Ghost Tour Meeting Location: Outside the Balboa Theatre in Horton Plaza Park at 868 Fourth Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
Tour Duration: 1hr. across 1 mile
To Order: Press "Get Tickets" for availability.
Ghost tours are held nightly, rain or shine!
Ghost Tour Meeting Location: Outside the Balboa Theatre in Horton Plaza Park at 868 Fourth Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
Tour Duration: 1hr. across 1 mile
To Order: Press "Get Tickets" for availability.
Ghost tours are held nightly, rain or shine!
San Diego Ghosts: Gaslamp Haunted Tour
Join us as we explore beyond the tourist attractions of San Diego, and experience the hauntings that lie beneath the charming exterior of the City of the West.
Tour Meeting Location: 868 Fourth Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
Tour Times: 8:00 PM
Tour Length: 1 Hour
Ghost tours are held nightly, rain or shine!
Old Cali and the War for the West: Gaslamp District Experience
Join us to explore the origin story of San Diego's eclectic and multicultural heartbeat before becoming part of America’s Finest City.
Tour Meeting Location: 199 5th Avenue, San Diego CA 92101
Tour Times: Email for availability
Tour Length: 2 Hours
Ghost tours are held nightly, rain or shine!
San Diego is known for being a sun-kissed piece of paradise. But only a few know of the city’s shocking history. People come to San Diego for the mix of cultures and the unbelievably great weather, but they don’t expect the sea of darkness that hides just underneath the surface.
San Diego Ghosts takes you back in time to hear about the sordid secrets that haunt this Western metropolis. Discover the pioneers of San Diego and their big personalities, who built the city into what it is today, and how those unfortunate souls still influence it in their own way.
Known for its elegant appointments, impeccable guest service, and a past full of intrigue, the glamorous Horton Grand Hotel hides a darker side that often piques the macabre interest of tourists and spectral seekers. Today, may hotel guests tell tales of Room 309, where famed gambler Roger Whitaker was shot to death inside an armoire after failing to pay his debts.
William Heath Davis built San Diego’s first streets. After attempting to build infrastructure for the rest of town, the William Heath Davis House went through many owners and saw countless visitors through its doors. Tourists today claim to have seen a WWII soldier, a German spy who used the home for a short period, haunting the place. There have also been encounters with a Victorian-era female apparition, allegedly the wife of the building’s second owner, Alonzo Horton.
This Gaslamp Quarter cocktail lounge sits in an old building dating back to the 1860s, once used as the city morgue for over a hundred years. After that, it was the Museum of Death, so it’s no surprise that many people report spooky encounters here. Today, workers at this favored restaurant refuse to be left alone in the dark.
Ever since joining the United States in 1850, San Diego has been a city of paradox. All at once, it feels like a sleepy beach town and a bustling metropolitan city. But this charming place hides a hideous past. The psychic pain of death is everywhere, and that pain manifests through both benevolent and malevolent spirits. While some of these spirits are peaceful enough, others prey on the vulnerability of the living to terrify and torment.
San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter has a long and sordid history. The area’s unique location has created a distinctive combination of cultures that cannot be replicated anywhere else. With so many clashes of opinion, you are bound to see some violence and turmoil. Find out how people survived and how others met their tragic end during California’s earliest days and when San Diego was just in its beginnings.
The amount of violence, murder, scandal, and other ungodly acts has left no building, no park, and no quiet corner immune from the lingering sense of doom that’s come as a consequence of San Diego’s sinful past. Journey into San Diego’s tormented history and learn why death, destruction, and conspiracy are built into the very heart of the city.
Learn about one family that discovered a mysterious, hidden windowless room in their apartment that led to their demise.
Visit the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop, which has a disturbing and demented past dating back to 1913.
Discover the gritty streets of 1920s San Diego while hearing real-life ghost stories that have haunted the area for decades.
Check out the former city hall, where a mayor barricaded himself inside the building to avoid an angry mob.
Take a walk past a building that was built as a repair shop where a boy was thrown and trampled by his horse.
San Diego has a long and complex history, from the pre-colonial times, the San Diego river separated the traditional lands of two factions of the Kumeyaay tribe of native Americans. The first Spanish colonial settlers founded a mission here in 1796.
The San Diego Ghosts tour dives into the history since San Diego, and California joined the United States. The rapid buildup of the city and its modern history is fascinating. Our tour will start with the difficult early steps of the Gaslight District. Founded by William Heath Davis, a real estate speculator who had a vision of a new downtown closer to the port’s trade.
However, his vision did not last, and he died with his original town of eight prefabricated ‘saltbox’ houses standing abandoned. His idea, though resurfaced later, and the carriers of his torch, Alonzo Horton and his wife built a house they later moved twice before it ended up in the gaslight district, where it stands today as the oldest house around, and a museum of the area’s history. It is most definitely haunted.
A family that lived in the house lost a child to Yellow fever, to this day, a ghostly sick child infects the Museum staff occasionally with rapid and brutal vomiting associated with Yellow fever, but only those staff who have touched the diseased apparition!
Ghosts appear more often to those who believe, whose minds are open to such things. The power of the minds of those more open to the supernatural has been studied for a long time. And while the science of the mind has made leaps and jumps, we still know very little of the power of the most complex object in the known universe, the grey lump that resides between our ears.
Several Universities have published serious academic articles exploring the brain’s ability to affect the material world in ways we don’t understand…yet.
That’s a roundabout way of saying there’s a lot we don’t know about the universe and our abilities within it. So, the ghosts of the past may have ways of reaching into our lives, and while we should all be wary, we best not close our minds to it completely.
And if we fail to convince you with our evidence of minds from the past affecting the world today. We leave you with, at the very least, a riveting history lesson brought to life with affecting stories from the past.
The Golden hour, just before sundown in San Diego is a marvel to behold, the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean creates eerie moments that might make a believer of anyone. After the sunsets, there is a pause before the cities nightlife truly wakes up. Call it the post-dinner lull. This is the perfect time to take the San Diego Ghosts tour and really get the best from your time in ‘The finest city in America.’
Our standard tour takes around 1 hour and covers a carefully curated selection of locations to bring you a cross-section of eras and fascinating moments in the city’s history.
Our guides are not only knowledgeable about their home city, but the tour is entertaining and full of the stories of San Diego brought to life by spooky tales that you will remember for years to come.
Like the Prohibition lounge on Fifth Avenue, today, it’s a lively bar with a secret entrance that we will happily show you. But in a previous life, the bar’s stylish tiled arches saw more dead bodies than any other room in the city. It was for a period in the mid 19th Century the city morgue. The bartenders remain mute about the hauntings they have seen.
Our tour covers the grizzly history of San Diego, but rest assured, our aim is not to terrify. We have had tour-goers claim to have felt a supernatural presence during our daily events, but we have welcomed countless young ghost hunters and never had a report of nightmares.
We work hard to make sure our tours are family-friendly and work hard to keep them that way. Our start times are bedtime friendly for all but the youngest travelers, and few often see locals at the San Diego Ghosts start point, looking to learn a bit more about their home city. We hope to see you soon.
