The Galveston Cemetery Tour: Walk With The Dead

The Galveston Cemetery Tour: Walk With The Dead is a 90-minute evening walk run by Historic Galveston Ghost Tours, listed from $31 per person when we checked on August 2, 2026. You meet the guide, billed as The Lady In Black, at the intersection of 40th Street and Avenue K, and park on 40th halfway down the block. The listing names three stops, Old City Cemetery, Episcopal Cemetery and Trinity Episcopal Cemetery, though two of those names belong to the same parcel. The group is capped at 30, the youngest booking band opens at 4, strollers are listed as accessible and wheelchairs are not. Inclusions are a guided walk and nothing else. It rates 4.8 from 407 reviews, the second-largest review base among the thirteen Galveston products we checked.

The live listing name ends in an exclamation mark, which our house style strips. Same tour, tidier punctuation.

What the route covers

Start with the correction that matters most, because this is the only Galveston listing we checked that names both. Episcopal Cemetery and Trinity Episcopal Cemetery are the same yard. The federal National Register nomination 14000340 uses one name in its description and the other in its photo log and interment table for the same parcel, and the City of Galveston lists a single Episcopal cemetery here, with Trinity Episcopal Church as its contact. A route that walks you to two different Episcopal cemeteries is inventing a stop. Nor is there a churchyard at Trinity Episcopal Church itself, twenty blocks away; this ground is its parish burial ground, and the Rev. Benjamin Eaton lies under the chancel floor of the church.

All three names sit inside one place: the Broadway Cemetery Historic District, listed on the National Register in 2014 as reference 14000340. It is seven burial grounds inside a single iron fence, six city blocks and 15.27 acres bounded by Broadway (Avenue J), Avenue L, 40th and 43rd, cut west to east by Avenue K. The meeting point at 40th and Avenue K is the east central gate, standing between the two yards this listing actually names. City lots were set aside in 1839 under the Galveston City Charter for family burying grounds, and the Galveston City Company formally donated four blocks in July 1840. Before that the dead went into the sand hills east of Center Street and south of Avenue N, where the nomination says those who died in the 1839 yellow fever epidemic were primarily interred, so the fever dead of that year are not under this ground. The nomination counts just over 6,000 burial sites across the district, a figure worth holding onto because the counts quoted on tours run high. Four yards are city-owned and three are private, and with fewer than ten burials a year as of 2013 this is still a working cemetery.

Old City Cemetery, opened 1839, lies north of Avenue K in the corner of Broadway and 40th, at the east end of the complex rather than the 43rd Street end. The nomination's table gives Emily Mariah Reed, aged 19, buried November 22, 1841, as the earliest known burial at the complex, and counts roughly 1,500 interments in this yard. Nobody should be called the first person buried here: the same document lists George Campbell Childress, who died on October 6, 1841, in a yard not deeded until 1844, and never reconciles the two. Immediately west lies the 1839 Potter's Field, re-dedicated as Oleander Cemetery by a 1939 ordinance, its Confederate section marked Soldier's Rest.

The Episcopal yard, opened 1844, runs against 40th south of Avenue K. Block 100 was deeded on March 1, 1844 to Benjamin Eaton, Rector of the Episcopal Church, on condition that it be used as a burial ground, and lots were advertised by April 20 of that year. The brick wall and iron fence went up between 1876 and 1878, the brick receiving vault was ordered demolished by the city Board of Health in 1890, and the grade inside was raised in 1925, not in the 1904 to 1910 window you may hear. Galveston's first mayor, Major John M. Allen, and Childress, a co-author of the Texas Declaration of Independence, are both documented here; city founder Michel B. Menard lies in the neighboring Old Catholic yard. Almost all the privately commissioned funerary sculpture in the complex was cut between 1879 and 1909 by Charles Sebastian Ott.

The 1900 storm is the one thing that is not underfoot here, which is worth knowing before a guide tells you otherwise. Most cemetery records were destroyed. The storm dead were largely subject to a mass burial at sea, washed back within 24 hours, and then burned on pyres by order of the Central Relief Committee. Two yards inside the complex date from that year and were created in part to memorialize the victims, which is a memorial rather than an interment. Neither storm-year yard was renamed to cheer the city up; Evergreen first appears in the sexton records in 1923. The toll itself is a range and not a count: federal sources say at least 8,000 and the Handbook of Texas gives 6,000 to 8,000 in the city and 10,000 to 12,000 island-wide, while Isaac Cline wrote that the correct number would probably never be known. Whole families were gone. One last thing: the named ghosts you may find online for this ground come from a different, chain operator's pages, and neither appears in the 84-page federal nomination.

Who it suits

Evening cemetery walking for adults and children from 4 up, 90 minutes, at $31, capped at 30, with active military free. This is not a churchyard you wander at night on your own: there are gates at the central entrances on 40th and 43rd, and three of the seven yards belong to a church, a diocese and a benevolent society, so check access hours with City Parks and Recreation before making any plan of your own.

• Choose it if you want a cemetery route rather than the Strand. Only two of the thirteen Galveston products we checked are cemetery walks, and they share the Old City Cemetery stop.
• Choose it if depth of feedback matters. At 407 reviews this carries the second-largest review base of the thirteen products we checked, behind only the same operator's residential anchor walk.
• Skip it if anyone in your party uses a wheelchair. This is the only listing of the thirteen we checked that does not claim wheelchair access. Strollers are listed as fine.
• Skip it on the operator's own health flag, which names heart problems and other serious medical conditions.

How it compares

The set we checked holds exactly two cemetery routes, and they share a stop but not a gate. Ghost City Tours' Galveston's Haunted Cemetery Walking Tour is $29.99 for 90 minutes, rates 4.6 from 200 reviews, caps at 40, lists wheelchair access, and names one stop. It meets at Avenue K and 43rd, the west central gate over by Evergreen and the Hebrew Benevolent yard, while the yard it names, Old City, is three blocks east where this walk begins. So: a higher rating on roughly twice the reviews, a cap ten lower, $1.01 more, no wheelchair access, and a different entrance to the same fenced complex. Against this operator's own anchor walk, $33 for six residential houses at a cap of 35, this is $2 cheaper on a different route. Both cemetery walks sit on our Galveston ghost tour hub.

Questions people ask

Are Episcopal Cemetery and Trinity Episcopal Cemetery two different stops?

No. They are the same parcel under two names. The federal nomination uses one name in its description and the other in its photo log and interment table for that yard, and the City of Galveston lists a single Episcopal cemetery here. Expect two names, one gate.

How long is it, and when does it run?

Ninety minutes, in the evening per the July 29, 2026 facts pass. No clock start time is published on the listing, so confirm your departure at booking.

Is it wheelchair accessible?

No. This listing does not claim wheelchair access, and at our August 1, 2026 check it was the only one of the thirteen Galveston products that did not. Strollers are listed as accessible.

Where does it meet?

At the intersection of 40th Street and Avenue K, the east central gate of the Broadway cemetery complex, where you look for the guide billed as The Lady In Black. The listing says to park on 40th, halfway down the block.

Is any ghost-hunting equipment included?

No. The inclusions list a guided walking tour and nothing else. No equipment, admissions or transport appeared anywhere in the listing at our August 1, 2026 check.

Are the 1900 storm victims buried here?

Overwhelmingly not. The storm dead were largely buried at sea, washed back within a day, and burned on pyres by order of the Central Relief Committee. Two yards in the complex were created in part to memorialize them, which is a memorial rather than a grave.