October in Houston brings along mildly less offensive weather, ragweed pollen nipping at your nose (and sinuses… and eyes…), and a desire to explore the spookier side of life. Ghost tours are a popular Halloween season activity, but as exciting as the tingly tales are, these nighttime excursions are only possible thanks to the efforts of the very much alive.

Amethyst has worked as a guide for Houston Ghost Tour for the past three years (Editor’s note: stage names are used throughout the piece). On days when she’s scheduled to lead one of the three offered tours through Hermann Park, Old Town Spring, or Tomball, she wakes up early to check how many attendees she can expect that evening. A recent tour had five sign-ups that blew up to 18 the morning of. Two more joined later in the day.

If 10 people are on deck, she needs to phone her employers for an assistant to help ensure that tour participants don’t wander off, get too close to water, or otherwise experience an emergency. Sometimes the assistant is her sister, Sammy, who has worked for Houston Ghost Tour for two years. If more than 30 people are scheduled by 6 p.m., the tour will then be split between two guides. These numbers and protocols can vary depending on the time of year, especially in the summer when few Houstonians want to leave the A/C.

The Hermann Park tour also requires knowing the Miller Outdoor Theatre schedule beforehand, because the performances can get loud enough to drown out her talks. If this is the case, she may need to go on vocal rest to ensure she can sufficiently project so all tour participants can hear her.

It’s a lot to keep track of, but Amethyst loves her work teaching people about the specters and ghosts that Houston’s paranormal pros have yet to bust. Her work gives her a chance to apply her considerable performing arts training.

“I have a theater and dance background. I went to high school for it, I went to college for it. I love doing theater stuff, it’s just hard to find a job where you can make money. [Houston Ghost Tour] was hiring… I kind of thought it was a joke,” she says. “And then I met the owners and I immediately loved them. They’re wonderful people.”

Lindy and Doc Strangeway, who founded Houston Ghost Tour in 2008, also work as historians, so even the most skeptical visitors will find that the tales woven in the tours have a fascinating, heavily researched basis in the city’s past. Amethyst took multiple tours with the company before committing to the guide position, and she knew from the first trip this is where she wanted to work.

“I love the history. I love meeting new people. And I get to use my theater background to entertain people, which is what I love to do,” she says.

All of Amethyst’s theater experience comes in handy when memorizing the ghost stories she needs to tell on tours, especially since new details emerge as the team digs up more historical context. She doesn’t have to follow a word-for-word script, but she does need to know the major bullet points and remember which ghosts haunt which spots, almost like hitting stage marks. It’s also necessary for a guide to be able to answer any questions that pop up along the way.

“You can put your own flair on [the script]. [The founders] encourage us to do our own research. Of course, we go to them to make sure Google isn’t lying,” Amethyst says. “When I get a script, I read through it a couple of times in my head. Then, I’ll take a paragraph and read it out loud so it’s kind of rough. When I get a feel for it, that’s when I put emphasis on different things. All tour guides have a different way they memorize.”

Despite this fluency in the material, she still reviews every story during the ride over to her tours. Failing to present information in the correct order could cause some confusion, as many of the ghost stories overlap with or build on top of one another, particularly in Hermann Park. Amethyst also makes sure to pack additional water and bug spray on especially humid nights, just in case the audience forgets.

Tours can last anywhere from one to two hours and cover over a half-mile of ground. The number of tours Amethyst conducts every week hinges largely on the time of year as well. In the summer, she may have to reschedule for weeks on end because so few people sign up. In the fall, she can do a full week’s worth of tours—or more, if private groups book their own events. As much as she loves her work, it’s still exhausting. On nights when Sammy accompanies her, the two have a smartphone signaling system to keep the energy and pacing up.

“In the back of the crowd, [Sammy] will shine a purple light. That means, ‘I can’t hear you back here. Project louder,’” Amethyst explains. “Or she’ll shine a red light, and that means, ‘You have 15 minutes left.’ That way I don’t keep people too long. It’s always great, especially when I have big groups. Sometimes you get people who want to stay in places a little longer. They want to take pictures.”

Every once in a while, a curious onlooker will join in and listen to spooky yarns about the Blue Lady of Miller Outdoor Theatre or Houston Zoo’s late lion tamer Hans Nagel. Amethyst lets them stay for a story or two as a teaser, but if they try to glom onto the tour any further, she or Sammy will kindly give them a business card and advise them to check out the website for ticketing information.

Once the tour wraps, Amethyst—and Sammy, if she’s in attendance—decompress in a few different ways. Hydration is always paramount, especially after talking for almost two hours straight. Especially overwhelming evenings call for dark chocolate, because its earthy flavor reminds her to be grounded, she says, or a soothing barefoot walk in the grass. Her playlist for the ride home depends largely on her mood. “Funky blues music” is her favorite, though.

Regardless of whether the city’s ghosts are real in a tangible, scientific sense, their stories and the guides who convey them are. Amethyst and her fellow Houston Ghost Tour guides gift us with aspects of our history that often go overlooked, though they intersect with persistent local issues like unsafe train infrastructure, police brutality, and extreme heat. All their efforts behind the scenes make it possible for us to appreciate yet another layer of Houston, and to better understand the past’s commonalities with the present.