The Ghosts of Key West Walking Tour

The Ghosts of Key West Walking Tour is a 90-minute evening walk from Ghost City Tours, booking from $29.99 per person at our August 2, 2026 check, when it carried 4.3 from 139 Viator reviews. It is the cheapest of the six guided haunted Key West listings we track and the only one banded from infancy: the booking bands run adult 12 to 100, child 6 to 11 and infant 0 to 5, and the listing is marked wheelchair accessible, with surfaces and transportation flagged accessible. Two numbers cut the other way. The cap is 30, the largest of the six, and that 4.3 is the lowest rating of any Key West listing in our set with more than a hundred reviews. Six stops are named, none flagged as a pass-by.

What you will see

Five of the six stops in the table above have research behind them, and the meeting point is one of them; only River Street Sweets has nothing. Ghost City Tours is a chain, and our research documents its own Key West pages as unreliable, so what follows comes from the record rather than from the operator.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church at 401 Duval, where the group gathers, is four churches on one lot inside eighty years: a coral rock church begun in 1838 and taken by the 11 October 1846 hurricane; a frame church of 1848 burned in the citywide Great Fire of 30 March 1886; a wood church of 1887 destroyed by the 11 October 1909 hurricane; and the present concrete church, first service 8 June 1919. Browne records the vestry vote of 10 July 1838; the 1839 completion belongs to the parish and to marker 92, not to him. This operator's own page says the church was established in 1832 by John Fleming, that he donated land, contributed funds and personally recruited clergy, and that his grave is marked by an imposing monument. None of it holds. John William Charles Fleeming died on 19 December 1832, four days before the first clergyman reached the island, the land came from his widow on 5 May 1838, and the parish and marker 92 both say the burial site is unknown, so there is no monument to walk to.

The Audubon House and Tropical Gardens at 205 Whitehead Street is named for a man who was never inside it, and the museum agrees. It was built for Capt. John Geiger: the museum dates construction to 1846-1849 and its own director of operations to 1847 to 1849, at least fourteen years after Audubon's only Key West visit in 1832. The Florida Historical Society reports flatly that he did not actually stay in what is now called the Audubon House, quoting that director on the garden, where a smaller cottage stood rather than this building. The name dates from 1960: the Key West Citizen's coverage of the dedication describes Mitchell Wolfson's foundation restoring the old Geiger House, renaming it and opening it as a public museum, which it did on Friday 18 March 1960. The story that Audubon named the Geiger tree traces to that same dedication-week feature. A search of Ornithological Biography volumes 1 to 4 returns no hits for Geiger, and Audubon's own list of Key West hosts names Major Glassel, his officers and their families, and Dr Benjamin Strobel. Of the Cordia sebestena he wrote that he saw only two individuals at Key West, in a yard opposite Dr Strobel's, and obtained his drawing bough through Strobel's influence. One practical note: this is a ticketed indoor museum with daytime hours, 9:30am to 4:15pm, so an evening walk stands on the sidewalk.

La Concha at 430 Duval opened on January 22, 1926. Key West Historic Marker 12 records Carl Aubuchon starting construction in 1925 and the hotel being sold within six months of the 1929 crash and renamed the Key West Colonial. What the marker does not record is most of what this operator's page says: more than a dozen people leaping from the roof, the building being the largest and tallest in Key West, and a busboy killed in an open elevator shaft in the 1980s. The same page has Truman spending his weekends here, while the Truman Little White House's own site records 12 visits and 175 days between 1946 and 1952 at the Little White House itself. The same operator also calls La Concha the island's first luxury hotel, which Casa Marina already was, having opened on 31 December 1920. On Tennessee Williams we keep the hedge: the Key West Art and Historical Society says it is believed he wrote the final draft of A Streetcar Named Desire at the hotel in 1947, marker 12 states it flatly, and the hotel's own timeline files the stay under 1946.

Marrero's Guest Mansion at 410 Fleming Street is a private occupied guesthouse, so nobody goes inside, and what the record carries there is the cigar trade rather than the ghost. The Sanborn fire-insurance index for April 1889 lists two Marrero cigar factories, April 1892 lists one, and by April 1899 no Marrero appears at all. Nothing located documents the marriage, the death, the eviction or the court case that circulate with the address, the build year is unsettled between 1889, 1890 and the 1880s, and Fleming Street's numbers shifted by about a hundred between the 1892 and 1899 Sanborns, so today's 410 cannot be laid over an 1890s map. This operator's own page says only that the house was built in the 1880s. At The Artist House, 534 Eaton Street, the thing to get right is the doll: Robert the Doll has been at the Fort East Martello Museum since Myrtle Reuter donated him in 1994, out of a private house on Von Phister Street, so nobody sees him at this stop. The property dates its own construction to "Built between 1890-98".

Who it suits

Families and mixed-ability groups who want a cheap, short, accessible first ghost walk. It is the only one of the six guided haunted listings we track whose infant band starts at 0, and it carries no minimum-party rule, unlike the Ghost and Mysteries walk.

• Skip it if you want a small group. The cap is 30, the largest of the six guided haunted listings we track.
• The listing flags it as not recommended for travelers with back problems or for pregnant travelers.
• Inclusions were not captured on the listing data we verified and no admissions are recorded, so plan on street-level stops.
• Accessibility is per listing here: this one is marked wheelchair accessible, the same operator's 21-and-over crawl is not.

How it compares

We track six guided haunted Key West listings that were bookable at our August 2, 2026 check: this walk, the two 21-and-over crawls, the Ghost and Mysteries walk, the equipment-led ghost hunt and the Ghosts and Gravestones trolley. Named but not ranked: a $9.75 self-guided phone tour whose nine reviews are too thin, the private haunted-history walk, out of stock at the same check, and the Sebago sunset sail, which is not a ghost product. This is the cheapest of the six. Against Key West Ghost and Mysteries Guided Tour at $33 it is $3.01 less for the same 90 minutes, but that walk holds 4.5 from 1,117 reviews against this one's 4.3 from 139, caps at 16 rather than 30, and requires two people per booking where this has no party rule. The real split is access: this listing is marked wheelchair accessible and that one is not. Its own operator's Key West Haunted Pub Crawl Walking Tour is listed not accessible, so the same chain runs opposite access in one city. The Key West page lays them all out.

Questions people ask

How much is it, how long, and how big is the group?

From $29.99 at our August 2, 2026 check, an hour and a half, and up to 30 travelers.

Is it wheelchair accessible?

Yes. At our August 1, 2026 check the listing marked the tour, its surfaces and its transportation wheelchair accessible, and strollers accessible. That is this listing only: the same operator's Key West pub crawl is marked not accessible.

Can children come?

The booking bands run adult 12 to 100, child 6 to 11 and infant 0 to 5. Of the six guided haunted listings we track, it is the only one whose infant band starts at 0.

Where does it meet?

The corner of Duval and Eaton, outside St. Paul's Episcopal Church, directly across from River Street Sweets.

Any health advisories?

The listing says it is not recommended for travelers with back problems or for pregnant travelers, and rates it moderate physical fitness.

Do we go inside the Audubon House?

The listing records no inclusions and no admissions, and the museum is ticketed with daytime hours of 9:30am to 4:15pm, so an evening walk sees it from the sidewalk.