I spend every weekend wandering through Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. It’s become quite a tourist draw for the past decade or so, and I always enjoy taking tours in my hometown. It’s been years since I took a ghost tour around Halloween, and was excited to see a US Ghost Adventures ghost tour offered more regularly. I knew Music Hall would be included, but there are so many other places thought to be cursed. Taking part in a “Phantoms of Pig Iron Past: Cursed Cincinnati Ghost Tour” took me to places I hadn’t yet explored in this fascinating Cincinnati neighborhood.

We started in front of Memorial Hall, which was once a hospital, once an orphanage, and is now a haunted event space next to the even more haunted Music Hall.

Music Hall is built on top of a cemetery. When the Germans first built a “sangerhalle” or music hall, they moved all the bodies in the church cemeteries to another cemetery outside of town and turned the valuable greenspace into a park. The ground beneath Music Hall was a Potter’s Field and there was no one to claim these unknown immigrants, so they left them buried and built on top. Lots of ghost hunters have investigated the property and all agree it’s haunted.

We’d been handed an electromagnetic detector and the lights lit up as we stood listening to our guide on the steps outside Music Hall.

Our guide took us past other haunted spots: ghost baby – a speakeasy in a tunnel beneath the ground, Krueger’s Tavern, which sits above the backend of the block-long tunnel 145 feet beneath the ground. My friend and I had dinner there afterward. It was fun to have a little paranormal history of the place. (The ghosts let us eat in peace.)

We learned a little more about Wooden Nickel Antiques – an iconic spot on Central Parkway.

And then we went to the Symphony Hotel – a boutique hotel in Over-the-Rhine that I’d only vaguely been aware of. To our delight, we went inside and heard about the ghost that haunts one of the bedrooms there. We also heard live music! I had no idea they had a bar and live music inside! I’ll definitely go back.

I appreciated being invited to this tour by US Ghost Adventures. I am always thrilled to learn more about Cincinnati. There are so many facets to the Queen City’s history and we’re constantly uncovering more and more. The tour was fun. I heard some of the stories I’ve heard before, but Ariel opened my eyes and ears to new ones. The stories are creepy, not scary, so it’s something the whole family can do.

Would you take kids along on a ghost tour like this? (My daughter never liked it when we did, but they always felt more historical than scary to us.)