Ghost City Tours New Orleans: The Ghosts of New Orleans Tour

What Is Included

Two things are included: the 90 minute haunted walking tour of the French Quarter, and all taxes, fees and handling charges. That is the whole list. The guide is a licensed New Orleans guide, since the city requires tour guides to be licensed.

• 90-minute haunted walking tour of the French Quarter
• All taxes, fees and handling charges

What Is Not Included

Gratuities are the only stated exclusion, and tipping your guide is the one extra you should expect to pay on the day. Nothing else is promised. No entry inside any building is included, no drinks or food, no hotel pickup, and no transport of any kind, because the walk is on foot.

If a building entry matters to you, the French Quarter ghost tour with interior visit at $37 goes inside one private haunted location.

• Gratuities
• Building entry (all stops are viewed from the street)
• Food and drinks
• Hotel pickup or drop-off

Museums You Could Add Yourself

Because the tour does not go inside buildings, any interiors are your own expense and your own planning. Two museums in the Quarter can be added on your own. The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres Street charges $10 self-guided admission for adults and $7 for seniors, students and military, open Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with guided tours at $20 for adults.

The Historic New Orleans Collection at 520 Royal Street is free with tickets, Tuesday to Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The Price in Context

At $29.99 this is one of several French Quarter tours. Others on this site are listed at $21 for a ghost and vampire walk, $37 for the interior-visit walk and $65 for the carriage ride. The table below sets out what the $29.99 covers, using the figures from the listing.

No Stop List Is Published

Unlike several competitors, Ghost City Tours does not name its stops for this tour. You meet at the storefront at 809 Royal Street, you walk for 90 minutes through the French Quarter, and the route is whatever your guide covers that night. If a published route matters to you, the Witches Brew walk from Exchange Alley names its stops, from the Witches Brew Gallery to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar, and its page lists them.

The Haunts Around Royal Street

What can be said with confidence is what sits within a few blocks of the meeting point, because these are the documented haunted places of the neighborhood. The LaLaurie Mansion stands at 1140 Royal Street at the corner of Governor Nicholls Street. Delphine LaLaurie bought the property in 1831 and the mansion was finished in 1832.

A kitchen fire in 1834 led rescuers to bound and mutilated enslaved people in the attic, and the New Orleans Bee reported seven people more or less horribly mutilated, suspended by the neck. A mob then wrecked the house and LaLaurie fled. The house is a private residence today and can only be seen from the street.

Haunted Hotels on the Same Streets

Ghost City Tours' own site writes about the Andrew Jackson Hotel at 919 Royal Street, where the legend says five boys died in a school fire in the 1700s and their ghosts play pranks on guests. Historians dispute the story because the standing brick building dates from 1890. Also on the ghost circuit is the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, whose ballroom carries legends of a dancing woman and a ghostly nun.

Whether your guide covers any of these on the night is not stated in the listing.

Where It Starts and Ends

The start is fixed and precise: the Ghost City Tours storefront at 809 Royal Street, with the company sign in the window. The return point is not stated in the listing. For cruise passengers, the listing says the tour departs within walking distance of the cruise port.

Families and Access

This is one of the more accessible listings in the comparison. It is wheelchair accessible, infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller, service animals are allowed, and it is rated suitable for all physical fitness levels. Viator lists infants 0 to 5, children 6 to 11 and adults 12 to 99, and children must be accompanied by an adult.

There is no adults-only age gate. Public transportation options are nearby and those transport options are wheelchair accessible too.

Who Should Book Something Else

If you are a group of adults chasing scares and darker material, the adults-only true crime and ghost walk at $38 restricts entry to ages 17 and over. If you want a documented stop list with interior access, the ghost tour with an interior visit names its route and goes inside one private haunted building. If you want the cemeteries, no walk from a Royal Street storefront gets you there, because St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 admits visitors only with a registered guide, so look at the official St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 walking tour. The night cemetery bus tour is a night bus ride to haunted locations and the cities of the dead.

The Honest Notes

Three things deserve saying before you book. First, the tour runs 90 minutes, so if you want a longer night, the $21 walk runs 2 hours. Second, no start times are printed in the listing, so the actual departure hour shows only when you check availability, and you must call the operator at 888-859-5375 to reconfirm.

Third, the absence of a published stop list means you are buying the operator's reputation, a 4.7 rating from 722 reviews, rather than a named route. If that uncertainty bothers you, pick a listing that names its stops.

What You Can Do Free

The houses on any French Quarter ghost route stand on public streets and cost nothing to look at. The LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street is a private residence, and viewing the exterior from Royal Street at Governor Nicholls Street is free. St. Louis Cathedral, Pere Antoine's Alley and the other street exteriors are free to see, and Jackson Square is a public square.

A self-guided evening walk past these facades, with the stories read from the pages on haunted places in New Orleans and the LaLaurie Mansion, costs exactly nothing.

What You Cannot Do Alone

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the exception. Since the Archdiocese restricted access, the cemetery is entered only with a registered guide, so you cannot walk to Marie Laveau's tomb on your own. The official option is the 55 minute walking tour at $25, which includes a Cemetery Tour Access Pass.

See St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 for how it works.

What a Guide Adds

What you pay $29.99 for is the telling, not the access. A licensed guide carries the stories: the 1834 fire at the LaLaurie house, the casket girls and the convent attic legend, the sultan massacre tale at the Gardette-LePrete House, and the yellow fever summers that killed more than 8,000 people in Louisiana in 1853 alone. A guide also keeps a small group moving on busy streets after dark and can answer questions.

If you are happy researching and walking yourself, skip the tour. If you want the stories delivered in 90 minutes with a group of 9, book it.