Old Jail After Dark Night Tour Review – St. Augustine, Florida
I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe in ghosts or the paranormal. I’ve always scoffed at these cheesy ‘haunted tours’ in tourist cities across the USA, never once had an inkling to go. My visit to St. Augustine was a little different – after all, St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city in the United States and many places in this city have a reputation for being haunted. Paranormal investigators – like the people from the Ghost Hunters show, love this city, and they especially love visiting the Old Jail.
We initially did the regular Old Jail tour and walked away fascinated by this jail, that later on, we decided to see if we could snag a spot on the “After Dark” tour. The Old Jail After Dark tour boasts that you can freely roam the jail and use professional ghost hunting equipment, just like you see on those cable network shows. Definitely a unique experience, so we jumped on the chance to do this.
Let’s review the Old Jail After Dark tour in St. Augustine Florida! I’ll tell you everything you need to know!
The Old Jail – A Quick Glimpse into History:
Built in 1891, the Old Jail served as the St. Johns County Jail until 1953. This Victorian-style jail housed notorious criminals, including murderers and bootleggers, within its cold, dark cells. Over the years, the jail gained a reputation for being a site of misery and suffering, witnessing numerous deaths and tragic incidents. Today, its eerie aura makes it the perfect setting for a ghostly encounter. I won’t get into all the details of what happened at the Old Jail – you will have to take a tour yourself – let’s just say it was pretty horrific, and it didn’t happen all that long ago.
How much does the Old Jail After Dark tour cost?
As of 2023, we paid $99 per person to do this tour. I felt that was very reasonable for what you get – you get 2.5 hours to roam around the jail at prime witching hour, using professional paranormal hunting equipment. The tour starts at 11:30pm, and wraps up at about 2:30am.
How does the “After Dark” tour different than the regular Old Jail tour?
We did both the regular Old Jail tour and the After Dark tour, so I can speak to both. The regular tour happens during regular hours (10-6 or so) and you typically won’t need to purchase your tickets in advance – we walked right up and bought our tickets and got on the next tour. We visited St. Augustine during the week between Christmas 2022 and New Years 2023, which is an extremely busy time to be in this area (well, Florida in general) and had no issues.
We decided to do the After Dark experience after we already took the regular tour of the jail because for some reason, this old jail fascinated us. So, the next day, we checked online to see if they had any space left on the “After Dark” – and we were in luck – they still had two open spaces for the next night!
The big difference is that the regular daytime tour of the Old Jail is an actual tour, where you’re in a group, guided from room-to-room. The “After Dark” is a paranormal hunting experience – it’s not really a ‘tour’. So you can do both, like we did, and have completely different experiences.
How does this “Old Jail After Dark” Experience Work? What’s it like?
We did this tour on December 31, 2022 – well, technically January 1, 2023, as you have to arrive at the jail at 11:30pm but the bulk of the tour happens after midnight. In other words, my sister and I rang in the new year in search of ghosts at this old jailhouse.
Being that the tour lasts from 11:30pm until 2:30am, I didn’t think I could hang. I’m someone who goes to bed at 9pm, even on New Years Eve. I can’t party ’til the break-a-break-a-dawn. To prepare for this, we tried to take a nap at the hotel after dinner, but I never fell asleep. Maybe I was just too excited for this!? In hindsight, I had no issues staying up – probably because of the adrenaline you get when you legitimately find paranormal happenings on the devices!
The tour begins outside the jailhouse, where a guide will give you a quick brief on the history of the old jail and information on what to expect while doing your paranormal investigation. The guides you’ll meet for your night in the jail are actual paranormal hunters themselves, so they’re really into this and very happy to share information. When you go through this experience and get readings on the devices, they’re legitimately as excited as you are!
After the debrief, you’re taken into the jail where your guide will give you an overview on the equipment. (Don’t worry if you can’t remember how to use it – the guides will be happy to explain it again as you go on your hunt!). All of the equipment here has fresh batteries – apparently the spirits like to quickly drain the charge. Equipment includes dowsing rods, EMF meters, REM pods, an EVP recorder, a white noise spirit box, and this creepy ass “boo buddy” teddy bear that likes to communicate with children. I was legit freaked out by that bear. You are free to switch out the equipment at any time if you want to try something else.
We were split into two groups – one group was taken upstairs with their guide and the other group stayed downstairs. We did our ghost hunting downstairs first, in the area with the kitchen, solitary confinement and some of the other cells.
One thing about the other tourists on this tour – this is serious business – if you come on this tour and want to cause a ruckus, making fun of ghost hunting and the paranormal, thinking it’s all ‘stupid’, you will NOT be welcome here. Some of the people on our tour have done this multiple times and are quite familiar with some of the spirits they talk to here. Some even bring their own equipment. This is NOT the place for horseplay or to practice your comedy routine!
I chose one of the EMF meters and once I had that piece of equipment in my hand, I could feel the adrenaline pumping! This was going to be fun! My sister chose a pair of dowsing rods and they immediately started moving, leading her around the kitchen area.
We could hear voices through the spirit box – most of the time it was difficult to tell what they were saying (though sometimes it was completely clear!) but one of our guides had some sort of interpreting machine and it would tell us what they were saying. The spirits we talked to seemed friendly – without anyone in our group saying anything about the “new year”, the spirit would tell us it was now January!
Two people on our tour were talking in a cell to an evil spirit – apparently, he calls himself “Violence” and he threatened to sink their car! The guides mentioned to us that if we didn’t want to summon the evil spirits, to avoid using the equipment in solitary confinement and a few other notorious spots in the jail. We took their advice, but again, you can go wherever you want in the jail, and if you want to talk to evil spirits, you can definitely do that.
Upstairs, you’ll find the gen pop cells as well as the bedrooms for the sheriff and his family. The “Boo Bear” was placed in the child’s room, and it would constantly go off – the Boo Bear is programmed to say a few phrases when it is physically touched by something or someone. Trust me, no one was touching this god damn bear and it would go off! It even said something it wasn’t programmed to say – “There’s a light in my tummy.” Christ almighty!!! Even our guide was shook!
We had all of the encounters you’d expect on this tour – it was 100% legit. We heard tons of voices from the Spirit Box, temperature readings appearing on the infrared camera, strange anomalies that interact with you. It was creepy and definitely worth it.
Final Thoughts
This is a real, legit paranormal hunting experience. It’s not a “tour” – you’re not going to have to sit through some guide telling you boring stories and a long-winded history about the ghosts here. While that’s all well and good, actually getting true, in-person evidence trumps all of them; there really is no comparison!
This experience is absolutely top notch and if you have the chance to do this, DO IT. It’s an incredibly unique experience. Even if you’re like me and are skeptical of anything paranormal, it’s a ton of fun and pretty creepy.
Have you done the Old Jail After Dark tour? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
