Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Torok.
Hi Justin, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been a creative person, and looking back, it’s pretty amazing how everything I’ve done has connected and led me to where I am today.
I went to East Stroudsburg University for Digital Media Technologies, where I focused heavily on photography, videography, filmmaking, and graphic design. That’s also where Ghost Encounters really began. What started as a creative project combining my interest in the paranormal with filmmaking grew into something much bigger. One of our early projects even won first place at the Pocono Mountain Film Festival, which gave me a lot of motivation to keep building the brand.
After college, marketing almost fell into my lap. I quickly realized how much I loved being able to take my creative skills and use them to help businesses grow. Over the years, I worked in different marketing roles, learned the industry, and gained experience in everything from social media and advertising to branding, graphic design, photography, and video production.
Eventually, I knew I wanted to do things my own way, so I started Ghost Marketing Company. I wanted to build a marketing company that wasn’t just pushing out generic content. I wanted to actually get to know the businesses I worked with, tell their stories, create professional content, and become an extension of their team. Today, I’m incredibly proud of what Ghost Marketing Company has become and the reputation we’ve built throughout the Lehigh Valley.
One of the biggest honors was being named a Lehigh Valley Business Forty Under 40 honoree in 2023. Being recognized alongside so many other successful professionals and leaders in the region was an incredibly proud moment for me and a milestone that reminded me just how far I had come.
At the same time, I never stopped building Ghost Encounters. Over the years, I’ve become a well-known paranormal investigator in the Lehigh Valley, investigating haunted locations throughout the area and beyond and turning those investigations into our Ghost Encounters YouTube series. Our work has been featured in numerous news stories, I’ve appeared on 69 News/WFMZ, and we’ve been able to bring our investigations to some incredible local places and audiences. Most recently, Ghost Encounters was featured on the big screen at the historic Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theatre, which was a pretty surreal experience.
We’ve also grown the Ghost Encounters Podcast, where we take the paranormal seriously but still have a lot of fun with it. It has become another huge creative outlet for me and something I’m extremely proud of.
What I love most about my story is that none of these things really exist separately. Everything I learned in college, everything I learned working for other companies, and everything I’ve learned as an entrepreneur has helped me build both sides of my career. The photography, video, design, branding, social media, marketing, and storytelling skills I use for my clients are also the skills that helped turn Ghost Encounters into a recognizable brand.
I’ve basically been able to take everything I love doing and build a career around it. On one side, I get to help businesses tell their stories and grow through Ghost Marketing Company. On the other, I get to chase ghosts, create films, host a podcast, and entertain people through Ghost Encounters.
It’s definitely not the most conventional career path, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t always been a smooth road, but I think a lot of the challenges I’ve faced have helped shape the person and business owner I am today.
With Ghost Marketing Company, one of my biggest challenges early on was simply being young. I’ve always been extremely driven and naturally found myself in leadership positions, so I climbed pretty quickly in my career. In my 20s, I was sitting in business meetings and attending high-level networking events where, at times, I could tell people didn’t take me as seriously because of my age. I was often one of the youngest people in the room.
But that never stopped me. If anything, it motivated me. I knew what I was capable of, I knew the quality of work I could produce, and I knew how determined I was to succeed. Once people actually worked with me and saw that drive firsthand, their perception usually changed pretty quickly.
Along the way, I was also incredibly honored to be named a Lehigh Valley Business Forty Under 40 honoree in 2023, which was especially meaningful after spending so much of my 20s feeling like I had to prove that I belonged in the room.
Now, in my mid-30s, I can look back at those moments from a completely different perspective. I’m running a thriving marketing company, working with incredible businesses throughout the Lehigh Valley, and I’ve built a reputation and career that I’m extremely proud of. The same young guy who sometimes felt like he wasn’t being taken seriously at the table ended up building his own table.
Being part of the LGBTQ+ community has also presented challenges. The business world can still feel very straight-dominated, and there have certainly been moments where I’ve been conscious of being different from many of the people around me. I’ve been fortunate, though, to surround myself with the right people and build my business in the Lehigh Valley, where I’ve found an incredibly supportive community. I’ve learned that I don’t have to change who I am to be successful in business.
Ghost Encounters has presented a completely different set of challenges. Building credibility in the paranormal field is not easy, especially today. Social media has created a world where anyone with a phone can make a “ghost hunting” video, and unfortunately, some of that content has made paranormal investigation look like a joke or something done purely for clicks.
I’ve been investigating the paranormal for around 15 years, and I take what we do very seriously. We approach our investigations from a technical and evidence-based perspective. We aren’t walking into locations trying to convince ourselves or our viewers that every noise, shadow, or strange occurrence is a ghost. We investigate, question things, research, and try to find logical explanations before calling something paranormal.
Then, of course, there are the skeptics. It’s very easy for someone to hide behind a screen and leave harsh comments about something they don’t believe in. I learned a long time ago that you can’t let that get to you. I would rather let the work speak for itself.
Looking at where Ghost Encounters is today—the locations that trust us, the media coverage we’ve received, the audiences we’ve built, and the reputation we’ve developed—I think we’ve proven that we’re serious about what we do.
Whether it’s been marketing or the paranormal, I’ve learned the same lesson: you can’t control whether people underestimate you, doubt you, or criticize you. You can control how hard you work and what you build. That’s what I’ve always tried to focus on.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Ghost Marketing Company & Ghost Encounters?
I’m fortunate because I’ve been able to build two brands that are very different on the surface, but both allow me to do what I love creatively.
Ghost Marketing Company is a full-service marketing company based in Bethlehem and serving businesses throughout the Lehigh Valley and beyond. We specialize in social media management, professional photography and videography, FAA-licensed drone photography and videography, graphic design, branding, digital advertising, email marketing, websites, print materials, and more.
What really sets Ghost Marketing Company apart is that we aren’t just marketers sitting behind computers. We are content creators. Photography, videography, filmmaking, drone work, and design have been part of my background since long before I started the company. When we manage a client’s social media, for example, we’re not relying on generic stock photos or constantly throwing text-heavy graphics at people. We’re going out to their business, capturing professional photos, producing high-quality reels and videos, putting the drone in the air when the project calls for it, learning their industry, and creating content that actually represents who they are.
As an FAA Part 107 licensed drone pilot, I’m also able to offer professional aerial photography and videography for businesses, real estate, construction, events, and other projects. It has become another way we can give our clients content that stands out and show their business, property, or project from an entirely different perspective.
I also never wanted Ghost Marketing Company to feel like a huge, disconnected agency where a client becomes another account number. We become an extension of the businesses we work with. I get to know the owners, their employees, their personalities, their customers, and what makes their company different. Some of our clients have been with us for years, and I think those relationships say a lot about how we operate.
Our name also represents that philosophy. Ghost Marketing Company is about being the “unseen hands” behind a brand. Our clients are the stars. We’re behind the scenes creating, shooting, flying, editing, designing, posting, advertising, and helping make sure people notice them.
What I’m most proud of is the reputation we’ve built, particularly here in the Lehigh Valley. Much of our growth has come from relationships, referrals, and people seeing the work we’re producing for other local businesses. There’s something really rewarding about driving around the Lehigh Valley and seeing businesses we work with, signs or materials we’ve designed, or content we’ve created and knowing that we had a hand in helping those businesses grow.
Then there is Ghost Encounters, which has been a passion of mine for about 15 years and has grown into its own recognizable paranormal entertainment brand.
Ghost Encounters produces professional paranormal investigations of allegedly haunted locations throughout the Lehigh Valley and beyond. We investigate the history, spend time inside these locations using various investigative equipment and techniques, analyze what we capture, and turn those investigations into professionally produced episodes for our YouTube series.
What separates us from a lot of paranormal content today is our combination of serious investigation and professional production. We aren’t trying to manufacture a scary moment every few minutes for views. If something has a logical explanation, we want to find it. If we capture something we genuinely can’t explain, that’s when it becomes interesting. After doing this for around 15 years, maintaining our credibility is extremely important to me.
At the same time, we know how to entertain. I’m a filmmaker and marketer in addition to being a paranormal investigator, so I understand that telling the story of a location is just as important as investigating it. We want someone who doesn’t even necessarily believe in ghosts to be able to watch an episode and enjoy it.
Ghost Encounters has expanded beyond the investigation series into the Ghost Encounters Podcast, where we dive into paranormal topics, strange history, true crime, haunted locations, unexplained phenomena, and plenty of other weird subjects. The podcast lets us show even more of our personalities. We take the subjects seriously, but we definitely don’t take ourselves too seriously, and I think that balance is a big part of why people enjoy it.
I’m incredibly proud of how far Ghost Encounters has come, from something I started while I was in college to investigating some incredible locations, receiving numerous media features, appearing on local television, building an audience through our show and podcast, and even seeing our work shown on the big screen at Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theatre.
Ultimately, both brands are built around storytelling.
With Ghost Marketing Company, I’m helping businesses tell their stories and get noticed.
With Ghost Encounters, I’m telling the stories of historic and allegedly haunted places, and occasionally trying to get the people who are no longer with us to tell theirs.
Apparently, one way or another, I was destined to work with ghosts.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I would say drive has been the most important quality behind my success. I’ve always been someone who, when I want something, I go after it. I don’t like sitting around waiting for opportunities to happen. I would rather create them.
That drive has played a huge role in both Ghost Marketing Company and Ghost Encounters. With Ghost Marketing, I’m constantly pushing myself creatively, learning new things, improving what we offer, and finding ways to deliver better work for our clients. I genuinely care about the businesses I work with and want to see them succeed. Their success feels like my success.
The same drive has kept Ghost Encounters going and growing for about 15 years. Building a respected paranormal brand didn’t happen overnight. It took years of investigations, filming, editing, research, building relationships with locations, dealing with criticism, and continuing to put our work out there. I’m always thinking about what location we can investigate next, how we can make the next episode better, or how we can grow the podcast and the Ghost Encounters brand.
I also think not being afraid to be myself has been incredibly important. I’m creative, ambitious, a little unconventional, and I’ve never really wanted to follow the same path as everyone else. I’ve learned to embrace that instead of trying to fit into what someone thinks a business owner, marketer, filmmaker, or paranormal investigator is supposed to look like.
I think success comes from being willing to work hard, keep learning, take chances, and continue showing up even when people doubt you. That mindset has gotten me to where I am today, and I still feel like I’m just getting started.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ghostmarketingco.com & www.ghost-encounters.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ghostmarketingco & www.instagram.com/ghostencounterspa
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/GhostMarketingCo & www.facebook.com/GhostEncountersPA
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ghost-marketing-company
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@GhostMarketingCo & www.youtube.com/@GhostEncountersPA
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/7d4a1KfLGZHzvIajPDDToy
