Banking on superstition

Skeptics may scoff at ghosts and UFOs, but the profits some businesses are making off the spirit world are no mere phantoms. Scores of small businesses, selling ghost-hunting equipment, ghost investigation services, and even ghost counseling, are booming outside of their prime season, Halloween.

Alamo City Paranormal in San Antonio, Tex., -- said to be one of the most haunted regions of the country -- claims to own $80,000 worth of special ghost-detecting gear and charges $50 and up for its investigations. It also offers para-counseling services (that's where a counselor talks to, say, a child who believes there's a ghost living under her bed), as well as popular ghost tours of downtown San Antonio, haunted, the story goes, by the spirits of hundreds of soldiers who died in the 1836 battle of the Alamo.

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