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Every powerful light casts a shadow. Las Vegas, a city almost entirely composed of light, casts more shadows than most. And Danielle Nicole, a paranormal researcher with nearly 20 years experience, has committed to moving through those shadows, hunting for ghosts in our Valley’s oldest and sometimes abandoned spaces. Her local startup tour company, Vegas Afterlife (vegasafterlife.com), leads walking ghost tours on Fremont Street and full-on, after-dark paranormal investigations at Primm’s abandoned Whiskey Pete’s casino, Jean’s 112-year-old Pioneer Saloon and Downtown’s Monster Quest Escape Rooms.
Guests on Vegas Afterlife tours are invited to use to the company’s equipment—including digital recorders, electromagnetic frequency detectors, thermal imaging cameras, laser grids, REM-POD field detection devices, the P-SB7 Spirit Box (“It flips through radio stations, and the spirits can communicate through the radio waves. It’s really cool,” Nicole says) and other specialized gadgets—to discover presences hidden in the darkness, while lead investigator Nicole guides the searchers and shares historical context relevant to the hunt.
Nicole, a relative newcomer to the Valley from Florida, recently spoke with the Weekly about her singular profession, and how she became interested in a shadowed life.
How did you get interested in paranormal investigation?
I grew up in a house in Tampa that was extremely haunted. I lived there for 10 years, and one night when I was about eight, I was having a sleepover with two friends. My friend looked into the hallway and saw a black shadow figure of a man, like a silhouette. And she was like, “Who is that?” I said, “That’s not my dad. I don’t have any siblings.” I still don’t know what that was, but there was a spirit standing there looking at us. I can still see it in my mind; I can see it exactly.
When I was about 12, we moved to Pennsylvania. I was so interested in the paranormal. My parents owned a local magazine. I had my own little section in their magazine called The Paranormal Corner, where I would write articles every month about different types of orbs, what an EVP is, things like that. … One month, my parents got a phone call from a local paranormal group, asking if I wanted to come join a paranormal investigation at this place called Old Bedford Village. My parents ended up coming on this investigation with me. We used paranormal equipment. It was the first time I ever had interacted on an investigation.
I’m familiar with orbs; they’re little floating spheres captured by cameras. I saw a few on an investigation in Seattle. But what’s an EVP?
Electronic Voice Phenomena. Spirits can communicate through an audio recorder or through a Spirit Box. If you replay a clip of audio from a recorder, sometimes you can hear answers.
Let’s talk about Whiskey Pete’s, which has been closed since December 2024. What will we find there?
Once, the spirits [there] were quiet; they were shy. Nobody’s ever tried to really communicate with them before. There’s a lot of activity in that building. You can feel it. I think as more people start going in there and communicating, and more equipment is brought in, they’re going to start coming out.
They’re going to start touching; they’re going to start testing themselves.
Touching?
Not everybody can feel it. I just recently discovered that I have psychic medium abilities. I’ve always felt when they’re around, but not to the extent that I do now. … I can feel tingling where my third eye would be. It’s a very strong tingle-pulse feeling. I’m learning how to understand that, how to work with that and also how to protect myself through that. It’s just energy—getting nauseous, feeling lightheaded or just being affected by whatever energy is in that vicinity.
It just depends on the location, depends on the history, depends on whatever happened there. That’s why I enjoy doing investigations so much, because you never know what you’re going to experience. It’s different every single time. I mean, one time, you may get nothing. Another time, you may get all kinds of stuff. You may get scratched; you may get pushed…
Whoa, hold up. Have you been scratched?
Yeah, all the time. Oh my God. I get excited when I get scratched, because that’s how I know that they’re around.
Is it aggressive?
No, no. I don’t think I’ve really had any sort of aggressive, really physical scratches. Most of the time I get scratched, it’s on the back of my shoulder blade, usually three scratch marks. [She holds up three of her pointed, immaculate nails.]
I would jump straight to the moon.
[Laughs.] Yeah. But I get excited when I get scratched. I get excited when stuff is pulled out of my hand. I don’t know why, but the darkness excites me.
English (US) ·