Tonight we are headed to the oldest city in the U.S. to experience the top-rated St. Augustine Ghost Tour. Along with our friends Kayla and Todd, we’ve booked the Old City Ghosts Boos and Booze Haunted Pub Crawl. Check out all the fun on this tour in downtown St. Augustine!
Read on to find out how to get 10% off your own St. Augustine ghost tour!
Planning a St. Augustine Ghost Tour
US Ghost Adventures offers paranormal ghost tours, haunted pub crawls and other tours across the USA in over 170 cities. And they reached out to us to be featured on our website. So with Halloween approaching, we thought it’d be the perfect time to do one of their ghost tours. Though they offer tours daily year-round and they have lots of great locations to choose from including St. Augustine. Check them out here: St. Augustine Ghost Tour – US Ghost Adventures.*
*If you book through this link, we can get a small commission. And if you use promo code WFT10, you can get a 10% discount off their St. Augustine tours.
Knowing we wanted to do St. Augustine, we checked out their website to get tour details. They actually have 4 different tours in St. Augustine ranging from 1 hour to 2 hours long. Each is a little different, so we first asked our daughter about them. Though they offer family-friendly ghost tours, she didn’t want to go. So we decided to do their only adults only ghost tour with some friends. We booked their 2-hour Old City Ghosts Boos and Booze Haunted Pub Crawl!
Start of the St. Augustine Ghost Tour
The tour starts at 6:00PM, and we’re rushing to get to the meeting location. The Grace United Methodist Church is downtown, and we know there’s a parking lot right across the street. So when we arrive, we pull in the lot and find the attendant to pay $16 to park. There’s cheaper places farther away, but this one takes credit cards and we’re right where the tour starts.
When we arrive we find our tour guide Meaghan sitting on a bench alone in front of the church. We’re the first to arrive with only a couple minutes to spare. Our friends Kayla and Todd show up shortly thereafter, and another party of 4 join the tour. With everyone here Meaghan starts with an introduction. And she tells us we will be visiting 3 bars and 6 haunted places on the tour.
Meaghan gives us some history about St. Augustine, the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the contiguous United States. Founded in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles of Spain, St. Augustine has a long history. Starting with the Matanzas River that leads to town named after Menendez’s massacre of the French Huguenots nearby. You can read more about that in our post: Three Amazing Forts around St. Augustine. From pirate attacks to a sea monster washing ashore, St. Augustine has a lot of interesting lore. And after a few minutes, it’s time to go to our 1st stop.
Our 1st stops on the St. Augustine Ghost Tour
Our 1st stop is just a short walk away to our 1st bar, Café del Hidalgo. It’s on the corner of Hypolita and St. George Street, the main thoroughfare downtown. And though it’s not haunted, it is the 1st place to get a drink. We go to the bar where we get some local beers, except Kayla. She gets a frozen white sangria that comes with a spoon and looks like apple sauce. But she says it tastes great. And then we find Meaghan who’s saved a table for all of us.
And with our drinks in hand, Meaghan starts to tell us the story of the former Moon & Sun Café. Just around the corner, it formerly was a residence. And she tells us the tragic tale of a young family that lived in the haunted dwelling. But before we leave, we have time for 1 more thing.
Café Del Hidalgo has a great selection of gelato. So, I choose some to share. It’s a nice treat before we leave. And on the way to our next stop, we pass by the old Moon & Sun Café that is now a B&B.
Next haunted stop and Tini Martini Bar
Our next stop is the haunted Casa de la Paz, which is now a closed B&B. Located across from the bay, Meaghan tells us the story of Mable and her husband, the fishermen. Let’s just say Mable was left with a broken heart and still haunts here today.
And right next door is our next stop, the Tini Martini Bar in the Casablanca Inn. This is a St. Augustine favorite for many reasons. The 1st reason are the drinks, a whole menu of martinis. But they also have beer and wine. And 2nd are the views of the bay. We get seated in a round table where all of us can sit around it.
First they bring each of us water, and then tell us the drink specials. They have a special pumpkin spice martini as well as a butter beer one with butterscotch of course. So, we each get one of them, and Kayla chooses one off the menu. I think Todd even ordered a martini this round. With all of us with our drinks, Meaghan tell us another story here at the Casablanca Inn.
She tells us the story of the “Lantern lady’ who used to wave off rum-runners if law enforcement was around. And people say they have spotted a lantern waving in an upstairs window from time to time.
More haunted stops on our St. Augustine Ghost Tour
After the tasty martinis, we continue down the street to our next haunted location. Believe it or not, it’s a popular dining location called Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille. And here we here the story of Bridget.
Bridget tragically died when a fire broke out in this building in 1887. And people have reported a cloud of smoke or the smell of burning cloth. Not good for a restaurant, but no one can ever find the source.
Around the corner, we stop at the Treasury on the Plaza, which was an old bank. And Meaghan tells us the story of Sam who worked in the building for 5 years. He often saw a “running man” who would bump into him. Thinking he was crazy, he went to various doctors who didn’t find anything wrong with him. And the hauntings ceased when he quit working here.
From here we walk down the street and walk through the Plaza de la Constitución to the other side. And down a side street, we stop at the Spanish Military Hospital, now a museum. Apparently thousands of burial remains were found below it. You can actually do tours of the museum if you want to learn all about it.
The last bar and last haunted stop
Once back on the main road, we walk back toward the bay and turn right. This time we stop at our last bar, the Chatsworth Pub. It’s a nice little bar with a good selection of beers and cocktails. Meaghan gathers some seats as we hang out.
She tells another haunted story about another location nearby. By this time it’s getting late, but we have 1 last stop. From the pub, we walk along the bay to the fort.
The fort I am referring to is the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. You can read more about it also in: Three Amazing Forts around St. Augustine. But what we didn’t know was the story of Dolores. In the late 1700s, she was married to the commanding officer of the fort, Captain Garcia Marti.
Busy with the fort, Marti neglected his younger wife who fell in love with his handsome assistant Captain Abela. But one day the Colonel smelt his wife’s perfume on the young captain. And the next day, they were nowhere to be found. That was until about 50 years later. A local architect discovered a hidden room and found their skeletal remains chained to the wall. Today if you get a whiff of strong perfume in the fort, they may be close by. And with that our tour has ended.
Summary of our St. Augustine Ghost Tour and Pub Crawl
Our St Augustine Ghost Tour and Haunted Pub Crawl was a lot of fun. We spent over 2 hours walking around downtown learning some spooky history in the oldest city. And we went to 3 bars including the Tini Martini Bar, one of our favorites. We can tell Meaghan really liked her job as our tour guide. And though we’re basically locals, we still learned new things about St. Augustine. With ghost tours all across the United States, their tours are a great way to explore a new city.
Don’t forget to book at St. Augustine Ghost Tour – US Ghost Adventures with promo code WFT10 to get 10% off!