Your Guide to Austin Ghost Tours & Haunted History
Austin may be known for live music and breakfast tacos, but beneath the fun-loving surface lies a dark history that stretches back to the 1880s when a serial killer known as the Servant Girl Annihilator terrorized the city years before Jack the Ripper made headlines in London. A ghost tour in Austin takes you through the shadowy streets, historic buildings, and haunted landmarks where the city's most unsettling stories unfolded — guided by storytellers who blend documented history with the paranormal legends that locals have been whispering about for over a century.
Haunted Walking Tours & The Driskill Hotel
Austin's most popular ghost tours are evening walking tours that wind through the downtown historic district after dark, stopping at sites with documented paranormal activity. The Driskill Hotel, built in 1886, is Austin's most famous haunted landmark — guests and staff report ghostly sightings of Colonel Jesse Driskill himself, a young woman in a bridal gown on the grand staircase, and mysterious cold spots in the hallways of the upper floors. The Texas State Capitol is said to be haunted by the ghost of Comptroller Robert Marshall Love, who was shot in the building in 1903. The Moonlight Towers — Austin's iconic 165-foot cast-iron light towers from the 1890s, the only surviving examples in the world — were erected partly in response to the Servant Girl murders, and guides share the chilling details of the unsolved cases that led to their installation. Most ghost tours run 75 to 90 minutes and depart from the Driskill Hotel or the Capitol grounds.
6th Street Haunts & Dark History
Sixth Street's party atmosphere masks a darker history that ghost tours reveal after the sun goes down. Several of the bars and buildings on 6th Street date back to the late 1800s, and their basements, upper floors, and back rooms carry stories of gambling disputes, Prohibition-era violence, and unexplained phenomena that bartenders and staff have reported for decades. Dark history tours expand beyond ghosts to cover Austin's true crime legacy — the Servant Girl Annihilator murders of 1884-1885, the University of Texas Tower shooting of 1966, and the unsolved cases that still haunt investigators. Haunted pub crawl tours combine ghost stories with stops at Austin's oldest and most atmospheric bars, where the spirits aren't just served in glasses. Cemetery tours visit the graves of Austin's founders and most notorious residents at the Texas State Cemetery and Oakwood Cemetery. Compare ghost tours above, read real reviews, and discover the haunted side of the Live Music Capital.
