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Our Tours

Tours are available daily year-around from the afternoon to late at night. Some are offered throughout the day based on season.

8 pm
St. Louis Ghosts: Gateway Ghouls and Hauntings

$25

What will I see on the St Louis Ghosts tour?

We have hand-picked the best 8 or 12 stories from spooky real-life locations that will let you in on the secrets of the Gateway City that rarely see the light of day. Our deeply researched histories will unveil sordid tales of gruesome murders and unexplained events from the turbulent past of the Lou’.

If you want to be entertained, informed and a little bit frightened this is the St Louis activity for you. From the surprising history of the 30’ tall burial mounds that dotted the city to modern-day tragic accidents; St Louis has some of the best ghost stories around.

Like the haunted underground drinking dens built on top of an earlier layer of Indian caves. The disease-infested shoreline, where corpses from the Spanish Flu epidemic were flung into ditches. Will you be able to hear the screams of the charred ghosts of victims of the Great Fire of 1849?

Our St Louis Ghosts tour has received great reviews, even from locals, who say they always learn new things about their home city on our tours.

Our passionate guides are locals St Louisans who love the city and its dark, twisted past. The horrid stories of grim deaths and the spirits that remain are plucked straight from the history books. We only share well-researched accounts of unexplained phenomena with our delighted guests.

The ghosts of St Louis appear in many forms; on our terrifying tour, you will discover every way the past haunts the present in this shadowy city by the dark Mississippi.

St Louis Ghosts is the only tour that entertains you with scary stories and sneaks in the spectacular history of Saint Lou without becoming a boring lecture! You will find being in the actual locations of these hauntings and hearing the gripping histories told in gory detail will cement these stories in your mind forever. Available for instant recall to entertain family and friends forever!

St Louis has a fascinating history of firsts, the first kindergarten, the first freeway, the first purpose-built gas station and the first Olympic Games in America. This spirit of innovation has created a driving force that has thrown countless passionate innovators into the gutter of life. They are sad stories, but they make for excellent ghosts!

We can’t wait to share some of the creepy history and horrifying haunts of Saint Louis with you. Our hour-long walking tour on the just-dark streets of St Louis will take you deep into the sordid past of this groundbreaking city.

Many guests on our tours and our fantastic tour guides have experienced things for which they have no reasonable explanation. We can’t promise you will experience anything specific, but we will show you where these strange things happened.

St Louis Ghosts will take you on an hour or 90-minute walk around some of the fascinating stories of this trailblazing city that values progress at all costs. One of the other notable world firsts for St Louis was the first successful parachute jump at Jefferson Barracks on March 1, 1912. The St Louis Gateway Arch was also the site of a much less successful one, years later.

Ghosts of the Gateway Arch

Even this spectacular steel monument has its ghosts. The monument celebrates the westward progress of the American nation; but it casts a long shadow over the whole downtown area. Visited by millions every year, it is still the tallest accessible structure in Missouri.

No one died during the construction, but years after it opened to the public a daredevil parachutist jumped from an airplane high above the arch and somehow managed to land on top of the structure. His widow later stated the plan had been to jettison the main chute after he landed atop the arch and use the reserve to jump from the top of the arch to the ground. Tragically after landing on the narrow arch, he was blown from his feet and dragged by his main parachute down the North leg. His reserve chute failed to open and his wife, looking from below, saw him plummet to the earth and his death.

The jumper’s ghost has been seen many times, wandering dazed and confused at the base of the arch, always slipping from view if anyone approaches.

Join the St Louis Ghosts haunted walking tour to experience first-hand the tales of tragedy and human misfortune that have lined the streets of St Louis with the finest ghost stories west of the Mississippi.

The nine ghosts of Lemp mansion

The site of the Gateway Arch was formerly the site of the first brewery in St Louis. John Coons opened it in 1809. Brewing has been an important industry in St Louis for hundreds of years.

One of the brewers that went under during prohibition was the William J. Lemp Brewing Company, which started in 1840. It was the first to introduce lager to St Louis. They used the natural caves under the city to age the beer in the always cool climate. At its peak, the brewery spanned five city blocks. William Lemp’s fortune grew, and a vast mansion was built for the growing family just south of Downtown. However, in 1901 things started going wrong. William’s sickly son Frederick died age 21. His daughter, who had married into the Pabst brewing family, brought the devastating news that his good friend Frederick Pabst had also died. William went into a spiral and committed suicide in the home his family had built. Willam Lemp started a horrifying family tradition of suicide in that house.

The Lemp mansion today is one of the most haunted houses in St Louis. Paranormal investigators have counted the spirits of the Lemp house. At least nine beings continue to haunt the place. Today it is used as an event space, including haunted sleepovers and murder mystery dinners.

Book your place on our haunted walking tour, and you will see more of the strange apparitions that St Louisans have seen and recorded for centuries.

St Louis Ghosts has tours every night of the week. Click ‘book now’ to see the tour times and if spots are available. Our easy walking route and fun-filled tour takes to you some of the classic haunted locations in St Louis. We also venture deeper into the depths of history to reveal some of the true stories behind the legends from St Louis.

The real life setting for ‘The Exorcist’

The book and film ‘The Exorcist’ is actually based on events that happened in St Louis. A confusing mist of myths and legend has grown up around the actual exorcism that took place here from January to April 1949.

Our in-depth research has the real story of what happened here. Our tour will let you into the secrets that remained boarded up for decades.

One day, in a small town in Maryland, welts appeared on a 13-year-old boy’s body. They appeared to spell the word ‘LOUIS.’ The family took this as a sign. They moved to St Louis to live with relatives in Bel Nor, a suburb in North St. Louis County.

The boy developed severe behavioral problems and went to St. Alexius hospital for treatment. He was released and later treated at home by the priests that ran the hospital. One of the priests that assisted in the ritual, Father Halloran, wrote a 29-page diary about the exorcism that disappeared for years. In the diary, he describes in shocking detail seeing scratches appear on the boy’s arm before his eyes, “as if a cat were slowly clawing his arm, the wounds grew.”

The exorcism was concluded at the St Alexius hospital in South St Louis. The room where the ritual happened was sealed off and never used again. In North St Louis, the ordinary-looking suburban house where the exorcism started is still there today. Unfortunately, it is not within walking distance for our tour. The hospital is gone now, but in its time, it had the look of a place that could put the devil in you, more than help take it out.

St Louis has more of these horrible tales to share. Join us tonight and we will take you to the places where the very worst happened and share with you the very best of St Louis Ghosts.

With so many tours and activities to choose from St. Louis, how do you choose which ones to book?

7 Reasons to take the St Louis Ghosts tour

Reasons

You will see St Louis in a different light after hearing our authentic spooky tales of real-life ghosts that terrorize the streets of St Louis.

St Louis has a darker side to share, one brimming with ghosts of the past and present. For example, the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Downtown West was the largest and best theatre in St Louis in its day. It was constructed by William Fox, who also founded the movie studio that bears his name. The Fox theatre became a grand showcase for stage shows, musical acts, and many world premieres of the biggest movies of the day, but profit proved elusive.

A sad decline happened over the years, and the theatre was a shell of its former self. However, a grand renovation in the 1980s gave it new life and made it a regular stop for Broadway musicals touring the country. Many a star has appeared on the stage; their performances made possible by a crew of dozens behind the scenes. In the early nineties, one of them tragically lost their life to a falling large piece of stage equipment. The stagehand didn’t hear the shouts because they were too engrossed in the performance. The stagehand’s spirit still lends a hand in the darkened theatre, long after his body was taken away after the tragic accident.

St Louis will shed its veil of decorum and show you its secret past on our walking tour around the flat streets of St Louis.

Reasons

There is so much to do in St Louis, even just staying Downtown, you have your choice of the highest number of free attractions outside New York City. The Gateway Arch is free, the Saint Louis Zoo is Free, the Saint Louis Art Museum is free even the Saint Louis Science Center is free.

However, every single one of those fantastic places closes in the early evening. The St Louis Ghosts tour is the perfect activity between a day of sights and evening sampling the booming culinary scene of St Louis. The creative chefs of the Gateway City have the evening covered, and the daytime is taken care of, but that tricky slot in between is where St Louis Ghosts will provide a fun, entertaining, and gripping activity.

Our St Louis Ghosts walking tour will start and finish at the same spot. We will also leave you with an indelible impression and a host of memorable stories from your time in the Gateway City. Even if you live here, our entertaining and knowledgeable guides will tell you things you did not know about the Lou’.

Reasons

St Louis Ghosts walking tour will bring the history of the city to life, through death! We do it by telling the tragic stories of the characters who drove the history of the city from the very places they did it. Our entertaining guides will walk you through the history of St Louis with some of the scariest stories of the people who lived and died here.

Our fun haunted walking tour is history by stealth. Our guides have all the answers and a veritable laundry list of hauntings in this charming area. Each one involves a local character whose life, and more importantly, death is entwined with the history of this fascinating city.

St Louis is a city of firsts; the first cocktail party, the first drive-up bank window, and the first monster truck! Being ahead of the nation requires some bold thinkers with radical ideas, visionary men and women with the courage to lead, and the conviction of their ideas.

Many of these bold souls of yesterday have become the haunting spirits of today. Only our tour has the details of their lives, their riveting stories, their achievements and their untimely ends. Our guides bring it all to life through the stories of the spirits that refuse to leave us.

Reasons

Give us just 60 minutes for our standard tour, or 90 minutes for the extended tour, and we will show you the dark and hideous hauntings of the Gateway City. The stories of the spirits we present are full of human drama and incredible twists and, more importantly, dramatic endings that the imagination could never invent. As they say, fiction is limited by what we can conceive of as possible, but real life is not.

For example, the 1849 Cholera outbreak in the city made the riverfront area a hive of ghostly activity. Spread by contaminated water, the disease could kill in hours. When the disease was at its height, the corpses came thick and fast; the city only recorded the numbers of people buried in different graveyards, not names.

On the riverfront, the poor and migrant populations were particularly ravaged by the disease. They could not afford burials, so they were laid in ditches and covered in soil. The spirits of so many lives taken early run thick in the dark cobbled streets and dingy underpasses of the district today. Let us tell you all about the heroes and villains of the outbreak.

Over a mile or so of walking around the city we will show you the dark past behind the bright lights of the city on the River. Fun lurks in mysterious places in STL; the riverfront’s entertaining ghosts have been storing up their tales for centuries.

Reasons

Although we have seen plenty of convincing evidence of the flimsy barrier between this world and the next, we won’t try and convert you. Neither are we out to capture glowing orbs and claim them as evidence of ghosts; that trick has been debunked for years. However, we are ready to show you between 8 and 12 fascinating stories about people’s lives from the past of St Louis. Then we will share how these spirits and souls have rippled through time and result in the unexplained events that so many have seen and felt in the city today.

Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, perhaps we can convince you that the energy we all put out into the world might continue long after we stop living. Like the heroic actions of Captain Thomas Targee, a volunteer fireman on the night of May 17, 1849. His heroism saved hundreds of people sleeping in buildings in the path of a fire that could have destroyed Saint Louis.

Early in the morning, the steamboat ‘White Cloud’ caught ablaze at the St Louis dock’s north end. The blazing ship drifted downstream, setting alight the next boat and spreading the fire to land.

The whole fire department was volunteer led at the time. Using hand-pumped tenders and a rudimentary hydrant system, the teams worked hard until the reservoir was empty. The fire continued unabated. The strategy now was to dynamite a line of buildings nearly eight blocks long to stop the fire before it reached the Cathedral and Court House.

Captain Thomas Targee was clearing buildings of sleeping inhabitants and setting charges in buildings that had been cleared. While setting the charges, one accidentally went off, killing the 41-year-old near the Gateway Arch site. An early hero of the professional fire fighting force established after the fire, Captain Targee is remembered today for his actions.

St Louis Ghosts tour has so many stories like this to entertain and spook you. Join our endlessly fascinating tour and let us lift the veil on the hidden history of the Gateway City.

Reasons

The beer and the city are intertwined. The great brewing dynasty’s emblem, a train of Clydesdale horses pulling a delivery cart stacked with barrels, is housed in the city. The stadium where the Cardinals play is named Busch Stadium after the brewer wrote a check to keep the team in the city.

But there is much more to the city than its biggest export. There is a dark undercurrent of hauntings and ghosts that courses through the city like the dark Mississippi at night.

The grand tradition of ghosts in St Louis started with the desecration of the burial mounds of the Mississippi Civilization that even predates the Native Americans. The European settlers razed the burial mounds they found and unleashed a terrific flood of supernatural energy on the city.

This seam of supernatural activity has echoed through the ages. Add in the ghosts of the tragic accidents of the great industrial boom of the 19th Century and todays untimely casualties and St Louis is a strong contender for the most haunted city in America.

If you are looking for an alternative take on the history of St Louis, we can promise you the most entertaining way to get to know the Rome of the West, so called for being the home of so many churches, many of the Catholic.

We have so many more interesting and thrilling stories about St Louis, picking the ones that made it onto the tour was incredibly hard. Check out some of the others on our blog.

Reasons

Our St Louis Ghosts tour is created to be scary and creepy but is still family-friendly and accessible to all. We have gone to great lengths to make our stories scary, but not too scary. We don’t want anyone to lose sleep after taking the St Louis Ghosts tour. You will often find young people on some of our tours having the time of their lives.

If you are looking for absolute terror, we suggest the Exorcist movie… not so much the sequel. However, we have a host of interesting stories about that film, which is based on real-life events that happened here in the Gateway City.

Saint Louis is mostly flat, with a gentle slope down to the dark banks of the Mississippi. Our tours are proudly accessible to all. If you can roam for a mile under your own steam, you will find a fun, entertaining and fascinating tour around the most thrilling haunted locations of St Louis.

We are careful to make our stories memorable, being in the actual places that these historic haunted stories happened really makes the history stick. Science even agrees with us; they call this technique creating a ‘memory palace’ of the mind, resplendent with rich stories attached to specific places and experiences.

St Louis Ghosts has unforgettable stories that you can tell your family and friends just by picturing the places you visited on our tour.