Apparently, Pittsburgh – my hometown – is full of ghosts.

Pittsburgh has only been around for about 300-odd years, making it a relative youngster as far as cities go. Yet where paranormal occurrences are concerned, Pittsburgh is off the charts when it comes to ghostly activity.

Perhaps it has something to do with its role as a frontier town in the brutal wars of the 18^th century. (For a particularly gruesome example, check out this recent post!) Or maybe because it was the epicenter of the conflicts and passions of the Gilded Age… a  city where robber barons and labor frequently clashed with bloody results.  It was a real American “melting pot” – people from all walks of life lived and died here, from immigrants seeking a better life to industrialists building their empires (including quite a few outlaws from both ends of the spectrum).

 

Whatever the reason, Pittsburgh certainly has more than its share of haunted places.

It would be just a matter of time before someone figured out that there was an audience eager to hear the tales of Pittsburgh’s darker side… Someone with a love of Pittsburgh’s history and delight in its spooky stories to tell us the tales that make up its supernatural legacy.

 

Meet Tim Murray and Michelle Smith, the founders of Haunted Pittsburgh, keepers of Pittsburgh’s nightmares, archivists of its deepest fears, and the historians who document the uncanny tales that make up the real Mysteries of Pittsburgh.

On the surface, Tim and Michelle seem like ordinary Pittsburghers – busy attorneys who also happen to share a deep love of the city and its history. In fact, they’re so passionate about it that they founded a business that would honor Pittsburgh’s history and give new life to the spirits who inhabit it.

 

It all started when Tim noticed that Ghost Tours were all the rage in other cities. So why didn’t Pittsburgh have a ghost tour? Surely there must be plenty of hauntings in Pittsburgh… but were there enough to fill a tour? He approached co-worker Michelle with the idea, but before they launched Haunted Pittsburgh in 2009, they spent two years engaged in intensive research, digging into the secrets and legends of Pittsburgh’s paranormal past.

The stories they collected came from a number of sources. Surprisingly, most of them were actually covered in the newspapers of the day. (In those more credulous times, ghost sightings and hauntings were reported as legitimate news stories.)

Other stories were gathered from first-hand witnesses who had actually experienced ghostly encounters, often a person who worked in the haunted place. In some cases, Tim and Michelle have even engaged a medium to confirm that paranormal activity was afoot.

 

 

 

Haunted Pittsburgh launched its first tours on Pittsburgh’s historic South Side in 2009. Now their flagship tour is their Downtown Walking Tour, bringing spellbound guests as close as possible to many of Downtown Pittsburgh’s most exciting haunted highlights.

 

 

 

 

Some of the ghostly hotspots featured on the tour include…

…The Allegheny County Morgue, where high-school boys used to take their prom dates for a cheap thrill. The building is said to be haunted by a number of spirits who worked there or passed through while still in their earthly form.

…The historic Old Jail, a spooky-looking Romanesque Revival masterpiece designed by renowned architect HH Robertson, still packed with the shades of former residents. One of them is the infamous Kate Soffel – the jailer’s wife who fell for a condemned criminal and staged a jailbreak. Her ill-advised escape with the Biddle brothers was a major scandal in 1902 (so scandalous, in fact, that it received the Hollywood treatment 80 years later in Mrs. Soffel, starring Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson).

…The site of the office where robber baron Henry Clay Frick was shot by a would-be assassin but claimed that he was saved by the ghost of his beloved little daughter, Martha.

…The grand old William Penn Hotel, overflowing with restless spirits of staff and guests, from the ghosts of suicides and murder victims to chambermaids and even otherworldly musicians.

 

 

Tim and Michelle are the brains behind Haunted Pittsburgh, but they don’t lead the tours themselves; for that, they rely on a team of Ghost Hosts – consummate storytellers who lead the walking tours through the twilit streets of Downtown Pittsburgh. To be a Ghost Host, Michelle says, requires not just great storytelling ability, but a hefty dose of showmanship and “the ability to keep the attention of a crowd.”

 

 

A walking tour can only cover so much ground, and Pittsburgh is a big place with many haunts. In 2016, Tim and Michelle published their book, Haunted Pittsburgh, in an effort to share many more of the stories that they’ve collected over the years, many of which are eyewitness accounts of paranormal occurrences all over the Steel City.  Haunted Pittsburgh is packed with tales of local haunts – houses, hotels, cemeteries, even restaurants – many of which are located outside the central city area and thus aren’t amenable to a walking tour. The inspiration for the book was Tim and Michelle’s desire to share more of Pittsburgh’s ghost stories that couldn’t be included in the tour.

 

Though Tim and Michelle love the tumultuous supernatural history of Pittsburgh, they aren’t interested in doing any paranormal investigation or ghost hunting. As Michelle says “We prefer to read about ghosts rather than actually meet them,” though they both admit to being fans of horror films.

As Haunted Pittsburgh grows, Tim and Michelle are considering adding more tours and branching out into a wider geographic area.  In previous years, ghost tours of Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington and Oakland neighborhoods were available (and may return closer to Halloween), but this year the focus is on making the downtown walking ghost tour and the virtual ghost tour bigger and better than ever.

 

 

Haunted Pittsburgh also regularly offers ghost-themed special events as well as a non-spooky history tour that’s doing great business. As they collect more and more stories from historical records and eyewitness testimony, Tim and Michelle are considering adding additional tours to cover more of Pittsburgh’s quirky neighborhoods and perhaps include a broader scope of Western Pennsylvania’s weird supernatural landscape.

 

*****

 

Having left the era of the steel industry and its robber barons behind, Pittsburgh today is an up-and-coming powerhouse in the tech, medical, and education sectors. Carrying on the lore of Pittsburgh’s past is an important mission –  especially the tales of the darker side with all its attendant supernatural emotional baggage. As long as their stories continue to be told, the people whose ghosts linger here will live on.

It’s why Haunted Pittsburgh does what it does so well – in Michelle’s words, “to share a bit of history and [our] love of Pittsburgh with people.”

So whether it’s a sultry summer evening or a brisk autumn twilight with crisp brown leaves swirling on the sidewalk, why not take a walk among the ghosts of Pittsburgh? You’re sure to be among friends, alive and otherwise.

And, as one reviewer commented, if you don’t get at least a little chill on this tour… you must not have a spine!

 

Haunted Pittsburgh’s Ghost Hosts are just dying to introduce you to Pittsburgh’s supernatural hotspots. They materialize every Friday and Saturday evening from now through early November. Tours depart at 7 pm from the City-County Building on Grant Street. Click here for more information or to book a tour!

 

 

 

Want to get the whole story of the haunts on the Ghost Tour (as well as many of the ones that didn’t make it into the tour)? Click here to order a copy of Haunted Pittsburgh!