There are plenty of ways to spend an evening in St. Augustine, and with the spookiest month of the year here, what better way than to explore the city after dark. We decided a weekend in this historic city wouldn’t be complete without at least one ghost tour. Wandering through old graveyards listening to stories about ghosts, unexplained happenings and people who apparently never quite left St. Augustine sounded like fun, so we booked our open-air trolley tour.
St. Augustine is already the perfect setting for a ghost tour. With more than 460 years of history, centuries-old buildings, narrow bricked streets and historic cemeteries, the city seems almost designed for spooky stories. During the day, it is charming and bustling, but after the sun goes down, the atmosphere changes. The same streets that feel welcoming in the afternoon suddenly seem a little darker, a little quieter and, depending on how active your imagination is, a lot more haunted. As we gathered for our Ghosts and Graveyards Tour, I was ready to be entertained, but not really frightened, plus I had my teenage son with me, who is definitely hard to scare. We started off at the Old Town Trolley Depot in the House of Oddities, where we boarded with our enthusiastic guide. As the tour moved through the historic district, she brought the city’s past to life with stories of death, mysterious happenings and spirits that are said to linger around some of St. Augustine’s oldest locations. Whether you believe in ghosts or think every unexplained noise has a perfectly reasonable explanation, it is hard not to get caught up in the atmosphere. We started at one of the historic graveyards. Standing among centuries-old tombstones and crypts at night is a completely different experience than driving past them during the day. Your eyes play tricks on you with each tree branch swaying in the breeze. Add thunder off in the distance and the mood was set.
As the evening continued, our guide shared stories connected to some of the city’s most historic locations and explained how legends of the supernatural have become part of St. Augustine’s identity. Some stories are rooted in documented history, while others have been passed down over generations, gaining a little more mystery with every retelling. That combination of history and folklore is what makes a ghost tour here so entertaining. Our next stop was Potter’s Wax Museum, for a private nighttime walk through of the macabre Chamber of Horrors. With the lights dimmed and the wax figures seemingly watching our every move, it was definitely not your typical museum visit. Live actors and crowd participation added to the experience with just enough humor to keep us from jumping at every shadow. They told us stories about bodies found buried under the floorboards of what was once the old morgue, and I still don’t know if they are true or just another successful attempt at creeping the crowd out.
Our final stop on the tour, and probably the most haunted spot in the city, is the Old Jail. Built in 1891 under the direction of tycoon Henry Flagler, the jail operated until 1953 and was designed to not look like a place of punishment. The building was beautiful from the outside, a far cry from what lies within. As we entered the building, lights flickering, we were hit by a rush of ice-cold air, and with the on-site actor wearing prison garb and holding shoes said to belong to an executed prisoner, this was definitely the creepiest of the places we visited. We learned that the building housed prisoners in cramped cells under notoriously harsh conditions, and had gallows where eight men were executed, adding a grim chapter to its history. Today, the Old Jail is considered one of the country’s most haunted prisons, with many reports of unexplained noises, voices and other paranormal activity. We personally didn’t experience anything too crazy but standing in an old prison after dark knowing people there suffered definitely gave us the creeps.
As we rolled back into the trolley depot we both agreed that seeing St. Augustine from a different perspective was a lot of fun. We had walked the streets many times during the day, seen the historic architecture and enjoyed the restaurants and shops, but exploring the city at night while hearing the stories behind its oldest places is definitely something I recommend. For 90 minutes we got to suspend our disbelief of the paranormal, step into the city’s darker history and let our imagination take over. If you have a weekend to escape to the east coast during the month of October, I highly recommend signing up for a scare.