Galveston's Haunted Cemetery Walking Tour

Galveston's Haunted Cemetery Walking Tour is a 90-minute evening walk run by Ghost City Tours, booking from $29.99 per person at our August 2, 2026 check. The listing names one stop, Old City Cemetery, and nothing else, so this page names nothing else either. It meets at the cemetery gates at Avenue K and 43rd Street, the posted maximum is 40 travelers, and the operator asks for a moderate physical fitness level. The age bands run from 0 up, and the listing marks the walk wheelchair and stroller accessible. That combination is what sets it apart from the island's other cemetery walk, which names three yards and is not listed as accessible. It carries 4.6 from 200 reviews.

What you will see

Old City Cemetery is one of seven burial grounds inside a single cast-iron fence, which is the first thing to understand about this walk. The complex covers 15.27 acres over six blocks bounded by Broadway, Avenue L, 40th and 43rd, and it was listed on the National Register as the Broadway Cemetery Historic District, reference 14000340, in 2014 (National Register nomination, City of Galveston). Old City itself, dating to 1839, lies north of Avenue K at Broadway and 40th, while the gates at Avenue K and 43rd where the group meets are the west central gate, on the Evergreen and Hebrew Benevolent corner, three blocks west of it. Four of the seven yards are city owned and three are privately held, and the complex still takes burials, so check access hours with City Parks and Recreation if being inside the fence after dark matters to you.

The ground was set aside rather than granted, and the distinction is real. City lots 160 and 161 were designated as the city cemetery under the Galveston City Charter in 1839, and the Galveston City Company formally donated four blocks in July 1840, with most of lot 161 marked as a pauper's cemetery. Before that the dead went into the sand hills east of Center Street and south of Avenue N, and the nomination records that those who died in the 1839 yellow fever epidemic were primarily interred out there rather than here. The earliest known burial in the complex, per the nomination's own table, is Emily Mariah Reed, aged 19, on November 22, 1841.

Yellow fever is the ground's real subject. 1867 was the worst year, with 725 deaths, and a new section opened west of the old Catholic ground, the Old Cahill Yard or Yellow Fever Cemetery, which the nomination says was filled almost immediately. There is no reliable denominator for that year, so 725 deaths is the figure and the percentages you may hear are not. Most cemetery records were destroyed in 1900, and two yards here, Evergreen and New City, date from that year and were created, in the nomination's careful phrase, in part to memorialize the victims. The storm dead themselves are overwhelmingly not buried here: they were taken out to sea, came back within a day, and were burned.

Scale is worth setting straight too. The nomination counts just over 6,000 burial sites across the whole district, well below the twelve thousand markers quoted on ghost tour pages. As for the residents the tours name, the operator's two headline ghosts here and its Yellow Fever Yard phantom physician are folklore we could not trace to a contemporaneous source, and on one of them the operator's own page concedes there are no documented reports of sightings.

Who it suits

This is the accessible cemetery option and the age-permissive one: bands from 0 up, wheelchair and stroller access on the listing, at the joint lowest price in our Galveston set, level with the same operator's The Ghosts of Galveston Guided Walking Tour. The trade is the group: a posted cap of 40, the largest of the thirteen Galveston listings we checked, with a moderate fitness level posted for uneven ground.

• Skip it if you want a downtown route or a bar route. This is one cemetery, ninety minutes, and nothing else is promised.
• Skip it if a small group matters to you. Forty is the posted cap.
• Check the gate hours first if being inside after dark is the point. Access is set by the city and three private owners.

How it compares

Galveston's other cemetery walk is The Galveston Cemetery Tour: Walk With The Dead from Historic Galveston Ghost Tours, at $31 for 90 minutes with a cap of 30 and 4.8 from 407 reviews. It names three yards where this one names a single stop, and the accessibility runs the other way: that listing is not marked wheelchair accessible and this one is. Within Ghost City Tours' four Galveston walks this is the joint cheapest and the only one that leaves downtown, against The Shadows of Revelry Walking Ghost Tour at $34.99 and Galveston Haunted Pub Crawl Walking Tour, the 21-and-over route, at $34.99. For the wider field see Galveston ghost tours compared and haunted places in Galveston.

Questions people ask

Which cemetery does the tour visit?

One: Old City Cemetery, the only stop the listing names. Old City is one of seven yards inside the Broadway Cemetery complex, so there is a good deal more ground on the other side of the fence, but nothing beyond that one name is promised.

Where does it start?

At the cemetery gates at the intersection of Avenue K and 43rd Street. That is the west central gate, on the Evergreen and Hebrew Benevolent corner, and Old City lies three blocks east of it.

Is there a minimum age?

No floor is stated. The bands read infant 0 to 5, child 6 to 11 and adult from 12. The operator does post a moderate physical fitness level, and the listing marks the walk wheelchair and stroller accessible.

Are the 1900 storm victims buried here?

Overwhelmingly not. The storm dead were taken out to sea, came back within a day and were burned. Two yards in this complex, Evergreen and New City, date from 1900 and were created in part to memorialize them.

Can I cancel?

The listing carried a free-cancellation flag at our August 2, 2026 check. We did not verify the window, so read the cancellation terms on the booking page.