Walk Tacoma's most haunted locations. 13 stops, self-guided. 3 stops free. No guide, no schedule — just you and the dark.
In 1885, a white mob expelled Tacoma's entire Chinese population, burned Chinatown, and forced families onto open railcars in a November rainstorm. Nobody was convicted. Old City Hall, built in 1893, processed that injustice — and its lobby still echoes with the sound of an angry crowd. Stadium High School started as an 1891 luxury hotel that burned before opening; a man in hotel staff uniform still greets invisible guests in its corridors. The Pantages Theater, opened in 1918 by the scandal-plagued Alexander Pantages, traps a sobbing woman in its basement dressing rooms. This self-guided tour covers 13 free stops across Tacoma — from Fort Nisqually's 1833 fur trading post to the waters of Snake Lake, where the Puyallup people warned that drowned spirits gather.
Tacoma's Old City Hall, built in 1893 in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, served as the seat of city government during Tacoma's most volatile de...
You stand before the Elks Temple, a five-story Renaissance Revival building completed in 1916 at the height of fraternal organization power in America...
You approach Thornewood Castle, a 27,000-square-foot Gothic Tudor manor built in 1911 by Chester Thorne, a founder of the Port of Tacoma. Thorne had a...
You stand inside Fort Nisqually, the first European settlement on Puget Sound, established by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1833 as a fur trading post. ...
You walk the ruins of Northern State Hospital, which opened in 1912 as the Northern State Hospital for the Insane. The facility held over 2,700 patien...
You walk Point Defiance Park's forest trails at dusk, 760 acres of old-growth forest jutting into Puget Sound. Before it was a park, this was Puyallup...
You enter the Pantages Theater, a 1,186-seat vaudeville palace opened in 1918 by Alexander Pantages, the Greek immigrant who built a theater empire on...
You stand at Snake Lake, a small body of water surrounded by wetlands and forest in south Tacoma. The lake has a reputation that predates the city. Th...
You walk Wapato Park at twilight, circling the lake that gives the park its name. Wapato — a Chinook word for a water plant the Indigenous people harv...
You stand in Fireman's Park, dedicated in 1903 to honor the Tacoma Fire Department and the firefighters who died in service. The park includes a memor...
The Tacoma 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 Tacoma tour is Old City Hall at Old City Hall, 625, Commerce Street.
3 stops free in Tacoma. No guide, no schedule — walk at your own pace after dark.
Last updated February 22, 2026. Researched by the History Nearby editorial team.