Night Watchman’s St Augustine Walking Tour: The Old Town’s Haunted History

For many years, the gate to the old city of St Augustine was locked every night at dusk to keep the town’s people safe. Yet, terrible misfortunes still befell them, as you’ll soon discover on this walking tour, one in a series often narrated by a character known as the ‘Night Watchman’. While you stroll down the city’s quieter brick-paved walkways and back alleys, you’ll hear from former residents including Maya, the Night Watchman’s daughter, who’ll help bring to life the sights, sounds and smells of yesteryear.

Our tour begins outside the Spanish bakery where you’ll hear about the ghoulish laundry lady who is said to have haunted the bakery’s backyard in 1999. Then, outside Tolomato Cemetery, you’ll hear the haunting tale of how Kernel Joseph Smith saved the city’s most beautiful woman from being buried alive. If you’re lucky, you’ll glimpse the apparition of Tillie, a nanny who died protecting her child from a hurricane in the late 1700s. You’ll walk past Pena Peck house where the Spanish Royal Treasurer, Leutenant Delaney, lived before he was stabbed in an unsolved murder case from 1785. And you’ll find out the gruesome details of Don Diego’s demise, after he fatally fell from the fortified walls of Castillo de San Marcos. At the entrance to the old city, where the tour ends, you’ll get acquainted with the brave women who saved these fragments of history by chaining themselves to the pillars of St Augustine’s city gate. You’ll also hear about two lucky visitors who received gold from a ghost who greeted them in the Huguenot Cemetery.

On this haunted tour of St Augustine’s Old Town, you’ll get goosebumps as you hear the often horrific answers to questions like:

• Who protects the city from hurricanes?
• Why is the oldest wooden schoolhouse anchored to the ground?
• Who killed cranky Miss Fay, who lived at number 54 Cuna Street?
• What are the building materials Coquina and Tabby made from?
• Who were the Minorcans and how have they shaped the city’s history?
• Which symbolic bird visited archeologists as they dug up Native American remains from the site of Our Lady of the Rosary?

Give yourself 75 minutes to get the most out of this tour, or linger longer and listen to See America Tours’ collection of stories from this mysterious town, haunted by war, illness, attacks and storms for over 457 years.