Walk Portsmouth's most haunted locations. 13 stops, self-guided. 3 stops free. No guide, no schedule — just you and the dark.
Portsmouth, Ohio sits where the Scioto River meets the Ohio, a geography that shaped its fortune and its suffering. The 1937 flood swallowed entire neighborhoods. The steel mills that built the middle class poisoned the ground beneath them. A tuberculosis sanitarium stood in the hills above town, isolating the sick from a community that preferred not to think about them. The Boneyfiddle district's Victorian facades hide a century of commerce, corruption, and decay — buildings that outlasted every industry that paid for them. This is a river town that learned the hard way that water gives and water takes.
You're standing in Boneyfiddle, Portsmouth's oldest and most haunted neighborhood. The name itself tells a story—settlers so poor they fought over ani...
You stand before the Twilight panel, where painted figures gaze at the rising waters of 1937. The Ohio River swallowed Portsmouth that January, rising...
You enter Portsmouth's crown jewel, a 1910 theater where tragedy struck more than once. During a 1924 performance, a vaudeville magician collapsed mid...
You're standing where the Ohio River became a monster in January 1937. The flood rose so fast that families were trapped in their homes, clinging to r...
You're at the site where Leonard Slye—better known as Roy Rogers—was born in 1911. The house is long gone, but what remains are the stories. Roy had a...
You stand before the skeletal remains of Portsmouth's shoe industry, once the city's economic heartbeat. At its peak in the early 1900s, these factori...
You're at the stadium where pro football history was written—and where tragedy was buried. The Portsmouth Spartans played here before moving to Detroi...
You enter the Art Deco bus terminal that sent Portsmouth's sons to WWII. Many never returned. Their families waited here for buses that would never ar...
You're standing at the edge of Suicide Ridge, a cliff in Shawnee State Forest that locals know all too well. For decades, people have come here to jum...
You're at the memorial for Alexandria, a small town just north of Portsmouth that was completely destroyed in the 1937 flood. The water came so fast t...
You're standing where Portsmouth's tuberculosis sanitarium once isolated the dying from society. In the 1920s, TB was a death sentence. Patients were ...
You stand on the ruins of Portsmouth's steel industry, where molten metal flowed and men died in ways too horrific to describe. The mills operated fro...
You're standing before the old Portsmouth High School, a Victorian fortress of education with a dark secret. In 1952, the night janitor, a man named T...
The Portsmouth ghost tour includes 13 documented haunted locations.
The first 3 stops are completely free — no account required. To unlock all 13 stops, a History Nearby premium subscription is $4.99/month or $49.99/year.
No. This is a self-guided walking tour. Each stop includes the address, a map pin, and the full haunting story. Walk at your own pace, start anytime, and take any route you like.
Plan for approximately 2.5 hours. This accounts for walking between stops and reading each haunting story. You can also split it across multiple evenings.
The most visited stop on our Portsmouth tour is Boneyfiddle Historic District at Front Street, Portsmouth, OH 45662.
3 stops free in Portsmouth. No guide, no schedule — walk at your own pace after dark.
Last updated February 22, 2026. Researched by the History Nearby editorial team.