posted September 08, 2013 11:23 PM            

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We've heard of ghosts that harass the living. Now people are starting to harass the ghosts. Virtually every night on television, a paranormal investigator like Bagans can be seen trying to summon a ghost or "dark spirit." All across America, novice investigative teams are creeping through people's homes at night, trying to get rid of their paranormal pests.

The public's fascination with the paranormal, though, has created a problem. Ghost-hunting teams are chasing television gigs more than ghosts, some investigators say. The allure of fame, they say, has done what the forces of darkness could not do -- turn ghost hunters against one another.

The stars of some paranormal shows feud over whose show is real or fake. Local ghost-hunting teams refuse to work together because they see each other as business rivals. Some teams refuse to share spooky "evidence" captured on film because they plan to use it as a demo tape for a potential television pilot or a Hollywood movie like "The Conjuring," investigators say.

For years the paranormal community functioned like an extended family: People bonded over shared experiences with the supernatural and joined one another on ghost-hunting expeditions. Now, though, the feuding has turned so toxic that some ghost-hunting groups have mounted a "Paranormal Unity" campaign via social media to get rid of all the "paradrama."

"With all of these paranormal shows, we're asking people to unite and to quit being so selfish and childish and share evidence and experiences with one another," Bagans says. "People don't need to compete against one another."

That may be unavoidable, though, because the law of supply and demand is hitting the paranormal community. There's a ghost-hunting glut: too many teams and not enough hauntings to go around, says Bill Wilkens, who created paranormalsocieties.com, a national online database of ghost-hunting teams across the United States.

Wilkens says 4,413 ghost-hunting teams are registered on his site, and 200 more have asked to be added. His site also lists potential cases. Movie producers and casting directors frequently call him, asking for the creepiest stories and the most telegenic investigators. He had to hire an assistant to help him run the site.

Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of that paranormal pie.

"Sometimes when I post a case," he says, "I might have eight teams respond."

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