America's Spookiest Summer Ghost Tours

America's Spookiest Summer Ghost Tours

Somewhere around 9:30 on a July night, in a house that was standing before your state had a highway system, someone in the group asks, "did anyone else feel that?" The guide doesn't answer right away. That pause is basically the whole business model. Ghost tours peak on paper in October, but summer is when they're actually good: the humidity presses in like a hand on your shoulder, real dusk doesn't arrive until almost nine, and towns that spend the fall drowning in costume tourists are, in July, still mostly just themselves. Here are five that earn the goosebumps honestly, with the details that actually matter for planning one.

---

Savannah, Georgia: The Sorrel-Weed House and What's Left of Colonial Park

The Sorrel-Weed House, at 6 West Harris Street, runs its Ghosts of Sorrel Weed tour nightly: 75 minutes, $30 for anyone ten and up, led by a guide the house bills as both storyteller and paranormal investigator (make of that combination what you will). It's one of the few Savannah stops where a rumored affair, a wife's fatal fall, and a 2005 cable ghost-hunting special all get mentioned in the same ninety minutes. Most groups drift toward Colonial Park Cemetery afterward, though you'll only see it through the fence, the gates lock at 8 p.m., well before most evening tours even start, so guides tell its stories from the sidewalk instead of inside it.

Best local stop: Get your ice cream at Leopold's before the tour, not after. By the time you're out, most of Broughton Street has already gone dark.

---

New Orleans, Louisiana: A Cemetery You Can't Enter Alone

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 stopped allowing solo visitors years ago. The Archdiocese now requires a licensed guide for anyone who wants in, no exceptions, which has turned the after-dark cemetery walk into its own small industry. Expect to pay around $49 for an evening tour covering roughly a mile of ground in about ninety minutes, weaving between the aboveground tombs the city built because its water table sits too high for anything else. Marie Laveau's tomb, still marked with X's and coins left by visitors chasing a wish, is reportedly the second-most-visited grave in the country, behind only Elvis's. From there most tours walk to the Lalaurie Mansion on Royal Street, no ticket required, just the nerve to stand outside it after midnight.

Worth knowing: Skip anything marketed as a Bourbon Street ghost tour if you want quiet. The Garden District walks draw a fraction of the crowd, and the guides actually lower their voices.

---

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: An Attic With Over 100 Bullet Holes

Summer here lines up with the anniversary of the 1863 battle, and the Farnsworth House Inn, whose facade still carries what the inn counts as more than a hundred Confederate sharpshooter bullet holes, runs its Shadow Shooters and Phantom Regiments tour most nights: ninety minutes, $15, all ages welcome, and yes, you do walk through the actual attic where a sniper is said to have fired on Union officers below. Want more than a walk-through? The inn also runs a two-hour Mini Paranormal Night for $60 with real ghost-hunting equipment, though that one's 16-and-up only. Either way, the battlefield does the rest of the work once the sun drops behind the ridge and the boulders at Devil's Den stop looking like boulders.

Best local stop: The cellar tour holds a steady 58 degrees year-round, a genuinely welcome break if you've spent the day walking the battlefield in July heat.

---

St. Augustine, Florida: A Lighthouse That Only Opens at Night Once a Week

The St. Augustine Lighthouse runs its Dark of the Moon tour on a tight summer schedule: 8:30 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday in June and July (they skip July 4th), and it's the only regular tour that lets you onto the grounds after dark at all. Ninety minutes, $29.95 for anyone over 12, $24.95 for kids seven to twelve, plus a 44-inch height minimum since you actually climb the tower, glow stick in hand, while guides work through the keepers' deaths and the odder things reported in the keeper's house below. Mention it in a St. Augustine bar afterward and someone will offer their own version of the same story, slightly different every time, in a city old enough that the story's had four centuries to grow legs.

Worth planning around: Book at least a week out in summer. These sell out, especially on weekends, when the line for the tower forms before the gates even open.

---

Salem, Massachusetts: The Quiet Season

Every October, Salem turns into something closer to a theme park than a town, so summer is when you actually get to hear the 1692 story told at a normal pace. The Old Burying Point on Charter Street is free to walk anytime it's open, no ticket needed, though most visitors pair it with a guided evening walk (Burying Point Productions runs several, generally $25 to $30) that also passes the Witch House on Essex Street. Gallows Hill isn't on every company's route, so ask. Nineteen people were hanged there in 1692, and not every guide bothers to mention it.

One more thing: Go in July if you can manage it. The same stories land differently without three thousand costumed strangers standing behind you.

---

None of this is really about being scared, not for more than the ten seconds after a guide stops talking. What sticks afterward is quieter: the smell of magnolia or harbor salt, a lighthouse beam sweeping over dark water, a cellar that stays 58 degrees no matter the month. Summer ghost tours are mostly just an excuse to stand still in an old place after dark and actually listen to it. That's worth the price of admission whether or not anything answers back.