Stay Spooked participates in affiliate programs, which means we sometimes link to products that we may earn a small commission from if you buy them through our links. This page explains exactly how that works, what we promise about our recommendations, and what your trust gets you.

If you’ve ever read a product recommendation on Stay Spooked, you should know how it was made and what’s in it for us. That’s what this page is for.

The Short Version

  • We sometimes link to products we own and use on real investigations.
  • Some of those links are affiliate links.
  • If you click one and buy something, we may earn a small commission from the retailer.
  • It costs you nothing extra. The price is the same whether you use our link or not.
  • We only recommend gear we actually use ourselves.

Programs We Participate In

Amazon Associates

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

This is required disclosure language from Amazon. In plain English: when you click an Amazon link on Stay Spooked and then buy something within a certain window of time, Amazon pays us a small percentage of that sale. The commission percentage varies by product category and is generally in the low single digits.

Amazon Associates is currently the only affiliate program we participate in. If we join others in the future, we’ll list them here.

How to Spot an Affiliate Link on Our Site

Affiliate links on Stay Spooked are tagged with a rel="sponsored" attribute behind the scenes, which is the technical standard for disclosing them to search engines and accessibility tools. You can right-click and inspect any link if you want to verify.

In practice, most affiliate links on the site will be Amazon product links, and they’re easy to spot because the URL contains amazon.com. They’re typically placed next to a piece of gear we’ve reviewed or recommended, with a clear “Check current price on Amazon” style call to action.

Not every link on the site is an affiliate link. Internal links to other Stay Spooked posts, links to museums and hotel websites, and links to research sources are normal, non-monetized links.

What Our Recommendations Are Worth

Here’s where the trust part comes in. These are the rules we hold ourselves to:

  • We don’t accept payment to feature specific products. Nobody buys their way onto our gear list. If a piece of gear is on Stay Spooked, it’s because we bought it with our own money and use it on real trips.
  • We don’t recommend things we haven’t tested. Every product on this site has been through at least one full investigation in our hands before we wrote about it. Many have been through dozens.
  • We don’t change our opinion based on commission rates. A product with a 1% commission gets the same honest treatment as a product with a 10% commission. We pick gear based on whether it works, not on what it pays.
  • We tell you when something doesn’t work. If we test a piece of equipment and it’s a dud, we’ll say so, even if we’d earn a commission on it. We’d rather lose a referral than mislead you.
  • Editorial decisions are made independently. The writing, research, and field reporting on this site is not influenced by any affiliate relationships. We don’t write posts to sell products. We write posts about haunted places we’ve actually been, and sometimes mention the gear we used to investigate them.

If you ever feel like one of our reviews or recommendations is biased or unclear, tell us. Our credibility is the only thing we have, and we’d rather know if we’re losing it.

What Affiliate Revenue Helps Us Do

Stay Spooked is a small family operation. Every dollar that comes in through affiliate commissions goes back into the site in concrete ways:

  • Booking stays at haunted hotels we want to investigate
  • Buying and testing new investigation equipment
  • Travel costs to get to remote locations and ghost towns
  • Site hosting, domain, and the tools we use to research and publish
  • Keeping the site ad-light so the experience stays clean for readers

If you’ve ever clicked through one of our links and bought something, you’ve helped us pay for the next investigation. We appreciate it more than the small dollar amount might suggest.

FTC Disclosure

This page exists in part to comply with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines on endorsements and testimonials. Under those guidelines, sites that have a financial relationship with companies whose products they recommend are required to disclose that relationship clearly and conspicuously. This page is our disclosure.

Individual posts and pages on the site that contain affiliate links may also include a brief reminder of this relationship, and the Our Gear page (where most of our product links live) links back to this disclosure directly.

Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions about this disclosure, our recommendations, or any specific product link on the site, reach out through our contact page. We respond to every message.

Last updated: May 23, 2026