You need a crash course in Austin’s history
Austin has crammed a lot into a short period of time, our tour covers each period of history, with true tales of history both ancient and modern.
Each tale of haunting springs from a real slice of life in Austin’s colorful past, each tale of real people helps you remember the history of this great city, because the ghost tales bring the past to life and stick in your memory. A Story is after all ten times more memorable than a statistic.
Standing on the very sites of some of the crucial moments of Austin’s history you will absorb these stories into your soul like the city is imprinted on the spirits who roam the same streets today. Like Austin’s great Capitol building. The highest building in the early city’s history and recently renovated with a state-of-the-art visitor’s center. It also has a haunted giftshop. If the stories we relate on the tour are true, do your shopping there early in the day, it can get a bit hairy around closing time.
The first capitol building was a temporary affair, when Texas voted to move the capital to San Antonio the whole Texas legislature arrived by ox cart in October 1893. They set about building a city from the village in the wilderness that they found. It’s an insightful story and helps explain the spirit of the place. Join the tour for the details!
When they arrived here in 1893 there was no dam on the Colorado River for instance and still plenty of signs of the original Native American occupants. For hundreds of years, Native Americans wandered the fertile valley and gentle hills that Austin sits upon. With their complex rituals, beliefs, and religions these ancient civilizations left an imprint on the ground that has not been easy to erase, goodness knows the later European settlers tried. We’ll show you the signs and spirits that still remain today.
Come and dive into the true tales of Austin’s history and the remarkable, memorable stories of today’s hauntings.
You want something the whole family can do in Austin
Even though our tours are full of stories of the dead haunting those who walk the streets today, we work hard to make the tour family-friendly.
We encourage families with children to join the tour, and it is fully accessible. Our professional guides are adaptable and knowledgeable locals full of stories and trivia about the streets our tours navigate. Your capable guides will adjust the content according to the group, we want to thirl and entertain, we don’t want anyone losing sleep.
Perhaps you are on a date and might consider a ghost tour a more memorable post date activity than a stroll in the park after a lovely dinner at one of Austin’s many amazing restaurants. Austin Ghosts has been a part of many blossoming romances and would welcome anyone and a current or future significant other!
You are a Non-Believer, testing the water of the supernatural
Believing in ghosts requires a certain frame of mind, one that children, animals, and some adults possess. It opens them up to the possibility of thinner boundaries between this world and the next than mere science tells us can be currently proven. And when has science been wrong? Why several hundred times. That’s a part of the beauty of science. Does Sun no longer seem to be revolving around the Earth? Well adopt a new theory and move on. Hollow Earth theory? We no longer think the earth has holes at the top and bottom that lead to an inner world of seas and islands. A neat experiment in Scotland determined the density of Earth and laid that one to rest for good.
We may one day discover the explanation for the thousands of ghost sightings. Until that day, we simply ask that you be open to the possibility that we don’t know everything yet.
If you are not one who is open to the supernatural, well done for even considering a ghost tour of Downtown Austin. Even if at the end your hour-long standard tour, you decide not to take the 30-minute extension and see more of the amazing city of Austin’s sights in the eerie dark you will have heard some fascinating stories, learned about the origins of the author of the O. Henry stories. How he was wrongfully accused of embezzlement and skipped bail the day of his trial. He was a local of Austin and features at several of the locations on the tour. Austin Ghosts won’t try and convince you the afterlife is real, we simply lay out the evidence, the accounts we have researched and let you make up your mind.
In Austin and Not Sure of What to Do?
Austin has many ways to entertaining its citizens and visitors, it really comes alive at night, but that time after the day is done, but before the town really revs up its nightlife is the perfect time to walk off dinner and learn something about the history of San Antonio and the ghosts who just can’t let go.
The route of our ghost tour in Austin skirts the main nightlife area of Austin, but the tour finishes within yards of a strip of amazing bars and restaurants where you can compare stories and wonder about the amazing tales you have just heard.
If your day is full in and around Austin may we suggest that a relaxing and entertaining ramble around just under a mile of the landmarks of Downtown Austin might be the perfect and thrilling end to your day? Join us on the Austin Ghosts tour to get the most out of your time in town.
Only got a night in Downtown Austin?
If you are here for a convention, a business trip, or anything else that might take you away from all the life that Austin has to offer, or if you are visiting Austin for just a couple of days then the Austin Ghosts is the perfect way to pass some time. The Austin Ghosts tour lets you pack in some exciting and entertaining sightseeing and get a flavor of the history and characters that give Austin its unique flavor.
The tour starts right in the heart of Downtown Austin, and visits several historical locations full of the spookiest stories. All in, the Austin Ghosts tours take just over an hour, it leaves you with a snapshot of every significant era in the city’s rich and important history.
From the Ghost who stalks the Paramount Theatre, constantly seeking justice for the murder of her family in the early days of the Civil war, to modern ghouls who pace the corridors of the impressive downtown hotels. Austin Ghosts has something for everyone and drops you within walking distance of the Austin Convention Center, the train station, and easy transport to the airport.
Get an insider look at the Austin culture
The more eccentric residents of Austin make up a great proportion of the local ghosts; From the Irish joker who haunts the legendary Buffalo Billiards bar to the two ghosts who plague ‘Handlebar’, the only mustache themed adult bar in Austin.
Austin is home to many colorful characters that refuse to leave this plane for the next. A historical shortage of burial spots led a few mourning families in Austin’s history to bury loved ones in the walls and in the case of the Museum of the Weird in one of the concrete columns. Most of the bodies were reinterred, including the column corpse, when a good spot had been found on the edge of the city limits for a communal cemetery, but the ghost of this body from the column remains in this very strange place. Burying people in columns somehow that typifies the Austin Spirit.
Be a tourist in your backyard
We see many Austinites on our tours, people who have lived here their whole lives have not heard the stories we tell. Austin Ghosts is a great way to dive deeper into the dark past of your home town. Perhaps you are taking a staycation, checking into a downtown hotel for a few nights and doing things you don’t normally get to do.
Maybe you’ll be able to add some local gossip or historical tidbits to the tour group, interaction is welcome and it’s a great way to make your group special. We have memorable stories that you will be able to share for years to come with your visitors from out of town.
So, become a tourist in your own town for a night, enjoy a meal somewhere new, and mix things up a bit! Seeing your city in a new light is something we can defiantly help you do.
