For the past year and a half, the murder historians at the 1947 Project have been bringing the details of death and mayhem from Los Angeles' rich past into the present, with crime-scene photos, newspaper clippings and a crime-a-day featuring eerie headlines from 1947.

Nathan Marsak and Kim Cooper like to share their creepy.

"We'd been blogging for about nine months, and the anniversary of the Black Dahlia murder was coming," said 1947 Project founder Kim Cooper, who co-produces the blog with Nathan Marsak. "I was talking to Nathan and said, 'It might be fun to meet some of these people who are reading the blog. Maybe we should do a tour?' I just got a city map out and started putting pins in it. We rented a bus and learned as we went. It's been really fun."

Since then, they have hosted "Pasadena Confidential," "Nightmares of Bunker Hill," and "The Real Black Dahlia" tours. CourtTVnews.com recently hitched a ride on the inaugural "Halloween Horrors" tour, a five-hour bus ride through Los Angeles' grittiest historic crime scenes and spook spots.

The tour highlights 47 locales — everything from the Hollywood apartment where Bela Lugosi died to a Sapphic love triangle that ended in a trick-or-treat slaying.

"We looked for things that were really gross and weird and Halloween-themed," Cooper said. "And we're not letting kids ride this bus."

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No, but there is a clown.

Cooper invited actor Michael Perrick to bring one of his irreverent personas on the tour, and "Crimebo" the crime clown was born. Crimebo ogles the ladies, reads aloud from newspaper accounts of his favorite crimes, and rewards murder trivia buffs with mutilated Barbie dolls and vinyl wallpaper samples.

"It's all about putting the fun back in funeral," Perrick says.

Your crime tour guides:

Kim Cooper, 39

Cooper is the publisher of "Scram," a journal of unpopular culture, and the author of "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth," and "Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed."

She co-organizes the Bubblegum Achievement Awards, which recognize top figures in the pantheon of "bubblegum" music, a genre geared at younger audiences, with candy-themed lyrics and sexual context — think "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies.

"Most of what I do is celebrating the underdog," Cooper says.

She began researching 1947 L.A. for a true crime book and got sucked in. "About two months into it, I knew I was really onto something. It wasn't just the Black Dahlia and Bugsy Siegel killings, but the whole history of Los Angeles and why it came to be, the development of the suburbs and freeways and how women suddenly came into power during the war and had the ability to work and support themselves ... I feel like I know Los Angeles pretty well, but then there was this whole shadow city."

Nathan Marsak

Marsak, the author of "Los Angeles Neon," is developing a blog on Los Angeles then and now. He also volunteers for the Los Angeles Conservancy and is restoring his two historical homes — one in L.A.'s Highland Park and the other in New Orleans. He is a director at a New Orleans-based oil, gas and land management company. "And that's what pays the bills," he says.

As co-host of the 1947 Project crime bus tours, Marsak, 39, sees his twin spirit in Julie McCoy of "The Love Boat."

"I'm your cruise director/researcher/passionate-if-insane collector of L.A. crap — maps and postcards and stuff like that," Marsak says.

Michael Perrick, aka Crimebo

Perrick, 38, a stage, commercial and film actor, is currently shooting a documentary about property rights on California's coast. Clowning allows him to "be the actor that I want to be and play the character the way I want to play it," Perrick said. Ten years ago, Perrick thumbed his nose at clown tradition.

Michael Perrick, aka Crimebo, is not liked by normal clowns.

"Everybody hires clowns and they're these little sanitized people who pull out magic toys and look sad. They're supposed to be fun, but they look creepy," Perrick said. "I thought: Why not be creepy up front?"

He began performing as "Fu--o the clown," and the persona was an instant success, voted Best Rentable Clown by L.A Weekly, and the star of a cable TV show. But for a crime bus tour? "He was too antagonistic, so I created Crimebo, which has been even more of a success than Fu--o. The first week, before I did any performances as Crimebo, I was doing radio interviews all over the world."

In the clown world, though, he's an outsider. "Regular clowns despise me," he says.