The adventure begins at the History and Hauntings Book Company, home of the Alton Hauntings tours. H&H does tours nearly year-round, excluding the winter months, as Alton is not a place you want to do a walking tour in the winter. Directions tend to involve "uphill" and "downhill."
The former Enos Sanitarium, currently an apartment building
Our tour guide this year was Luke Naliborski, author of The Lighter Side of Darkness
(A+, would read again). Courtney was with us for the first time this year, and being a skeptic, she was not sure how much she was going to enjoy this "ghost hunting" business. After the first stop she said she was loving it because Luke is a great story teller and is really good at making the history of Alton interesting and memorable. Since I have done this tour five times, and the last three with Luke, I have to agree!
Since I see on the Alton Hauntings website that the tours are not yet sold out for the season, I am going to honor a media blackout and refrain from repeating the stories. I will tell you that the tunnel above is under the Enos building, and is known to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad (and it's haunted).
The rest of the pictures are from the First Unitarian Church, and this is also the only tour group that is allowed inside the building. There are a couple stories to explain why this building may be haunted. I admit that, having been in the old part of the basement 4 times, I took the coward's exit this year.
Get your tickets now because the Halloween season tours do tend to sell out! If you can't make it this year, know that for best availability you should be prepared to buy your tickets the day they go on sale, which will be Labor Day 2010 at midnight. Like I said, though, they do tours at other times of they year, and you can find information about those and other Illinois tours on the website.
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