Ghost Hunt Outdoor Escape Game in Philadelphia

Ghost Hunt Outdoor Escape Game in Philadelphia is a self-guided phone game from Questo, not a guided tour. There is no guide at any point. It listed from $10.49 at our July 30, 2026 check, runs about two hours, and is sold as a private booking, so you play at your own pace. The app feeds you clues and directs you to nine stops, among them the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site and Eastern State Penitentiary. It rated 2.5 from four Viator reviews, the lowest score and the smallest sample of the eight Philadelphia listings we track, and four reviews is far too thin to settle anything. It suits a self-directed walker on a small budget who wants a puzzle rather than a storyteller.

What you will see

The route opens at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site at 532 North Seventh Street, a National Historic Landmark since 1962 and the last of Poe's Philadelphia addresses still standing. He rented it, roughly 1843 to 1844, and never owned it. Nothing inside belonged to him, which the 1974 federal nomination conceded. That nomination also says he wrote The Raven here, and it is wrong: the poem first appeared in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, after he had left the city. The Tell-Tale Heart falls outside the tenancy too, published in January 1843. What belongs here is The Black Cat, published August 19, 1843. The cellar holds a false chimney resembling the recess the narrator walls his wife into, and the Park Service says only that it could well have been the inspiration. That hedge is the whole of the evidence, and the apparition stories have no documentary basis.

North Broad puts two congregations on opposite corners of one intersection. Congregation Rodeph Shalom at 615 North Broad dates to 1795 and is the oldest Ashkenazic congregation in the Western Hemisphere, but that describes the congregation, not the building: the sanctuary is Simon and Simon's, 1927 to 1928, on the National Register since 2007. Frank Furness gets the credit on plenty of tours and should not: his 1866 to 1871 synagogue stood here until the congregation pulled it down in 1927. We found no ghost story attached to it at all. Old Zion Lutheran Church at 628 North Broad has served the city since 1742, but its eighteenth-century events belong to a building two miles away, Zion Church at Fourth and Cherry, which burned on December 26, 1794 and was demolished in 1869. Five years to the day after that fire, the House walked from Congress Hall to that church for Washington's memorial. The Broad Street building went up in 1891, and Old Zion moved in after a 1984 merger, so the congregation is the continuity, not the walls.

The listing calls its fifth stop the Mint House at the Divine Lorraine Hotel, and that name is out of date: the Mint House hotel there closed on January 1, 2025 and the new owner announced a return to apartments. The building, 699 North Broad, joined the National Register in 2002 as the Lorraine Apartments. The Historic American Buildings Survey dates it from the trade press: Willis G. Hale's plans in November 1892, built 1893 to 1894, so the 1892 date in circulation is the design year. In 1948 Father Divine's movement bought it and opened it to everyone, and the survey's phrase is worth keeping rather than upgrading: "one of the first high-end integrated hotels in the United States." It closed in 1999 and stood stripped for about fifteen years, which is where the ghost reputation came from. The survey holds nothing paranormal.

The route ends at Eastern State Penitentiary, 2027 Fairmount Avenue, about eleven acres, a National Historic Landmark since 1965. The cornerstone went down in 1823 to John Haviland's design and the first prisoner arrived on October 25, 1829. The federal nomination describes cells of 12 by 8 by 10 feet, each with its own walled yard. Dickens came in 1842 and wrote that he believed the regime "in its effects, to be cruel and wrong." It ran another 71 years before the system was abandoned in 1913. Two corrections travel with the place: Pep, the black Labrador admitted in 1924, did not kill the governor's cat, and Capone was here for roughly the winter of 1929 to 1930, not a full year, with the cell display a recreation. Neither the federal record nor the site's own history carries a ghost claim. The four remaining stops, Broad and Spring Garden, the Prohibition Taproom, Roberto Clemente Playground and St Andrew Lithuanian Catholic Church, turned up no documented history, so we invent none.

Who it suits

This is a walking route you run yourself off a phone, about two hours, from Seventh and Spring Garden west to Fairmount Avenue. It is the only listing in our Philadelphia set that leaves the Independence Hall district, and the only one without a guide. The trade is a cheap outdoor puzzle instead of a person telling you the stories.

• Skip it if you want a live guide. Every other Philadelphia ghost tour we track is a guided walk.
• Skip it if you came for Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and Old City. This route misses them.
• Check accessibility first. No wheelchair or stroller detail appears on this listing.
• Bring a charged phone. The clues and the directions live in the app.

How it compares

Every other ghost tour we track in Philadelphia comes with a guide, so the comparison is cheap and self-directed against a person telling you the story. The Phantom Penance of Philadelphia Ghost Tour is closest on price at $26 for one hour, rated 4.3 across 284 reviews. Dark Philly Adult Night Tour is $38 for two hours, the same length as this game, and by far the most reviewed in our set, 4.9 from 4,469 reviews. Ghost Tour of Philadelphia by Candlelight is $29 for an hour and a quarter at 4.0 from 159 reviews, the lowest-rated of the guided listings and still a point and a half above this one.

At $10.49 this is the lowest from-price of the eight Philadelphia listings we track, with one seasonal listing showing no price at our check, and it is the only self-guided one of the eight. On price and flexibility it wins. If you want the history told well, four reviews at 2.5 promises nothing. For the full field, see our Philadelphia ghost tour comparison and the best haunted tours in Philadelphia.

Questions people ask

Is there a guide?

No. Questo sells it as a self-guided game played on your phone, and the booking is private, so you read the clues yourself and the app points you to the next stop. Nobody meets you.

What does it cost and how long does it take?

From $10.49 at our July 30, 2026 check, and about two hours. The listing carries tiered pricing, so check the total for your party size.

How bad is the 2.5 rating?

It is the lowest of the eight Philadelphia listings in our research, and it rests on four reviews. That is too small a sample to condemn the game or to clear it, so treat it as unproven.

Do I get inside the Poe house or Eastern State Penitentiary?

No admissions appear on this listing, and the live name calls it an outdoor game, so plan on seeing the buildings from the street. The Poe site is National Park Service and free to enter; an Eastern State visit you would arrange yourself.

Is the Divine Lorraine still a hotel?

No, and the listing has not caught up. The Mint House hotel there ran from May 2022 until January 1, 2025, and the new owner announced a return to apartments.