"During my research on ghost tours in the South that included slavery as a theme, I found that many of these tours had characteristics in common, such as the romanticization of relationships between enslavers and the enslaved, the diminishment of the sexual abuse that enslaved Black women endured, a gratuitous focus on violence, an exoticization of Black faith traditions, and a demonization of white women. I would say that if tourists hear narratives about slavery that sound too easy-going to be true or too grotesque to be respectful of people’s lived experience, they are probably listening to exaggerated or fabricated narratives crafted to increase revenue rather than to educate the public."