The phantoms of Florida’s dead continue to roam the Jacksonville boardwalk. Enter the Gateway to Florida to uncover Jacksonville’s chilling past and discover the tragic mysteries of its present.
Book NowJoin a Jacksonville ghost tour tonight and creep down sordid alleys and thoroughfares of the city to uncover its many ghosts. Investigate deep into the city’s blackened underside and discover why what’s hidden in the shadows during daylight often reveals itself in the darkness of the night.
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Tours are held daily, rain or shine, and year-round. Please see a list of available tours below to book your tour today, or for more information.
We enjoyed our tour immensely! Our tour guide Skylar was very entertaining, knowledgeable & articul... read more
Once considered the finest hotel to sit upon one of the finest beaches in the United States, the Casa Marina was a popular vacation destination for movie stars and mobsters. Some loved it so much that they never left.
The Jacksonville lifeguard station is one of the oldest in the state. It has seen all manner of tragedies during its almost 90 years of service. Dozens of people have drowned just a hair’s distance away from the beach and all those souls seek refuge in this location.
Built in the 1950s, the building now known as Ginger’s was once a dress shop, where mannequins looking out from the windows would draw people in. Today passersby see the face of Ginger Payson staring back at them, the owner who died in 2003.
Tonight, get ready for a thrilling and haunted ride like no other.
Long before the colonials came and forts sprung up like weeds along the coast, Jacksonville was a region mired in superstition, ancient traditions, and medieval rituals. Old lands soaked up the myths of these ancient societies. Some of those tales, some of those tragedies, and much of the warfare of those indigenous people left stains on Jacksonville’s soul. This city was forged in horrors and calamity long before more savage terrors crossed the Atlantic and made it their home.
A dark and tragic history of hurricanes, fires, the Motion Picture Industry, and even mobsters tell the REAL stories of East Coast Hollywood. From forts defended with blood and grizzle, to winter resort areas populated by bootleggers and mobsters — Jacksonville has one of the nation’s most sordid and colorful pasts. Home to some of Florida’s most haunted locations, its history is filled with hellish bouts of Yellow Fever outbreak and its inhabitants were witnesses to bloody battles like The Spanish-American and Civil War that took their toll on the population time and time again.
The infamous background players included the likes of pirates, Presidents, mobsters, Hollywood powerhouses, and vengeful natives. Each and every one of them left behind a tale, along with a couple of ghosts — some their own, some their unwilling victims.
“The New City of the South,” has a 6000-year-old history of Human habitation — curses, plagues, the mutinies, killings, and even murders paint JAX’s rich and gruesome history. Even back then, when humankind made the leap from nomadic tribes to agricultural groupings, a beachfront property was highly valuable due to its commercial advantage.
A history that spans more than 6,000 years of human habitation — Location, location, location. Even back then, when humankind made the leap from nomadic tribes to agricultural groupings, a beachfront property was highly valuable. The area now known as Jacksonville and its equally iconic brother St. Augustine – just a stone’s throw away – are the US’ oldest habitable regions. Ancient places where complex societies, well-adapted to environmental conditions, made their home. Powerful chiefdoms battled and bled for this patch of land.
Come with us this evening as we dig through Jacksonville’s ancient past and unearth the seeds that birthed some of its modern monsters.
Something ghostly – something only our tour guides can show you in the dead of night in Jacksonville wants to make contact. The Jacksonville pier and its rows of bars, family-friendly entertainment, quaint little shops, and sand-packed beaches are full of ghosts. Jacksonville is a city like no other–one that draws in the crowds, the tourists, the ambitious go-getters. It is a city baked in the summer’s heat, brought to life by winter birds wanting a change and spirited by a sprawling commercial district. One of the 12 most populous cities in the US and the biggest one in the State, Jacksonville is full of triumphs and countless failures. Some of those are more tragic, more bloody, and more shameful than others.
Jacksonville is a city tempered by its rich past, built on the heartache of others, where the wraiths of pirates haunt the beaches searching for hidden booty, leaving their ghostly steps behind. Its haunting past is marked by a suicidal, or murdered, actress who haunts a theme park. Its home to multiple haunted, bone-chilling locations waiting for you to tear away the glamor and peer at what really lies beneath.
Journey tonight into the darkness of this city to witness the real Jacksonville. Hear the secrets behind its fame, and encounter the shades and ghosts it has fostered with the wickedness of its residents.
Rub elbows against fiends and specters such as Blackbeard’s ghost, poor drowned Todd, down on her luck actress Karla Rubinstein, and even a cursed other-worldly threat. Those are just a few of the creatures that wait in the shadows.
Learn the thrilling tales of a smuggler who tried to outsmart the city’s crime boss and his cement-footed end. Hear about the region’s founding on the sharp end of a conquistador’s sword and the curses laid on the land by native witch doctors wanting revenge. From wronged starlets looking for fame, but only finding death, to jilted lovers seeking vengeance, The River City’s history is brought with terrifying tales.
The Jacksonville ghost tour is a bone-chilling thrill ride not for the faint at heart. It starts off looking into the horizon, just feet from the sand and its world-famous pier.
Come with our expert guides as we adventure down shadowed avenues, stand under neon lights, and attempt to photograph the unseen. As you hear tales of Jacksonville’s incredible history and off-beat chronology. Witness the former location of a sprawling native encampment, an invasion site for Spaniards, and even a bustling silver screen backlot that existed long before Hollywood came to be.
Come with us as we travel across streets, parks, and peers of this river city as an expert narrator evokes stories that should have stayed dead. Tales of vengeful ghosts, fevered native curses, of blind ambitions. Each haunted stop has its own theme and has been heavily researched with all sightings of haunts documented. Get ready to feel the sinewy cold tingle of something brushing against your back and to get in touch with something from beyond the veil. This ghost tour is an exclusive once-in-a-lifetime experience you’ll recall until your dying day — or longer.
Journey with us through Jacksonville’s haunted history — a past that scurries across its blood soaked veneer. Book this once-in-a-lifetime experience, and be part of a growing community of investigators of the afterlife — Of ghost hunters.
If you’d like to stroll down the haunted promenade of Jacksonville and see this beachside neighborhood in a frightening new light, book your tour with US Ghost Adventures today.
Experience the unexplained — many of our guests bear witness to the unknown. Become one of them tonight.
* This is a walking tour and we do not enter privately-owned buildings or private property *
Make contact with the soul of this tourist enclave and bask in its secret history. A quiet little seaside neighborhood where every nook and cranny has a sinful story to tell. Every spot hides a body, a tragedy, a murder. Every stop is rife with an exciting tale. A history guarded and hidden in the shadows. Our tour, our sensory experience, is heavily researched and based on facts — from periodicals, history books, recorded accounts of hauntings and documented ghost sightings. Learn about the pirates, like Blackbeard that called the shores of JAX their own, of crime families that controlled the region, of drowned northerners swept up by the current. All dead souls are still rattling around.
Some of us are simply attracted by the darker aspects of history. There’s an actual tourism type for that — Dark Tourism. We have on our bucket list Chernobyl. If you tell us that there’s a bar in Port Orange famous because a serial killer picked up their victims there, we will go and have a beer on its stools. We tend to memorize the ghastly bits of stories, the bloody bits. And the truth is that we are a community. If this sounds like you, If you’re the type that pays attention when murder and mayhem step onto the the stage, then this is the perfect tour for you.
There’s a reason why we like our vampires both bloody as well as sexy. Why Dracula or Lestat or even Edward seem like gothic pin-up models. It’s because danger is exciting, danger is sexy, danger is attractive. Studies have shown over and over again that nothing excites us more than a good scare. There’s something in us, something almost self-destructive, that links a good scare with that part of our brain that finds someone attractive. There’s a reason why scary movies and roller coasters get the blood pumping and give that date night a different stimulant.
You’re a history nut. Some of us are like that. We fly into a city and need to know absolutely everything about it. We love a good stat’, or date, or historical tidbit. And the US is full of them. We might be a relatively new nation but what we lack in age we make up in other ways. We started strong and our dogged ambition has allowed us to concentrate into a couple of years what countries in Europe or Asia required millenniums for. JAX is full of fevered history and if you’re a fan of it, it’s time to learn some of its secrets.
Jacksonville like all of Florida is full of crazy sights, of weird history, of bizarre coincidences. For a State so new, and one that was just – as of the start of the 20th century – recently sprung open, it has amassed a lot of history. Still, you’ve gone on all the tours, visited St. Augustine, and made the day trip to Disney. You’ve shopped at its outlets and spent countless hours on JAX’s beaches. You’ve done it all. But not quite. You’ve done the traditional, what about the outré? Time to take a long hard look at the night work that drives this city’s spirit and resurrect its demimonde heart.
When the lights go down the city is possessed by something sinister.. Night-comers scuttle out of the woodwork and haunt the willing, the brave, or the foolish.
“Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn’t like it is either crazy or sober.” — Raymond Chandler.
Jacksonville was once Hollywood before Hollywood was even a thing. The eastern coast of the US was where power couples, producers, the silent screen idols came to film and make magic. This was where the first soundstage and movie studies were built. It was also where the first Hollywood scandals were born. Where starlets and stars sold their souls for 15 minutes of fame. Where torrid affairs were made real. Where passions dictated scenes. Where slander and gossip were the coins of the land. Get the inside scoop on some of the truths behind that era’s biggest wrongdoings. If you’re a fan of yellow journalism, of the seedy, the reproachful, and the tantalizing, JAX is your kind of town. Get the behind the scenes exclusive. Those facts didn’t get past the censors — watch as they are laid bare and naked before you. Decadent parties, midnight trysts, extramarital meetups. Passions inflamed by the sun, the booze, and mankind’s hunger. In JAX, you’ll need a guide that is willing to kiss and tell.
