Experience spirits and spectres year-round in spooky San Diego. These tours let you experience America’s Finest Frightningest City. Which haunted tour is best? It depends upon your spectral needs.
Want to go Inside for History and Spooky Stories?
If walking the sidewalks of downtown San Diego isn’t scary enough, Haunted San Diego Ghost Tours will take you inside many of the buildings on their tours. Haunted San Diego is a local company. Of all the companies I reviewed, Haunted San Diego had the best tour guides, they dress up in period costumes and tell their stories with dramatic flair. Many are part of the local theater scene.
Haunted San Diego provides several tours and they all have San Diego history woven throughout them. Their Haunted Gaslamp Tour is about two hours and has a lot of walking. Many of the stories are about the Stingaree brothels and true crimes so this is better for adults. On this tour you enter the Horton-Davis House and the Horton Grand Hotel.
If liquid spirits are more your style, Haunted San Diego has a Ghosts and Goblets pub crawl that offers custom cocktails that match the spooky stories told at each of the three historically haunted bars. Haunted San Diego also has an Old Town Paranormal Walking Tour.
Gaslamp Museum Provides History and Ghost Tours
If you want to support a local non-profit museum and learn about San Diego history, then I recommend Ghosts of the Gaslamp Tour offered by the Gaslamp Museum. However, their tours are only offered on Fridays and fill up quickly. The museum, which is in the Horton-Davis house, also offers history walking tours of the Gaslamp.
The Gaslamp Museum is operated by the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation, and they focus on preserving the history, architecture, and culture of San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter.
(Photo: KimberlyUs)
Want to Hang with a Real Ghost Hunter?
Interested in ghost hunting? Then the local company San Diego Ghost Tours in Old Town is your best choice.
San Diego Ghost Tours takes visitors on a walking tour through historic Old Town San Diego, a California State Park. San Diego local, Michael Brown, has been ghost hunting in Old Town for twenty five years. His tour lasts 90 minutes and covers about a mile.
The tour begins at the fountain near Fiesta del Reyes and guests walk to ten locations while hearing his personal ghost experiences. You pass by several historic buildings and visit El Campo Santo, the cemetery.
Visitors are given an EMF Detector and taught how to measure the vortex, a large invisible pocket of energy that opens and closes. It is unexplained, but some visitors are able to feel it in their finger tips.
The highlight of the tour is going inside the Hotel Cosmopolitan, the spot Brown considers to be the most paranormally active building in San Diego. In the hotel, he shows you photos his customers took of ghosts and points out where the most active spots are located. Visitors are invited to wander around the hotel in the dark and seek their own ghostly experiences through photography or their EMF Detector.
The Whaley House–America’s Most Haunted
According to Life Magazine, the Whaley House is the most haunted house in America. Thomas Whaley built this brick home and general store in 1856 on the lot where the gallows were located. Some wonder if that is what started the wave of bad luck that struck the Whaleys. Their tour guides wear period costumes and tell the story of the cursed Whaley family and their haunted house.
The house is said to be haunted by their infant, their 23-year daughter Violet, and “Yankee Jim” Robinson. Some report that Thomas and Anna Whaley also hang around.
On my tour I experienced a freezing chill on the back of my waist while in the parlor, but no one was behind me. It is one of the few true ghostly experiences I’ve had.
Hop on the Ghost Bus!
Haunted San Diego Ghost Tours also has a ghost bus that drives visitors from Old Town, to the Villa Montezuma in Sherman Heights, and the Gaslamp. This is an excellent way to see San Diego and you don’t have to drive. I recommend this for families because the script is G-rated and there is less walking. The costumed tour guides are excellent storytellers.
(Photo: KimberlyUs)
The tour lasts two hours and starts in Old Town. Visitors walk to the Whaley House. Standing on the outside, you learn the story of the house and the Whaleys. The ghost bus then drives to Sherman Heights, located uphill from downtown San Diego. Along the way, the guide tells stories about spooky San Diego.
In Sherman Heights, visitors enter the enchanted Villa Montezuma. This gorgeous Victorian mansion was custom built to be an art palace for Jessie Shepard. The music room is where Shepard would channel the spirits of great musicians and give improv piano and singing performances. Very few San Diego tourists visit this amazing house. If you love architecture, you’ll be enchanted by the woodwork, tile and stained glass windows.
After the Villa Montezuma, the bus goes to the Gaslamp. The tour goes inside the Horton-Davis House and the Horton Grand Hotel. Both locations not only have ghosts, but stories about tuberculosis, espionage, gambling and murder.
The ghost bus returns to Old Town and visitors walk to El Campo Santo Cemetery to see the grave of “Yankee Jim” Robinson.
A Word of Warning About Spooky San Diego…
When you are deciding on which tour to take, here are some things to consider. Parking wise, Old Town is more convenient and there are both free and paid places. If you are a woman traveling alone, Old Town has fewer unhoused people and feels safer. Old Town offers more choices if you want to experience authentic Mexican food.
If you go on any of the Gaslamp tours, be prepared to pay around $25 for parking. Street parking fills up fast and the city enforces their meters. Your best bet is to park in the Horton Plaza parking lot at 800 4th Avenue. This centrally located lot is good if you plan on bar hopping. The Gaslamp is wickedly wild on weekends.
Check and see if there is a Padre home game at PetCo Park on the day of your tour. If so, give yourself extra time to find parking and navigate the traffic.
There are two other ghost tour companies in San Diego, but they are not owned by locals. They are large corporations based in Virginia and Florida. Their tours have made up history and include the same stories they tell in other cities. Support San Diego-based tours because they tell factual history. Also, the guides know the city and can give recommendations for restaurants and other activities.
Conclusion
San Diego is a boo-tiful city famous for its weather and beaches. But, grab your ghouls and explore spooky San Diego. If your skele-fun is found in historic cemeteries, visit Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego where the Whaley family and Horton are buried. La Vista Cemetery in National City is where Frank Kimball, the man who brought the train to San Diego, is buried.
If you happen to be in San Diego in October, be sure and do the Haunted Trail in Balboa Park. Stumbling through the dark while zombies, witches and clowns with chainsaws jump out at you is terrifically terrifying.
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