Charleston Ghost and Graveyard Night-Time Guided Walking Tour

Charleston Ghost and Graveyard Night-Time Guided Walking Tour is a 90-minute night walk run by Bulldog Tours, booking from $40.50 per person at our July 30, 2026 check. Its itinerary names one researchable place, the Circular Congregational Church graveyard at 150 Meeting Street, and leaves the rest of the route as the Historic District. The listing marks it wheelchair accessible, asks you to arrive 15 minutes before departure, and says it operates in all weather. The adult band starts at 13, with a child band for ages 4 to 12 and an infant band below that, so children can come. It suits people who want time in an old burial ground after dark rather than a long landmark route.

What you will see

The Circular Congregational Church graveyard at 150 Meeting Street is the one place this itinerary names, and it carries the claim the listing sells hardest. The congregation is more careful than the marketing: it calls the ground "likely the oldest English burial ground still in existence in Charleston," and every qualifier there is doing work. The earliest burial, unmarked, dates to 1695 and is believed to be Henry Simonds; the earliest inscribed stone is dated 1729 (graveyard page). The congregation goes back to 1681, when Dissenters built a meeting house in the northwest corner of the walled town, and the lane running to it became Meeting House Street, later shortened to Meeting Street (church history).

What makes the yard worth standing in is the carving. More than 500 gravestones survive, naming roughly 730 individuals, and church records point to a further 620 people most likely buried here. One hundred and fifty of those burials happened before 1776. The oldest markers are slate shipped south from New England carvers, and the congregation states there are more eighteenth-century slate stones here than anywhere else in the country. Their winged death's-heads are New England Puritan iconography a thousand miles from where they were cut. Named burials the church identifies include Richard Hutson, who died in 1795, and the historian David Ramsay, in 1815 (the church's graveyard page).

The church beside the graves is not the one that gave the place its name. Robert Mills designed a circular, Pantheon-inspired building here between 1804 and 1806: 88 feet across, seven doors, 26 windows, seating roughly 2,000, with an 1838 steeple that rose 182 feet. The great Charleston fire of December 11, 1861 destroyed it. The graveyard survived. What stands today went up between 1890 and 1892 to designs by Stephenson and Greene of New York, built from brick salvaged out of the ruin, and it is not circular: the plan is a modified cloverleaf (church history). The property was listed on the National Register on November 7, 1973, reference 73001683, and the National Historic Landmark here is the parish house rather than the sanctuary (Landmark list).

The listing promises graveyard hauntings, voodoo and botched burials. Weigh that against the sources. The congregation publishes a detailed page about its own graveyard and says nothing at all about ghosts, and we found no named witness, dated incident or investigation record behind the shadow figures the Charleston scripts describe here. One story you may hear is checkably false. Lavinia Fisher, hanged in 1820, is not buried at 150 Meeting Street, and not in the Unitarian graveyard on Archdale Street either. The account of her case treats both burial claims as a fiction promoted by tour guides and records her going into a potter's field outside the Old City Jail (Lavinia Fisher). She was convicted in May 1819 of highway robbery rather than murder, and Bruce Orr, who worked the primary record for Six Miles to Charleston in 2010, found no trap doors, no poisoned tea and no cellar of skeletons (Post and Courier).

Who it suits

This is 90 minutes on foot after dark at a pace the operator calls leisurely, built around one burial ground rather than a long list of landmarks. It is marked wheelchair accessible, which several Charleston ghost walks are not, and it runs in all weather.

• Skip it if you want to go inside a building. There is no paid interior; the same operator's dungeon tour is the one that has it.
• Skip it if you want many named landmarks. The itinerary names one place.
• Skip it if price decides. At $40.50 it ties its own sibling as the most expensive walking tour of the 21 Charleston listings we compared that showed a price, and only a 40-minute carriage ride at $42 cost more.
• Children are allowed: the adult band starts at 13, with child (4 to 12) and infant (0 to 3) bands. It is still a night walk through a working burial ground.
• Book it if the graveyard is the point and step-free ground matters.

How it compares

Bulldog Tours lists two Charleston night walks at the same $40.50 and the same 90 minutes, and one line separates them. Charleston Ghost and Dungeon Night-Time Walking Tour with Entry to Provost Dungeon adds admission to the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon on East Bay Street, so you go inside a building; this one stays outdoors in the graveyard. The dungeon sibling rated 4.2 across 521 reviews at our check against 4.5 across 1,135 here. Before you pay for a cellar: the 1969 National Register form describes that basement as customs-business space, and its use as a prison was a wartime repurposing between 1780 and 1782 (nomination 69000160).

If a burial ground is the point, Ghosts of Charleston Walking Tour + Unitarian Church Graveyard sells after-hours access to the Unitarian ground on Archdale Street at $35.50 and rates 4.6 across 2,903 reviews, though its listing marks it not wheelchair accessible and confirmation takes up to 48 hours. For a cheaper night with a named guide, Charleston Dark History and Ghost Tour with Adam runs 80 minutes from $25 and rates 4.9 across 336 reviews. This listing sits mid-pack: thirteen of the 22 rated Charleston listings we compared score above 4.5, though its 1,135 reviews are the fifth-largest sample in that set. See Charleston ghost tours compared and our guide to the best ghost tours in Charleston.

Questions people ask

How is this different from the Ghost and Dungeon tour?

Same operator, same $40.50, same 90 minutes. The dungeon version includes admission to the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. This one has no paid interior and spends its time in the Circular graveyard instead.

Do you actually go into a graveyard?

The Circular Congregational Church graveyard at 150 Meeting Street is the only place the itinerary names, and being there after dark is what the walk is sold on. The rest is the Historic District.

Is it really Charleston's oldest cemetery?

The congregation's own wording is more careful: "likely the oldest English burial ground still in existence in Charleston." Keep those qualifiers. Its earliest burial dates to 1695 and its earliest inscribed stone to 1729.

Is Lavinia Fisher buried there?

No. The claim that she lies at 150 Meeting Street is a tour-guide fiction, and the Unitarian graveyard version is wrong too. She was buried in a potter's field outside the Old City Jail, and convicted in May 1819 of highway robbery rather than murder.

Can children come, and is it accessible?

The adult band starts at 13, with a child band for ages 4 to 12 and an infant band for 0 to 3, so children are allowed. The listing marks the tour wheelchair accessible, and stroller access was not verified at our check.

What happens if it rains, and how early should we arrive?

It operates in all weather, and asks you to arrive 15 minutes before departure. No clock time was verified at our check, so confirm your departure time and the meeting address on the booking page.