Paranormal investigators check for ghosts in new ad campaign from real estate startup Bungalo

Real estate startup Bungalo is checking for ghosts at its properties. The home-buying platform hired real-life paranormal investigators to search its houses for the supernatural in a new Halloween-timed marketing stunt launching today.

"This is our first real campaign that takes a step into a bit more of a creative territory," says Josh Stolz, creative director at Bungalo. "We wanted to show both aspects: the regular inspection combined with the paranormal inspection."

Bungalo's paranormal investigators will keep an eye out for voices, orbs, apparitions, unexplained movement and "feelings of being watched" in its houses in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dallas, Texas, and Tampa, Florida. The company is posting the results for each home on its website and promoting the effort with a behind-the-scenes video starring Becky Vickers, a paranormal investigator who's previously made TV appearances on the Travel Channel's "Ghost Stories" and "Ghost Adventures."

In the full two-and-a-half minute promotional video, Vickers discusses the different detection instruments she uses while Bungalo field coordinator Dustin Johnson performs a standard home inspection. "I have a very scientific way of investigating the paranormal," Vickers says. "Do I believe in the whole ghost thing? No," Johnson says.

Bungalo worked with Side Label Productions on the video, spending approximately $25,000 to produce four cuts for its website and social. The company is also pushing the paranormal inspections through in-app notifications. Most of the campaign's total budget, which Stolz declined to disclose, will go to social promotions on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, running from now until the end of the month.

Many of the paranormal inspectors volunteered their services for free, keeping the campaign's overall costs low, Stolz says. "Most of them actually do this as a freelance hobby because they have so much passion for what they do. All the people who did the investigations take what they do very, very seriously. It's very much a science to them."