Tease, not spoilers
The Stories
Five threads run through the 9 PM tour. Here is enough of each to know what you're signing up for, and not enough to rob your guide of the good part.
Murder & Madness
The cases too dark for the family tour.
In 1937, in a quiet house on a respectable street, Marie Walkup did something under a full moon that Flagstaff still struggles to talk about. Our co-founder Susan Johnson wrote an entire book about it, The Walkup Family Murders, and the walk past that chapter of town history is not on the family tour.
There was also a desperate act inside Babbitt's haberdashery, and a janitor at the Emerson School whose story ended in the basement. What connects them is not gore. It is how ordinary the town looked the day before each one.
Your guide has read the case files. The details stay for the tour.
The rest of this story? You'll hear it on the tour.
True Crime Flagstaff
An extra case we save for this crowd.
Every city has a courtroom story locals still argue about. Ours is a 1980s murder trial that took a turn nobody in that courtroom expected, and it divided this community in ways that have not fully healed.
We do not tell it on the all-ages tour. It needs the full 9 PM telling, unrushed and uncensored. We will let your guide handle that one.
The rest of this story? You'll hear it on the tour.
Paranormal Investigations
What brought television's investigators to town.
When Travel Channel's The Dead Files came to Flagstaff in 2022, they did not pick our downtown by accident. A basement on our route had been unsettling employees for years before the cameras arrived, and a psychic's walk through the 1926 train depot produced a number that still gets repeated around town.
The stories that drew a national show here are the same ones we researched first. You will stand where they filmed and hear what the episode left out.
The rest of this story? You'll hear it on the tour.
Theatre Phantoms
The Orpheum keeps a shadow that watches back.
A concertgoer once watched a woman in the Orpheum's balcony melt away mid-song. Stagehands describe a visitor who only ever shows half of itself. Across town at the community theatre, a Victorian woman in a feathered hat has opinions about intermission cookies.
Theatre people are superstitious for a reason. On this tour you will hear the firsthand accounts, from the people who were on shift when it happened.
The rest of this story? You'll hear it on the tour.
Haunted Landmarks
The Monte Vista, the Weatherford, and buildings with body counts.
The Hotel Monte Vista's phantom bellboy is famous. Room 54's story is not, and it is worse. Zane Grey's ghost is said to mumble on a stairway he loved in life, a brakeman's lantern still flickers down the tracks, and something in the library stacks has been known to stare back between the shelves.
These are working buildings you can visit any afternoon. At 9 PM, standing outside them, the same facts feel different.
The rest of this story? You'll hear it on the tour.
Want the television side of it first? Read about what brought The Dead Files to Flagstaff, then come stand where they filmed.
18+ Adults Only
Hear the endings in person.
Friday and Saturday nights at 9 PM · 90 minutes · 1 mile · Adults $39 · Students $35
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