Queen City is Haunted

This past Saturday night, Dan and I embarked upon the "Queen City is Haunted" tour, by the same team who runs the Civil War tour, Newport Gangster tour, etc.

To tell you the unfortunate truth, I didn't love this tour. It ended up taking 2hrs, and I felt that only maybe half an hour of that was actually telling ghost stories. There were many conversations about how they found the stories or how they didn't believe the stories, about the paranormal teams and psychics that they teamed up with... but when they got right down to it I found there to be very little substance on this tour.


One moment that particularly frustrated me: the tour guides explained that after excavation began on Washington Park, the crew was forced to stop because they started finding dead bodies. I am fairly confident that this was actually a planned stage of the park renovation, as it was well known that the Washington Park was once a cemetery. If that's the case, then a large chunk of the tour was very misleading.


Other stories began but never really concluded. There was a large amount of setup about the cholera epidemics that once swept Cincinnati, and while the guides insisted that would play a role in later stories, we never heard about it again. There was a good portion of time spent talking about the hospital, asylum and medical college that operated in Over-the-Rhine, but there never ended up being any stories about related spirits or hauntings. Murders, yes! Ghosts, no.

I think Dan and I would have been better off taking the "Newport is Haunted" tour, because at least we would have learned something new about an area of town we know significantly less about. Because we'd already done the "Queen City Underground" tour, we'd seen the spaces and buildings that this tour touched on, and there was very little to keep us interested other than a view of Music Hall at night.


NOTE: This coming weekend, the tour is actually going to go into Music Hall at night, which -- dangit!-- would be a sight worth paying for if you ask me! Even if you don't spot any specters, I'd consider taking the tour on Halloween weekend!

DOUBLE NOTE: Overall I really enjoy these tours and the Queen City Underground team. I think the attention they're bringing to this part of town is incredible. If you haven't taken any of their tours I highly recommend it, but this one wasn't for me. I think their real forte is the history lessons, not the spook-outs, and I'd recommend you stick with those.

Queen City is Haunted: http://queencityishaunted.com/
Queen City Underground: http://www.queencityunderground.com/

Queen City Underground: Over-the-Rhine

The Queen City Underground tours have become the talk of the town lately. From our condo we are literally a stone's throw [yes, literally a stone's throw --ed. note] from MiCA 12/v, where the tours depart and I'm not sure there's been a weekend this summer that we haven't bumped into a tour crowd or two when outside our place.

Last Saturday we decided to wander down there and take one of these much talked-about tours and see what it was like to take a historical tour of our own neighborhood. It's hard not to become a bit of a history buff living in OTR, so how much could you possibly learn?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. The tour departed from MiCA and headed north on Vine St., then stopped basically in front of our condo, where we learned about the colorful and rather fascinating history behind two buildings we pass every day and knew basically nothing about. After that we knew this tour was going to be awesome, and as we proceeded down Vine Street things got even better as we were taken inside an intact biergarten and into the 'underground' part of this tour.

I could go on and on about the tour, but I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't been on it. It's definitely worth the price of admission ($15) and is a great way to spend the morning or afternoon downtown and in OTR. We are planning on taking their Newport Gangster tour and Cincinnati Civil War tours next as we've heard those are just as good.

One thing I think we both felt was interesting about the tour was seeing the reaction of people who clearly hadn't been downtown in some time, and had possibly never been in Over-the-Rhine. The tours are doing a great job of bringing more people downtown and helping to change perceptions and attitudes towards downtown and Over-the-Rhine.


Queen City Underground tour: http://www.queencityunderground.com/
Newport Gangster tour: http://www.newportgangsters.com/
Cincinnati Civil War tour: http://www.cincinnaticivilwar.com/