What happens when a con artist who performs fake exorcists find themselves in the presence of a real ghost?

So this might sound like a bad romance novel, but I've had this idea running around about a con artist (more of a group) end up at a circus where things that can't be explained are happening. At first, they are there to figure out how these weird things are occurring, seeing what kind of tricks they can steal for their next con. Soon, they find out that's it's not a ruse, but rather a real live (well dead) ghost/demon. I'm thinking this non-mortal is stuck by some curse/trap by someone else in the circus. The con artist then sets out to help free them without being killed or thrown out. It's all real rough in my mind, but I'm happy to talk through some of my ideas with you if you choose this plot!

This is a loose idea based on The Twilight Zone’s episode “It’s A Good Life”. While you don’t necessarily have to have seen it, I do highly recommend it just because!

(Shamelessly taken from Wikipedia’s plot summary) “Six-year-old Anthony Fremont looks like any other little boy but looks can be deceiving: he is a monster, a mutant with godlike mental powers, including mind reading. Years before, he isolated his town of Peaksville, Ohio. Everybody is under his rule, even his parents. Anthony controls what goes on in the grocery store (Tomato Soup, Ham, etc.); he has also banned soap from the town for a year. He has blocked TV signals, caused cars to not work, and, due to his controlling everything, he does not attend school.

The children and adults, including his own parents, tiptoe nervously around him, constantly telling him how everything he does is "good," since displeasing him can get them wished away into a mystical "cornfield," an unknown place, from which there is no return. At one point, a dog is heard barking angrily. Anthony thinks the dog is "bad" and doesn't "like [him] at all," and wishes it into the cornfield. His father and mother are horrified, but they dare not show it.”

Our characters are some of the few remaining members of town, doing their best to live by Anthony’s ever-changing rules. Keeping him happy is the only way to survive. We might also want to expand on this idea so that either Anthony is older or it’s an entire family holding the town hostage. Someone can only live like this for so long before they snap. And when you’ve been bent as far as the townspeople of Peaksville have, snapping comes easily.

This was an old RP I had going but never got more than a handful of posts into. I still have my old introductory post if anyone is interested. The main idea is an alternative history/ Woldenstein-esq (secret operations, occult experiments) WWII plot. In a small, occupied French town, a local girl has joined the secret Resistance against the German occupants. The Germans have recently arrived and started forcibly taking civilians for some kind of horrible experiment, alarming Character B. (Some have played this as an American bomber pilot, others as German occupants, but I'm down for whatever!)

This was an old RP I had going but never got more than a handful of posts into. I still have my old introductory post if anyone is interested. The main idea is an alternative history/ Woldenstein-esq (secret operations, occult experiments) WWII plot. In a small, occupied French town, a local girl has joined the secret Resistance against the German occupants. The Germans have recently arrived and started forcibly taking civilians for some kind of horrible experiment, alarming Character B. (Some have played this as an American bomber pilot, others as German occupants, but I'm down for whatever!)

This is a rough idea set in a post-apocalyptic magic-tech fantasy world. Think like magical warfare that has splintered and crippled the natural order of things so there are these magic-scars around the world that can be things like ridges of floating rocks with monsters/animals or general weird happenings. Plants that are alive or leviathan like creatures, that kind of thing. While the people are not necessarily magic wielders, magical objects could be used in weapons or other uses like water filtration, etc. Civilization has splintered into various factions fighting over resources. We could have characters that might start out with trying to go after the same magical object that has appeared in no-mans land or enemy territory and go from there.