The Most Haunted Places in St. Augustine

Founded in 1565, St. Augustine has had Spanish, British and American rulers, epidemics, sieges and fires. Each left buildings and burial grounds behind, and with them the stories that fuel the city’s ghost tours. For each place below: first what the record says, then what the legend says.

Why is St. Augustine known for ghosts?

Age, mostly. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city of European origin in the continental United States, and its old town still sits on the street plan of the Spanish colony. Centuries of deaths in a small, walkable space, plus a tourism industry that has told the stories for decades, make for a famous reputation. Treat the hauntings as folklore; the history beneath them is documented.

The Old Jail

History: the operator’s own listing dates the jail to 1891 and says it held prisoners for more than 60 years. The sheriff and his family lived upstairs from the cells, and the gallows still stand in the yard.

Legend: the Old Jail is the centrepiece of the city’s ghost lore, with stories of former inmates and of the sheriff himself still walking the cell blocks.

Castillo de San Marcos

History: Spain built the fort between 1672 and 1695 from coquina, a stone made of shells. The Park Service calls it the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States.

Legend: stories of soldiers sealed into a hidden room, and of a Spanish officer who still patrols the walls. The fort closes in the evening, so the ghost walks tell these stories from outside.

Huguenot and Tolomato cemeteries

History: before 1821 the only active burial ground, Tolomato, took Catholics only. When yellow fever struck in 1821, the city opened what is now the Huguenot Cemetery for everyone else; it was used until 1884. Tolomato dates to 1777.

Legend: a figure seen on the Huguenot Cemetery wall at night, and a judge whose grave was disturbed during an exhumation and who is said to wander the grounds looking for what was taken. The Ghosts & Gravestones trolley tells both.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

History: in 1873, while the present tower was being built, a supply cart carrying the children of the construction superintendent Hezekiah Pittee broke loose and ran into the water. The lighthouse museum records that three girls drowned, two Pittee daughters and a young African American girl whose name newspapers did not record; the youngest Pittee child survived.

Legend: children’s laughter heard on the tower stairs. The lighthouse is outside the old town, on Anastasia Island.

Visiting the Old Jail

The Old Jail museum tour (4.6 from 75 reviews, from $19 (GetYourGuide, checked October 2026)) takes you through the cell blocks, the maximum-security cells, the gallows and the sheriff’s quarters, with a guide in character as Sheriff Joe Perry. Daytime tours leave every 15 minutes from 9:00, the last at 16:30. The After Dark paranormal option runs two and a half hours, for guests aged 13 and over, with ghost-hunting equipment provided and training in how to use it.

What the guided visit adds is the context: who was held here, how executions worked, and why the building became the city’s ghost-story magnet.

To hear the cemetery and Castillo stories at night, see the best ghost tour in St. Augustine. For the same places in daylight, with the history only, read St. Augustine by day.