“I was the creepy girl in school,” Tanya Vandesteeg says. “I guess I still am, but we moved a lot when I was a child. And to make friends with everybody in my new school, I would always ask them things like, ‘Oh, what’s the local legend in your town?’ I was always really wanting to debunk it.”
Despite this desire to debunk, Vandesteeg has never doubted the existence of the paranormal. “I was really into it. I would see portals in my room when I was a small child — like these really spinning weird things. And I would hear voices and have visions.”
Once at college, her paranormal proclivities led her to ghost hunting, a hobby that she continued as she moved from place to place until she landed here in Memphis, where she joined her first “official paranormal group.” That’s also where she met fellow paranormal investigator Stephen Guenther. “We decided to break off that group and form our own group,” Vandesteeg says.
Since then, the Historical Haunts team has performed and continues to perform a number of paranormal investigations, and eventually the two founders branched out into offering haunted tours, where guests can learn about Memphis’ ghostly history and try their own hand at ghost hunting. And, yes, there will be paranormal activity on these tours, Vandesteeg assures.“We don’t fake anything.”
In fact, whether you see a ghost or not depends on your intentions and energy. “If you’re all closed off and negative about it you’re not going to be vibrating on the same level as the spirits,” she says. “We always say if you’re loving and caring and grateful, you’re going to vibrate on that level.” With that in mind, the group does not tolerate provoking spirits.
Historical Haunts Ghost Tours’ various tours — including the Haunted Memphis Bus Tour, Haunted Pub Crawl, and Walking Ghost Hunt — run weekly. For more information or to buy tickets, visit historicalhauntsmemphis.com.
Historical Haunts Ghost Tours, historicalhauntsmemphis.com.