The spookiest night of the year is just around the corner, and while some will head to haunted houses and hayrides, those looking for a more authentically chilling experience may be heading for Cooperstown. In this week's edition of Your Hometown, our Sarah Blazonis tells us how a nationally-televised paranormal investigation sparked curiosity, and spurred business related to the village's haunted history.

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COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Cooperstown welcomes about 300,000 tourists every year, many of whom are coming to make a stop here at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But a growing number of those visitors are coming to explore a more non-traditional aspect of the village's past.

Strange lights in the ballroom, the sounds of children playing in hallways in the middle of the night when no children are staying in the hotel, and ghostly apparitions that disappear when approached.

Not your typical hotel guest complaints, but then, the Otesaga Resort Hotel isn't your typical hotel.

"I think now more and more people nationwide are becoming aware that both the hotel and the village have kind of an interesting paranormal history as well," said Bruce Markusen, concierge at the Otesaga.

It's a history Markusen knows well.

Even before the 102 year old Otesaga was featured on an episode of SyFy's "Ghost Hunters" last summer, Markusen was inspired to delve into Cooperstown's haunted history by one of the country's most famous ghost towns.

"My wife and I and her parents had gone on a trip to Gettysburg, and we were taking a ghost tour there because the ghost industry is huge in Gettysburg. While were on the tour, it just popped into my head: 'Why don't I try something like this in Cooperstown?'" said Markusen.

So in 2004, Markusen started giving walking tours past locations rumored to be haunted, including the Pomeroy House and Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery. That foundation, along with the "Ghost Hunters" episodes, have led the Chamber of Commerce to see an increase in the amount of visitors interested in the reported haunts.

"There's been the special events up at the Otesaga, there was a tour, I believe, an investigatory type of tour, over at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Hyde Hall," said Susan O'Handley with the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce.

In the past year alone, the Otesaga's Paranormal Weekends have attracted more than 200 visitors who inevitably branch out to the village's other attractions. Tour guides said it's usually not long after visitors begin their journey into Cooperstown's paranormal present that they begin to learn more about its past.

"They learn about James Fenimore Cooper. This was really the first great American author, and while he wasn't born here, he lived a good part of his life here, he wrote many of his books here," said Markusen.

And that often leads them to visit sites like the Fenimore Art Museum and Farmer's Museum.

"It's another diversification of our audience," said O'Handley. "The more diversity we can bring into Cooperstown, the better off we all are."

So, while it's still too early to tell if the ghost industry is going to be big in Cooperstown, officials at different attractions agree: they don't care what brings tourists in, and they're more than happy to share the wealth.

If you'd like to check out haunted Cooperstown for yourself, you still have time. For more information on the village's candlelight ghost tours, visit www.cooperstownghost.com.