Haunted-adjacent
San Francisco Ghost Tours: Gold and Ghouls Tour
The hour when the fog stops being scenic and starts being weather.
4.6316 reviews on Viator
San Francisco1h 30m
Find bad ideas
City
Type
Boat required
Alcatraz Inside Access Ferry and Audio Tour with Night Option
A ferry to a decommissioned federal prison, timed so you leave in the dark.
4.0300 reviews on Viator
San Francisco2h–4h
After dark
Griffith Observatory Hike: Guided Tour through Griffith Park
The whole basin below you in the dark, and coyotes going about their evening.
4.91,035 reviews on Viator
Los Angeles2h 30m
Haunted-adjacent
Dark Side of New Orleans: French Quarter Ghost Tour
A continuous local tradition rather than a costume, and the better guides treat it that way.
4.958 reviews on Viator
New Orleans1h 30m
After dark
Ultimate Jack the Ripper : Guided Tour of London
The case everyone has heard of, in streets that are now something else entirely.
4.91,685 reviews on Viator
London2h
Underground
Hidden Tube Walking Tour of Aldwych Disused Station
A station sealed decades ago, several flights below one that never closed.
4.841 reviews on Viator
London1h 20m
Dead history
New Orleans City and Cemetery Tour with Garden District Stroll
Above-ground tombs on one side of the street, cast-iron balconies on the other, both paid for by the same money.
4.4769 reviews on Viator
New Orleans3h
Strange animals
New Orleans Swamp and Bayou Alligator Tour
Alligators, at the waterline, from a flat boat. Ask the operator whether they feed them.
4.31,327 reviews on Viator
New Orleans1h 15m–4h
Questionable weather
Portland Head Light and Fort Williams Walking Tour
The oldest lighthouse in the state, and the rocks below it that explain why it is there.
5.010 reviews on Viator
Maine in October1h
Cinema
Hitchcock Film Locations Walking Tour
Vertigo used this city as a set and never gave it back.
San Francisco2h 30m
After dark
Chinatown After Dark Walking Tour
Alleys, family associations, and a neighbourhood that outlasted every attempt to summarise it.
San Francisco2h
Dead history
Colma Cemetery Belt Half-Day Tour
A town where the dead outnumber the living by a thousand to one. Municipal fact, not a turn of phrase.
San Francisco4h
Strange animals
Bay Area Reptile Handling Encounter
Snakes, at close range, in a room built for exactly that.
San Francisco1h
Dead history
Hollywood Forever Cemetery Guided Tour
A working cemetery that screens films on the lawn in summer.
Los Angeles2h
Underground
Downtown LA Historic Theatres & Tunnels Walk
Movie palaces shut longer than they were ever open, and the tunnels under the hill behind them.
Los Angeles3h
Weird museum
Los Angeles Oddities & Curiosities Museum Visit
A collection somebody could not stop assembling, arranged by somebody who will not explain it.
Los Angeles1h 30m
Cinema
Los Angeles Horror Film Locations Tour
The houses are on ordinary streets and people live in them. That is the whole strange fact.
Los Angeles3h 30m
Dead history
New Orleans Cemetery & Burial History Tour
Tombs above ground in rows, like a small dense town. The reason is drainage.
New Orleans2h
Boat required
Louisiana Swamp Night Boat Tour
A flat boat, a spotlight, and a great many eyes at the waterline reflecting it back.
New Orleans3h
Weird museum
Historic Pharmacy & Medical History Museum Visit
A nineteenth-century apothecary, preserved. Horrifying because the medicine was.
New Orleans1h
Dead history
Highgate Cemetery Guided Visit
A Victorian cemetery left to go woodland for forty years, now kept that way on purpose.
London1h 15m
Weird museum
Old Operating Theatre & Herb Garret Visit
A surgical theatre in a church roof, from before anaesthetic was a thing anyone had.
London1h
Wet and inconvenient
Thames Foreshore Mudlarking Walk
The river goes out twice a day and leaves two thousand years of discarded objects.
London2h
Dead history
Salem Witch Trials History Walking Tour
Twenty people executed on evidence that would not survive a moment's scrutiny.
Maine in October1h 30m
Boat required
Maine Coast Lighthouse & Shipwreck Boat Trip
The lighthouses exist because a great many ships did not make it.
Maine in October2h 30m
After dark
Portland Maine After-Dark History Walk
A working port with a long memory, walked once the working part has stopped.
Maine in October1h 30m
Concrete and brutal
Sutro Baths Ruins & Lands End Walk
The concrete footprint of a Victorian swimming palace, filling with seawater on the schedule of the tide.
San Francisco2h
Boat required
Historic Ship Visit at Hyde Street Pier
A working nineteenth-century square-rigger you can go below deck on, moored where the gold rush landed.
San Francisco1h 30m
After dark
Mission District Murals After-Dark Walk
Forty years of political painting in two alleys, lit badly and better for it.
San Francisco1h 45m
Weird museum
Los Angeles Mortality & Crime Museum Visit
A collection about how people die, assembled without a single soft edge.
Los Angeles1h 15m
After dark
Griffith Observatory Evening Visit
A 1935 art-deco observatory that has been in more films than most actors, open late and free to enter.
Los Angeles2h
Haunted-adjacent
Queen Mary After-Dark Ship Tour
A moored ocean liner that served as a troopship, now a hotel, with a reputation it has never discouraged.
Los Angeles1h 30m
Deeply regional
Jazz Funeral & Burial Tradition Walk
A funeral tradition with a brass band in it, explained by people whose families kept it going.
New Orleans1h 45m
Underground
Wartime Underground Bunker Visit
A government bunker sealed in 1945 and left as it was, with the map pins still in the walls.
London2h
Weird museum
Surgical & Anatomical Collection Visit
An eighteenth-century surgeon's specimen collection, kept for teaching and never softened for visitors.
London1h 30m
Concrete and brutal
Barbican & Brutalist Architecture Walk
A concrete estate built on a bombsite, designed so that you would never touch a road. You will get lost.
London2h
Boat required
Thames Night River Crossing
The cheapest good view in the city, on a working commuter boat, after the commuters have gone.
London1h 15m
Weird museum
Salem Witch Trials Museum Visit
The trials, told with dioramas, in a building that takes the subject more seriously than the street outside does.
Maine in October1h
Strange animals
Maine Seabird & Puffin Island Boat Trip
A colony re-established on a bare rock after being hunted off it, reachable only by a long cold boat.
Maine in October3h 30m
Underground
Granite Coastal Fort After-Dark Tour
A granite fort that never fired a shot, with unlit passageways you walk through by torchlight.
Maine in October1h 30m