How’s this for spooky? “Virtually every Soulard address has been the site of a death.” That quote comes from local historical researcher Neal Putz, and it’s part of the marketing for a new historical walking tour that leans into the St. Louis neighborhood’s macabre side. Hosted by the Soulard Restoration Group, the nonprofit neighborhood association, the inaugural Spirits of Soulard Ghost Tour features six stops in a 12-block walking tour. Befitting their status as a labor of love designed to promote and raise money for the neighborhood, the tours will be led by actual Soulard residents. At each stop, participants meet the homeowner (or their designated representative), dressed in period-appropriate attire for the ghost story they’ll be telling—and, at some sites, even get offered a drink, says Joy Grdnic.
A former radio host and founder of The Fountain on Locust, Grdnic is part of the Soulard Restoration Group’s Historical Committee, which dreamed up the walking tours. She says the idea grew organically from conversations among members. “We realized every building and every house has had a death, and many of them are really unnatural,” she says. That led members to start swapping ghost stories, and from there, a fundraiser was born.
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Grdnic hopes the tours will also bring new attention to an underappreciated aspect of the neighborhood. “People know Soulard for the historic houses and Mardi Gras, of course, and the bars and the restaurants and the landmarks, but they don’t know the chilling past,” she says.
And as the tour demonstrates, the southeast city neighborhood has stories to spare. Organizers promise a mix: A vacant lot once home to a Civil War hospital and a “long-lost estate destroyed by fire, where a mysterious mist has been seen rising from the ground,” a mansion from the 1870s still allegedly haunted by the Austrian physician who built it, and a former bar where a laborer died in what’s described as “a gruesome industrial accident.” Yes, his beheaded spirit is apparently haunting that site as well.
Grdnic explains the tour tells the neighborhood’s history from the 1870s all the way until the 21st century: The most recent ghost story dates back to an incident in the early aughts. The hardest part, she says, was paring down the number of stops, from the 12 they originally brainstormed down to six. “It’s just so haunted, and we have too many houses,” she says.
In the inaugural, one-day-only offering set for Sept. 27, the tours are limited to 100 people, with five groups of 20 leaving every 20 minutes. Tickets are selling briskly, so those who are interested should act fast. Reservations can be made online.
