Ghosts & Gravestones

A city that has been burying its dead since 1565, that has survived sieges, yellow fever epidemics, pirate raids, and fires, was always going to have ghost stories, and St. Augustine has built an entire evening economy on them. Dozens of ghost tours run through the historic district every night — walking tours, lantern tours, pub crawls, hearse rides, ghost-hunting experiences — and Ghosts & Gravestones, the after-dark sister of the Old Town Trolley, is the most polished of the big ones. The format is a theatrical trolley tour of about 80 minutes. A costumed host, part storyteller and part actor, collects you at the Ghost Tours Welcome Center on San Marco Avenue and steers the darkened trolley through the old town, telling the darker side of the city’s history as you pass the sites: the old cemeteries, the bayfront, the streets where epidemics and executions left their marks. The tour includes time off the trolley at reputedly haunted locations, where the storytelling gets close and theatrical. The tone is spooky rather than gory, with the history doing much of the work, and the hosts are good at reading a crowd that mixes skeptical teenagers, true believers, and couples on a date. It is the easiest way to sample the ghost-tour tradition without choosing among the dozens of operators.

Logistics: the tour lasts about an hour and twenty minutes and departs from the Ghost Tours Welcome Center at 27 San Marco Avenue, north of the City Gates; arrive about thirty minutes ahead of your departure to check in. Tickets are nonrefundable and cannot be rescheduled, so book once your evening is settled, and book early for weekends in October, when the whole city leans into the season and tours sell out. Departure times shift with sunset through the year, because the tours start after dark.

Who it suits: older children, teenagers, and adults. The operator positions the tour as a frightfully fun experience, and the content involves death, disease, and executions, so it is not aimed at small children; check the age guidance when booking and consider it carefully for anyone under about ten or with a sensitive temperament. Skeptics enjoy it as dark history and theater; believers enjoy it more.

How it compares with the alternatives: the walking lantern tours that gather on St. George Street are cheaper and more intimate but variable in quality, and the St. Augustine Lighthouse’s after-dark tours are the best pick for an evening on Anastasia Island. Ghosts & Gravestones is the one to pick for a polished, accessible, no-walking-required first ghost tour. Pair it with an early dinner downtown, and if you are visiting during Nights of Lights — from the weekend before Thanksgiving into mid-January — you will see the old town lit up on the way, which makes the tour’s darker stories all the more striking. Bring a light layer in winter, when evenings on an open trolley can be cool, and comfortable shoes for the stops on foot, which may include uneven ground. Photography is usually allowed, and plenty of guests hope to catch an orb in the frame. If you want a deeper dive afterward, many local bookshops stock collections of St. Augustine ghost stories, and the city’s own historic sites are the best way to separate the documented history from the legend. For a quieter, more intimate experience, some visitors book a walking lantern tour on a second evening and compare the two styles. Whatever you believe, the stories are rooted in real people and real events, and that is what gives the city’s ghost tradition its staying power. It is also one of the few evening activities in town that works in light rain, since most of the tour happens under the trolley roof.