Twenty Years
Twenty years.
It’s strange how a number can feel both impossibly large and impossibly small at the same time. Twenty years feels like a lifetime—and also like something that slipped by while no one was looking.
In January of 2006, my husband’s friend Mike and I met at the Providence Public Library. We sat at a table, surrounded by books and quiet ambition, sketching out what felt like a wildly unrealistic idea. We had talked about it first through instant messages, after a brief conversation at a New Year’s Eve party.
“We should start a ghost tour,” we said.
At the time, I didn’t really know Mike. He played in bands that played with bands my husband—then my boyfriend—was in. I showed up to shows. He showed up to shows. That was the extent of our shared world.
But somehow, two recently graduated college kids, both feeling a little lost and deeply uninspired by their day jobs, realized we shared something important. We both loved history. We both loved ghost hunting. And we both felt there had to be something more meaningful we could build.
So we started planning.
At first, we didn’t even know where to begin. How do you find ghost stories? How do you separate genuine experiences from exaggeration or delusion? How do you back any of it up with real history and documentation?
Those early questions shaped everything that followed.
For nearly my entire adult life, I’ve been falling in love with the spirits of Providence again and again and again.
Over the last two decades, I’ve watched this city change in countless ways. The park where I begin our flagship tour transformed from a chronically littered, patchy stretch of grass into a truly beautiful and well-loved space. Homeowners have come and gone. Businesses have opened, closed, and reopened under new names—sometimes multiple times over.
The tour itself has changed too. What began as a partnership eventually became something I carried on alone. Providence Ghost Tours went from having two owners to one: me.
But not everything changes.
Some things linger.
The spirits remain.
Some of these energies have been here for centuries, long before any of us arrived. Over the past twenty years, I’ve had the rare privilege of observing them, listening to them, and learning how they interact with the living world.
I’ve listened through spirit boxes and EVP recorders. I’ve watched EMF and REM pods light up in response to unseen presence. I’ve seen dowsing rods react with unmistakable intention. Spirits have revealed themselves through strange and unexplainable photography. They’ve startled guests, made themselves known in dramatic ways, and occasionally required a firm reminder about personal boundaries.
You know which ghost you are. Manners, sir.
There have been moments—honest moments—when I wondered if it was time to let go.
Small business ownership has a way of entwining itself with your entire life. Life keeps happening while you hold on. There were times I worried the tour was taking too much from me, that it was pulling me away from living instead of enhancing it.
The world hasn’t always made it easy. A recession. A pandemic. Community tragedies that shook us deeply. I asked myself more than once: does the world really need a walking tour right now?
Every time that doubt surfaced, a quieter voice answered back.
This work provides something meaningful. It gives people a pause from their routines. It offers a chance to step outside the present moment and pass briefly through a portal of time—into something ancient, something mysterious, something bigger than ourselves.
These tours create community. They create connections. They spark curiosity.
On many dark nights, they have been my light.
To everyone who has walked with me, listened, believed, questioned, supported, and shared these stories—thank you. You made these twenty years possible.
May the next twenty be just as full of wonder, connection, and light in the darkness.
