Come explore The Holy City’s streets, cemeteries, back alleyways, churches, and join our experienced and fully-licensed tour guides on a 1 1/2 hour walking tour through the dark edges of Charleston’s Haunted Historic District. You’ll hear fun and chilling stories of Charleston ghosts, haunted houses, voodoo, and Lowcountry superstitions. This is the only Charleston SC ghost tour that has access to THE DUNGEON!!
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? It seemed just up my alley. That’s how Bulldog Tours markets the tour they call their “Ghost and Dungeon Walking Tour.” There was a dungeon. There was walking. But, there were darned few ghost stories. Mostly, the tour guide gave us history. It wasn’t her fault that the tour was lacking. She did a good job with the material she had…they just didn’t give her anything to work with!
She walked us about a block away from the office, and stopped to give us the “rules” of the tour. She encouraged us to take pictures and told us about some photographs with “orbs” in them that had been taken by other tourists and sent to their office. “Orbs” are those spots of light on photographs that some folks claim are ghosts.
Our guide told us of a picture they had just received that had been taken in the dungeon. Some man snapped a photograph of his wife, and they discovered a ghostly head behind hers in the picture! She said, “I wish I had thought to bring it with me.”
At that point, my husband had to tackle me and wrestle me to the ground with his hand over my mouth. I was trying to call out, “We’ll wait right here while you go get it!”
She was just telling a story! We knew that. But, if you are a tour guide, you don’t want me in the group. Not unless you know how to handle a heckler.
Now, I can’t complain about her ability to tell stories. Our tour guide did that well…except she was not a good liar! She also tried to tell us some hooey about her nickname being “ghost bait” because a pirate ghost in the dungeon had a crush on her. Since he couldn’t have her, he had tried to strangle her. If you can’t look your audience in the eye and refrain from blushing — don’t try to lie.
The dungeon itself was mildly interesting. By day, it is a museum, so there were stuffed mannequins everywhere. For me, that took away from the tour. I expect a storyteller to be able to paint pictures in my mind without the use of props. The mannequins and stuffed rats were a cheesy touch.
You can visit my Flickr page to see the photo album, and see if YOU can find any “orbs.” I put titles and descriptions with each picture, so you will know what you are seeing (if I knew what you were seeing!)
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If you go to Charleston and want a history tour, this is not a bad one to take. If you want a ghost story tour, skip this one. On a scale of one to ten, it barely rates a one as a “ghost” story tour. We got two or three pretty forgettable stories. Am I too picky? I don’t think so. This tour really had some possibilities. They had a dungeon, for crying out loud! In fact, I spent all night dreaming and re-writing her few ghost stories so that they had some suspense (“Lemme at ‘em, Coach!”). Maybe I should get them to hire me as a consultant? I could handle a few weeks in Charleston!
Sorry there weren’t any ghosts, Cindee. I know you were expecting a good ghost story. So was I! The only scary part of the whole night was that they charged us $18 each to go on the tour. And, we paid it!
Our trip was too short! The driving part wasn’t. We only had seven days, and four of those were spent driving to and from South Carolina (and Georgia, since we were so close). Mostly our trip was to visit some of my husband’s relatives. We decided that since “fish and visitors stink after three days,” we would take the side trips to Charleston and then Savannah, Georgia.
I could have spent weeks in either city. In retrospect, I wish we had picked just one of them, because we barely got a taste of either city. We had no time to visit the shore! Yeah, I was that close to the beach, and I was busy in town. Oh well, I didn’t have a bathing suit anyway.
I’ll tell you more about my impressions of both cities in the next few days.
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Oh thats to bad no ghosts(-: I was waiting for a good story(-: I guess I will have to watch Ghost Whisperer(-: I have seen orbs in pictures that I have taken. It was interesting too because it was at a SAR Christmas party and one of the members that would normally be there had passed away so I decided it was him(-: There were also orbs in a couple pictures at my daughters wedding! Interesting too. I have heard all the reasons orbs appear in pictures. The wedding pictures were outdoors and the Christmas party was indoors.
Anyhow at least you had a nice trip and got to get away for a few days(-: Glad you are safely home!!!
Cindees last blog post..What "Can" I do today????
I’ve never gotten pictures of orbs, but I don’t care. I keep trying, though. I sat on a “ghost” once…if you believe my vivid imagination. Does that count? Next time, I’m going to find a ghost story tour that gets rave reviews before I book it. Again, the history was great, but she just didn’t have good ghost stories.
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