Galena Ghost Tours

Galena, Illinois is a town that never quite left the 19th century. Once the busiest Mississippi River port north of St. Louis, this lead-mining boomtown is so perfectly preserved that most of its buildings still stand on the National Register of Historic Places — and the spirits of its past seem as unwilling to leave as the brick storefronts and gas lamps. Ghost City Tours leads walking tours through Galena's steep, hillside streets, where history feels close enough to touch.

Our local guides tell the true, researched history behind the hauntings — the lead mining disasters, the steamboat tragedies, the cholera epidemics, and the Civil War that shaped this river town where Ulysses S. Grant lived before becoming president. Take the family-friendly Ghosts of Galena Tour, which visits the historic DeSoto House Hotel — where Abraham Lincoln once spoke from the balcony — and the Victorian mansions whose former owners seem to linger, or the adults-only Things We Don't Speak Of Tour, a mature walk into the scandals and quiet tragedies Galena's old families spent more than a century keeping secret.

Ghost City Tours has been telling America's darkest stories since 2012, bringing that same authentic, storytelling-first approach to one of the Midwest's most haunted small towns. Book your Galena ghost tour today and discover why the past here has never quite been laid to rest.