews not publicly available. In short, US Ghost Adventures dba Durango Ghost is unlawfully copying Horsefly History Tours’ artistic and literary expression of ideas on Durango’s history,” he said. “This is not about competition or who can tell Durango’s history, and based on his experience Mr. Zaal knows this.”
US Ghost Adventures has attracted the ire of ghost tour companies across the country.
As The Herald News reported in 2023, tour company owners say US Ghost Adventures has “used similar names to existing businesses, infringed on trademarks, taken ideas from their businesses, and created confusion for customers by making it seem as if they’re connected.”
After US Ghost Adventures purchased the Lizzie Borden House – a historic house in Fall River, Massachusetts, where the gruesome ax murders of Andrew and Abby Borden occurred in 1892 – it accused Miss Lizzie’s Coffee next door of trademark infringement and took the coffee shop to court.
The district court sided with the coffee shop, as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upon an appeal, CBS News reported.
The Baltimore Banner reported last year that Baltimore Ghost Tours and Annapolis Ghost Tours owners were frustrated by being repeatedly confused with US Ghost Adventures.
Johnson said the ordeal has made Durango’s small ghost tour community closer.
She said she hopes people who take her ghost tour walk away more knowledgeable about Durango’s past. She said US Ghost Adventures isn’t just being disrespectful to tour company owners when it uses and embellishes their stories – it’s disrespecting Durango’s spirits and the town itself.
cburney@durangoherald.com
