Ghost Tours and Paranormal Adventures Worth Taking in 2026

Ghost tours are commercial walking (or trolley / bus) products: guides, tickets, folklore, sometimes EMF toys. Ghost Adventures is a long-running TV franchise about locked-down investigations and Zak Bagans’ inventory of haunted objects. Related vibe. Different SKUs.

How we chose the tours

Named sources only:

• USA TODAY 10Best — Best Ghost Tour — 2025 winners; 2026 nominees voting mid-September 2026.
• Operator sites for multi-city brands (Ghost City Tours, American Ghost Walks) and iconic single-city products.
• Hotel-affiliated tours (Stanley) that still publish 2026 calendars.

USA TODAY 2025 Best Ghost Tour — the living leaderboard

Per USA TODAY 10Best’s Halloween 2025 winners package and the ghost-tour award page:

2025 Top 10 (Readers’ Choice):

1. Mysteries of Hawaii — Honolulu, HI
2. Providence Ghost Tour — Providence, RI
3. The Queen Mary (tour products) — Long Beach, CA
4. Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours — San Antonio, TX
5. Black Cat Tours — Salem, MA
6. Seaside Shadows Haunted History Tours — Mystic, CT / Westerly, RI
7. Bar Harbor Ghost Tours — Bar Harbor, ME
8. Shepherdstown Mystery Walks — Shepherdstown, WV
9. Old Bisbee Ghost Tour — Bisbee, AZ
10. Chicago Gangsters and Ghosts Tours — Chicago, IL

The September 2026 nominee list included Mysteries of Hawaii, Black Cat, Ghosts & Gravestones, Ghosts of Gettysburg, Grim Philly, Sisters Grimm, Savannah History & Haunts and more. See the linked USA TODAY award page for the announced results.

Mysteries of Hawaii: Native Hawaiian-owned walks that beat the mainland hype machine

Honolulu’s Mysteries of Hawaii took the 2025 national ghost-tour crown. USA TODAY describes its Native Hawaiian-owned walks, including Ghosts of Old Honolulu and Waikiki / Night Marchers themes. The Pacific has plenty of shadows of its own.

Multi-city machines: Ghost City Tours & American Ghost Walks

Ghost City Tours — Savannah origin story, then New Orleans, Gettysburg, Nashville, Austin, Salem, Key West, and expanding. Walking tours + haunted pub crawls. Volume brand with review-count flex. Pick the city; pick the maturity rating; tip the guide.

American Ghost Walks — research-forward walks across 10+ destinations (Madison roots; Milwaukee, Portland ME, Chicago coach tours, Stillwater, Puerto Rico products, etc.). Sells “true history is scarier than a script” energy. Good for enthusiasts who want footnotes with their fog.

Neither company is Zak Bagans. Both will sell you a night walk.

Stanley Hotel Ghost Tours: Rocky Mountain residual celebrity

Estes Park still packages Ghosts and History / night tours with Room 217 lore and corridor folklore (Stanley tour desk). Overnight guests often stack tour + room. Same property as the sleepover package — different product code. The Shining was fiction. The gift shop is very real.

Salem, St. Augustine, Williamsburg, Gettysburg — the colonial death-map circuit

• Salem, MA — Black Cat Tours on the 2025 Top 10; multiple licensed operators (city guide rules apply). Witch-trial history + modern occult retail. October is gridlock with cloaks — book ahead.
• St. Augustine, FL — Ghosts & Gravestones and other Old City products still work Tolomato Cemetery / Old Jail folklore lanes; 2014’s Sheriff’s Ghost Walk DNA lives on in a crowded guide market.
• Williamsburg, VA — Colonial Ghosts / The Original Ghost Tours / US Ghost Adventures — Williamsburg (again: tour brand, not the TV series) still sell Peyton Randolph House and Gaol folklore after dark.
• Gettysburg, PA — Ghosts of Gettysburg (Mark Nesbitt lineage) and Ghost City presence; battlefield town = densest ghost-walk competition per square brick.

New Orleans: French Quarter walks and gear-forward hunts

French Quarter operators offer theatrical walks, LaLaurie lore and cemetery tour products. For enthusiasts who want equipment, operators such as Gators & Ghosts market small-group paranormal hunts with K2 / REM Pod / SLS-style kits. A guide, a dark street and an instrument that might decide to speak: a different night from the standard storytelling walk.

Hands-on West Coast: Hollywood EMF nights

The Haunt (Los Angeles) sells Hollywood / Chinatown ghost-hunting walks with EMF meters and spirit-box optional play (thehauntghosttours.com). Meet near the Roosevelt lore corridor. Believers and skeptics both pay the same price. Only one group goes home sure.

• Gatlinburg / Chattanooga ghost walks — Smokies folklore + cemetery starts; TripAdvisor-era excellence claims from 2013 are nostalgia, so re-check current ratings and schedules.
• Ybor City (Tampa) — historic cigar-city haunt walks; EMF-detector gimmicks never really left the industry.
• Haunted Heartland–style lock-ins — asylum / penitentiary overnight investigations remain a separate product class from street walks (Waverly, Eastern State daytime/history vs. Halloween Nights, Ohio State Reformatory, Trans-Allegheny). Buy from the facility or a contracted investigator group; do not confuse with a $25 downtown stroll.
• Grim Philly Twilight Tours — Bourdain-endorsed dark history; 2026 nominee energy. Founding Fathers, but make it unseemly.

Ghost tours and the television show

• Product — Ghost tour company: Walking/bus tickets, pub crawls, some equipment hunts — ***Ghost Adventures* (TV)**: Episodes, lock-downs, merch, Haunted Museum (Vegas)
• Proof standard — Ghost tour company: Stories + optional guest photos — ***Ghost Adventures* (TV)**: Edited TV evidence packages
• How you participate — Ghost tour company: Buy a seat, follow a guide — ***Ghost Adventures* (TV)**: Watch / visit museum attractions

Want the museum? Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum in Las Vegas won USA TODAY’s 2025 Best Haunted Destination — adjacent lane, still not a walking tour of the French Quarter.

Bottom line

For a paranormal night out, choose a sanctioned tour in a city that sells darkness as heritage. Use the operator’s site for meeting points, age rules and access. Then follow the lantern.

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Sources

• Claim element: 2025 Best Ghost Tour = Mysteries of Hawaii; category framing — Attribution: USA TODAY 10Best Editors, Oct. 1, 2025 — Link: Best things to do this Halloween…
• Claim element: 2025 Top 10 ghost tours; 2026 nominees list — Attribution: USA TODAY 10Best — Best Ghost Tour — Link: Best ghost tour
• Claim element: Multi-city walking tours / pub crawls — Attribution: Ghost City Tours — Link: ghostcitytours.com
• Claim element: Research-forward multi-state walks — Attribution: American Ghost Walks — Link: americanghostwalks.com
• Claim element: Stanley Hotel ghost tour product — Attribution: Stanley Hotel — Link: Stanley Ghost Tours
• Claim element: French Quarter equipment hunt product — Attribution: Gators & Ghosts — Link: Paranormal Ghost Hunt
• Claim element: Hollywood EMF walking investigation — Attribution: The Haunt Ghost Tours — Link: Hollywood Ghost Tour
• Claim element: Williamsburg walking ghost tour product — Attribution: Colonial Ghosts — Link: colonialghosts.com

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Protective footer / legal disclaimer

This article is mature-audience tourism commentary. It covers commercial ghost tours and paranormal-themed experiences, which are entertainment and historical storytelling products — not the Travel Channel/Discovery television series *Ghost Adventures, except where a museum or destination is explicitly named as a separate attraction. Monstrum Athenaeum does not certify that any location is haunted, that any device reading is paranormal, or that any tour’s historical claims are complete. Tour routes, cemetery access, age limits, alcohol rules, and guide-licensing requirements vary by city; follow local law and operator instructions. Do not trespass, vandalize, or disturb burial grounds outside sanctioned tour stops. Outbound links are for attribution and reader verification. Ticket prices and schedules change. Results (including apparitions) are not guaranteed — and skepticism is free.*