Experience Tampa’s Most Haunted Ghost Tour

You want a fun group evening activity

Everyone can enjoy a trip to Tampa; it has attractions for every kind of visit. The Florida Aquarium has over 20,000 species of plants and animals, but they close at 5 pm, and they do not have ghosts! If you are too late for the famous stingrays in the touching tank, there is something else to do on the streets of Tampa that will give you the shivers and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end!

All the hauntings and encounters with the unexplained come from first-hand, verified accounts. The stories of real lives cut short that you will hear on Tampa Terrors are plucked directly from the history books. The twisted history of this town does not need any sensationalizing. So you won’t see any costumes or anyone jumping out trying to scare you; the stories are more than enough for that. It does help that your skilled guides are great and adaptable storytellers. This also makes the tour suitable for anyone, young or old; all are welcome to hear Tampa’s horrible history.

Everyone is welcome on Tampa Terrors

Tampa’s streets are as flat as a pancake, and the route sticks to streets with ample sidewalks. The tour is accessible to anyone that can walk a mile. The extended tour adds an additional half-mile and 30 minutes of spooky stories. Tampa Terrors starts and ends at the same location for both the standard and extended tours, and there is plenty of accessible parking nearby.

Guests of all ages are welcome on our ghost tour. Your tour guide will recount stories from the days when pirate ships sailed up the Hillsborough River past trees hung with moss, and Cigar City’s history, infamous criminals, crooks, and double-crossers.

You want a crash course in the history of Tampa

Book your tour for a fascinating glimpse of the city’s past through its ghosts and ghouls. Hear how the roads of the city are built on the crushed bones of the Tocobaga tribe. The foundations of the city rest on Indian graves.

The Tampa Bay History Center has artifacts and exhibits from every era in Tampa’s history, but they don’t have any ghosts. And the dioramas have that hollow feel when something is not entirely authentic. The ghosts of Tampa were real people, with real lives. You will hear their unvarnished stories, how they lived, how they died, and how they still make themselves felt today. Tampa Terrors will take you on a dramatic and atmospheric night-time walking tour to the actual sites where the haunted and historical events of Tampa’s ghostly past took place.

Like the 38th Mayor of Tampa. Another in the line of Tampa McKay’s, Donald Brenan McKay, knowns as ‘D.B.’ to all. He oversaw the public works, sewerage, and infrastructure projects that made Tampa a truly modern city. He was also responsible for the construction of the first Tampa City Hall. This odd building was by turns called a layer cake, an edifice fit for a modern city, and an eclectic mess.

D.B. McKay haunts the city hall to this day, high up in one particular office window, his shadow can often be seen. Find out why his ghost paces back and forth and seems so worried about something. You will also hear the curious story of how the city hall got its clock, and how it got the name ‘Hortense’!

You are not a believer…yet!

Not everyone can be receptive to the energies of the past. Animals and young people tend to be the most open-minded to these subtle ebbs and flows of previous lives. Adults have too much focus on in the here and now, and rightfully so. If you have lost your openness to the other worlds surrounding us, we won’t try to change your mind. We’re just here to lay out the evidence for the thin barrier between this world and the next.

We’re not the only ones exploring the possibility of things beyond the grave. There’s a sliding scale of investigators, from your Ouija board wielding teens to a research center at Yale University. If you are interested in ghosts, you will have seen the many legitimate accounts of hauntings. These raise questions for which satisfactory answers don’t yet exist. That is something we might just have to accept. It’s sometimes tough to take, but being OK with not knowing the answer will make life a lot more bearable.

Tampa Terrors invites you to crack open the door of possibility that there might still be some things in the universe that we don’t have an explanation for yet. You will also receive a fascinating and memorable introduction to Tampa’s flamboyant history through the stories of the lives and deaths of some of its most notable personalities. Unbelievers are especially welcome to join the Tampa Terrors, several have had their minds changed in the past. Will you be next?

Click the ‘Book Now’ button to see available times and places.

Keen to see another side of your hometown?

Perhaps you are a Tampa resident and want to spend a weekend away without going any further than the Downtown area? Staycations are a booming trend in travel; the Sheraton on the river has excellent views and is right in the center of Downtown.

The Sheraton is also one block away from one of the most haunted squares in Tampa. Lykes Gaslight Park is a pretty typical looking park. But it’s diagonal paths pretty much mark an ‘X’ for the haunted center of Tampa. It is also a stone’s throw from the Old City Hall, the haunted Tampa Police Department, and The Vault. However, the largest and most ancient concentration of ghosts is right underneath this spooky park. This is the final resting place for hundreds of bodies.

One of the largest shell mounds in the city stood on this spot. Centuries of Indian burials give the park a spooky atmosphere when the sun goes down. Join Tampa Terrors to hear the stories of how the square is haunted and find out why you might want to avoid it after dark!

While you stay in Downtown Tampa, you can get to know your hometown more and get some more entertaining stories to tell out of town visitors. Even if you choose not to believe the ghost stories, Tampa Terrors is a fun and entertaining night out.

In town for just a short spell and want to get a flavor of Tampa?

If you only have a night or two here in Tampa and want to get a feel for the city’s culture, Tampa Terrors is a great way of doing just that. The ghost stories that stick around are the ones that capture the spirit of the place, literally! The people they memorialize, the places they mark as notorious, these are the secret to how the city sees itself.

Tampa Terrors ghost tour takes you to 8 haunted and historical locations that will give you a good feel for the Big Guava. The city got that nickname when a New York fruit company exec came looking for wild Guava trees in 1884. They didn’t find any in what was a village of around 1000 people at the time. But on his way back to New York, he did swing into Key West to recommended Tampa to his friend, Cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez-Ybor. The rest is history, one that you can experience in the places it actually happened on the Tampa Terrors Extended tour, including all the stops of the standard tour, but adding four additional stops, and about a half-mile of walking.

The Extended tour adds four additional locations after the conclusion of the ghost tour and leaves you to explore the extensive Tampa nightlife afterwards.

Looking for the perfect thing to do in Tampa in the evening?

Tampa has some world-class sights in the daytime, but even Busch Gardens Tampa Bay closes at 6 pm. The Aquarium is the same. Tampa has some legendary nightlife, with dozens of clubs and bars, casinos, and discos across the bays. They really get going later on in the evening, if you are looking for the perfect activity to get the most fun out of your time in Tampa, then Tampa Terrors perfectly fills the slot between the two.

Finish up your hour or ninety-minute haunted walking tour of Downtown Tampa with a new perspective on the city. Tampa has countless secrets to share, and your local professional guides of Tampa Terrors have dug up dirt on the haunted histories of The Big Guava to make your tour a riveting blast through the twisted past of Tampa. Hear all about the ghosts of Downtown Tampa, how they became ghosts, and how they haunt the streets of Tampa today. Tampa Terrors will lift the city’s glitzy curtain to reveal the rotten heart of this ghost-infested city.

Some of the stories that were unearthed for the Tampa Terrors tour were just a bit too far to walk to. The best of the ones that aren’t on the tour can be found on the Tampa Terrors blog