Chattanooga: Ghost Hunt Tour with EMF Meters & Local Guides

4.69

(129 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I noticed was the way Cherry Street felt different at night—like the air was thicker, or maybe it was just my nerves. Our guide, Marcus, handed me an EMF meter right away (I pretended to know what I was doing). He grew up here, so every story sounded personal—he even pointed out where his grandma used to work, just across from the Dome Building. The city lights made weird shadows on the old bricks, and honestly, I kept glancing over my shoulder more than once.

We stopped in this alley Marcus called “Hell on Earth”—not subtle. He showed us how to use these dowsing rods (which I definitely held wrong at first), and told us about a fever outbreak that wiped out whole families. There was this moment when everything went quiet except for someone’s dog barking far off. It smelled like rain on concrete and a little bit like cigarette smoke from a bar down the block. My friend tried asking questions to the ghosts—Li laughed when I tried to say something in Mandarin; probably butchered it but maybe the ghosts appreciated the effort.

I didn’t expect zombies to come up (Marcus just grinned and said “wait for it”). The Confederate Jail site felt heavy—hard to explain, but you could almost feel how many people passed through there. At one stop, we met another guide who swore he’d caught a ghost on camera at the old schoolhouse-turned-hospital. He showed us the photo but honestly, all I saw was a blurry light—but who knows? By then my EMF meter had beeped twice and everyone got weirdly quiet.

We finished back near where we started, and I kept thinking about those stories long after we left. The tour ran rain or shine (it drizzled for half an hour), but nobody seemed to mind. It wasn’t just about hunting ghosts—it was about hearing how Chattanooga’s past still lingers if you listen closely enough.