LENOX, Mass.—Twelve-year-old Hannah Emerson Clapp came to the Mount, a mansion surrounded by nearly 50 acres of woods and manicured gardens, to see where novelist Edith Wharton wrote "Ethan Frome" and "The House of Mirth" and entertained Henry James.

The experience left her looking as if she'd seen a ghost—which was exactly what tour guide Anne Schuyler intended. Ms. Schuyler, attired in a long, dark hooded cloak, leads ghost tours, complete with spooky stories of hauntings, apparitions and shrieks in the night. There's even...