Today we’d like to introduce you to Troy Taylor.
Hi Troy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up with an interest in the usual, raised by relatives who filled my head with stories of ghosts and crime and the fact that some of them were in the carnival business inspired my love for circuses and oddities, which had a big effect on me later on.
I was always an avid reader and had always wanted to be a writer, so when I had the chance, I jumped in on the “do-it-yourself” publishing fad of the 1990s and wrote and published my first book, which was about the ghosts and crimes of the Illinois town where I grew up. I didn’t expect much from it, but it became a huge success — bigger than it deserved, in all honesty — but that started my career. Around the same time (1994), I started my first ghost tour. This was a time when ghost tours were really rare outside of a handful of big cities, so I guess I got in on the ground floor of the phenomenon.
I went on to create tours in other towns in Illinois, ghost hunting tours throughout the Midwest, started offering lectures, and events, and, in 1997, founded the first ghost conference in the United States — the Haunted America Conference — which is still held annually in Alton, Illinois.
And of course, I continued writing books — 153 titles at last count — and I’ve also opened the American Oddities Museum in Alton, which recaptured all my childhood loves of strange and unusual things.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It hasn’t always been a smooth ride. I made up my job — creating it out of nothing — so I had nothing to base it on or anyplace where I could get ideas to make it work. So, it’s been 32 years of flying by the seat of my pants and working through recessions and the pandemic and coming up with new ideas to try and keep the lights on. It’s not always easy but I can’t imagine doing anything else.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Essentially, I’m a storyteller. I write books, filled with stories of history, ghosts, and true crime, and I also try to bring those stories to life with guided tours and speaking events, where I get to connect with the people who read my books. I was lucky to start at a time when the market wasn’t glutted with other tours or even other books like the ones that I write. That gave me a chance to build an audience and community, and many of those people have stuck with me over all these years.
One of the things I am most proud of has been the creation of the Haunted America Conference, an annual event that brings together several hundred enthusiasts for ghosts and the paranormal. When it started, there was no other event like it, so it became the first paranormal conference in the country. I spent the days leading up to the first event in 1987 talking to radio stations and newspapers, who couldn’t imagine why people would want to gather to talk about ghosts. It was so much fun that I tried it again the following year and I’ve been doing it every year since then. We only missed one year — in 2020 — and it’s been really great watching it continue to grow as the years have passed.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
My business really depends on the public’s interest in ghosts, the unusual, and the paranormal and that’s something that has been up and down throughout American history, believe it or not. Back in the 1840s, the public first became interested in Spiritualism — communicating with the dead — and it became a national fad with more than 3 million people calling themselves “Spiritualists” at a time when the U.S. population was only about 10 million people. That interest ebbed and flowed over the decades, peaking during the Civil War (yes, the Lincolns really did hold seances in the White House), after World War I, and then turned into other things in the 1920s.
Much of the popularity revolves around what’s happening in pop culture — books, movies, etc. When horror films and fictional ghost stories are hot, people tend to seek out true stories of the same type. I’ve seen this happen many times over the years, so I don’t expect that will change. The only thing you can do it ride the wave, so to speak.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://americanhauntings.net
- Instagram: troytaylorgram
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/troytayloroddities/
- Other: http://dinnerandspirits.com
