OCEAN CITY, N.J. -- A woman known only as Emily doesn't have a room at the Flanders Hotel in Ocean City. But workers say she spends a lot of time on the premises anyway.

When confronted, she runs away and disappears into a dark hallway. Later, children of guests say they see the nice lady in another hallway and she tells them secrets.

No one has ever asked Emily to leave. That's because Emily, people in this town say, is a ghost, one of many who make this summer resort town their home.

Real ghosts?

"They're here," says Eileen Reeser, who guides tours to the town's ghost spots. "We have eyewitness accounts and legends to prove it."

In a town where alcohol is banned and authorities are strict about the "pooper scooper" ordinance for dog owners, Ocean City is amazingly tolerant of its least visible residents. So tolerant, it appears, even the Ocean County Chamber of Commerce was in high spirits when Reeser's "Ghost Tour" opened in May.

Now Ocean City residents and visitors can learn about all the town's legends by candlelight walking excursions through the town's streets of Victorian homes. An average nightly tour can pull around 25 phantom seekers, Reeser says.

The tours are modeled after similar ones in Lancaster County, Pa., and Philadelphia.

According to shore lore, phantoms have been seen near the site of the Sindia, a four-masted, 329-foot, steel-hulled barque that shipwrecked near the town 100 years ago.

Owners of the Restless Spirit Music Shop, located where a dance hall burned, claim they hear dance steps from above them even though here is no floor above the shop.

Doors and windows of city hall open and shut wildly some late evenings. Residents believe the culprit is a mayor who died in office years ago.

"People see the ghosts when their guards are down, when they least expect it," Reeser says. "Most ghosts aren't trying to make contact with anyone, even reporters."

On a recent tour, visitors followed cape-wearing tour guide Kevin Wilson around the town. When he placed his lantern on the ground, he would introduce a new site and spin a new tale.

At the Ocean City Tabernacle, Wilson told the story of the town's founding father, Simon Lake.

Lake bought the island in 1879 in order to create a Christian community. He died two years later after accidentally amputating his foot while trimming bushes. When the debate to lift the town's alcohol ban comes up, Wilson said, Lake's ghost can be seen shaking bushes at a nearby park.

"It is believed his ghost is trying to keep the town on its original mission," Wilson said.

At the Flander's Hotel, Wilson retold Emily's story, but with a new twist. It was recently learned a painting of a woman on the second floor was called "Emily." The woman in the painting was a girlfriend of a World War I soldier who never returned from battle.

But not everyone in this town believes the legends. During a recent tour, a number of teenagers drove by and shouted the tales were lies. Some pedestrians snickered as they passed the spellbound crowd.

That didn't stop Rena Fenner, 22, of McHenry, Ill., from remaining curious about the dead. She found the ghost stories "fascinating and romantic."

"You can't help but wonder," Fenner says.

Her fiance, Scott Algayer, of Temple, Ariz., agrees. That's why he brought her on the ghost tour a day after he proposed.

They planned to stay the night at the Flanders Hotel and looking for Emily.

"I'm here because there's so much history," says Bill Stewart, 35, of State College, Pa., as he pushed his sleeping 2-year-old son in a stroller and waited for the next tour. "I brought a camera just in case."

A minute later, wind knocked down a paper flier posted on a street pole. Stewart's son immediately woke up and wanted to know if his father saw anything.