Ghost Tour of St. Augustine: The Original Haunted History Tour

Ghost Tour of St. Augustine: The Original Haunted History Tour is a 90-minute evening walk from Spyglass Tours, sold on Viator from $25 per person at our August 2, 2026 check. That $25 is the price floor of the guided walks among the twelve bookable St. Augustine listings we compare, and its 4.9 from 426 reviews is the highest rating of any listing in that set with more than a hundred reviews behind it. The four named stops are the marquee four: Huguenot Cemetery, St. George Street, the Castillo de San Marcos and Tolomato Cemetery. Wheelchair and stroller access are both listed, and the booking bands start children at 5.

The word Original belongs to the operator's product name and appears nowhere else here. We are Arizona guides who research haunted history in other cities, so read this as a write-up of somebody else's tour, not one we run.

What you will see

The Castillo de San Marcos needs the least embroidery and usually gets the most. The National Register nomination states that the coquina fort was built in 1672 to 1695 and remodeled in 1738 to 1740, 1752 to 1756 and 1762, and that it became British in 1763, Spanish again in 1784 and American in 1821 (NRHP 66000062). Never taken by assault is true; never conquered needs the footnote that it changed hands three times, by treaty each time. The material worth the walk is the prison record. Seminole prisoners were held here from 1837, and Coacoochee led twenty of them out on the night of 29 November that year (National Park Service). Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Caddo and Arapaho prisoners arrived under Lieutenant Richard Pratt in May 1875, Apache prisoners from 1886, and by January 1887 the nomination counts 447 prisoners inside the walls, with tourists coming to look at them. The famous dungeon does not survive the record: the sealed room opened in the 1830s was the fort's first permanent powder magazine, and the Park Service publishes its own debunking of it. Osceola was imprisoned here but died at Fort Moultrie on 30 January 1838.

St. George Street is where the tour walks rather than a single address, and the honest version beats the usual one. The street grid follows Spanish colonial planning rules codified by the 1573 Laws of the Indies, and the town plan as a plan is why the district is a National Historic Landmark, designated 15 April 1970 (NRHP 70000847). Do not date the street to 1565: that is the city's founding year and a different location. Here is the correction the federal inventory hands you for free: most of the colonial-looking buildings on the pedestrian block are reconstructions put up between 1962 and 1980 and classed non-contributing for that reason. The genuine colonial fabric is a short list including the Avero House of 1735 to 1743 and the Arrivas House of 1710 to 1740.

The Huguenot Cemetery, the half-acre outside the Old City Gate, was set aside in 1821 during that year's yellow fever epidemic as the burying ground for non-Catholics, has been Presbyterian-owned since 1832, and closed to interments in 1884 (Florida Department of State). Its documented figure is John B. Stickney, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, who died in Washington on 5 November 1882; the Evening Star of the following morning reports pneumonia at Providence Hospital (Evening Star). No Huguenots are buried there, and the gold-teeth exhumation tale has no contemporaneous source.

Tolomato Cemetery closes the loop on Cordova Street: Guale mission ground resettled after 1702, cemetery-only use from 1777 under Fr. Pedro Camps, Georges Biassou of the Haitian Revolution buried here in 1801 in a grave nobody can locate, Bishop Augustin Verot moved to the central memorial tomb on 22 January 1988, and burials stopped in 1884 (preservation association). The defensible superlative is the association's own, oldest extant planned cemetery in Florida. Both cemeteries on this route are locked at night, so the tour reads them from outside the fence.

Who it suits

Ninety minutes, in the evening, at the bottom of the guided price band, covering the fort, the pedestrian street and both cemeteries. It is the broadest single-walk coverage of the old town in the St. Augustine set we compare, with wheelchair and stroller both listed.

• Choose it if you want one walk covering the four sites everybody comes to St. Augustine to see, without paying more for it.
• Choose it on price and rating together: $25 is the guided floor here, and 4.9 across 426 reviews is the strongest pairing of the two in the set we compare.
• Choose it if you are pushing a stroller or need a wheelchair-accessible route, both of which are listed.
• Skip it if you want to go inside the cemeteries or the fort after dark, because neither is open then.

How it compares

St. Augustine Ghost Tour: A Ghostly Encounter runs the same 90 minutes at $30 and rates 4.7, but across 2,475 reviews, a base nearly six times this one's, and it names two pass-by stops to this walk's four. Walking Tour in North City Cemeteries of St. Augustine shares the $25 price and spends two hours on the cemeteries alone at 4.8 from 132 reviews. On the numbers we can verify this is the strongest all-round pick in the set; the caveat is that four stops in 90 minutes means storytelling on the move.

Questions people ask

How long is it, when does it run, and what does it cost?

One hour thirty minutes, in the evening, from $25 per person, checked on August 2, 2026. No clock time is verified, so confirm the departure when you book.

What ages can book?

The booking bands start children at 5. We do not write age guidance beyond that verified lower bound.

Do you go inside the cemeteries?

No. Both Huguenot and Tolomato are locked at night, and the tour views them from outside the fence. Each opens to the public on published days at midday, not in the evening.

Is it accessible, and can I cancel?

Wheelchair and stroller access are both listed, surfaces included. The listing offers free cancellation up to 24 hours before the start, and confirmation comes within 48 hours.