Ghosts of New Haven

My wife and I decided at the last minute to take this tour. The group began to congregate outside the Starbucks around 7:15 and our guide Christine came right over to everyone and introduced herself. We started out a few minutes late because of a few stragglers who went to the wrong beginning location. To be fair you can’t blame folks for going to the wrong starbucks. GPS in the city is spotty because of the buildings blocking signal but we still got off by about 7:45.
I have to give high marks to our guide. She seemed very knowledgeable and had an active interest in the city’s history. She was very professional and well spoken. I think the whole group was drawn in by all the tales we heard as we followed Christine around the Yale campus and surrounding historic sites.
She timed the whole tour perfectly and we got back to the starting point by about 9:30. The only reason I am giving 4 stars is not even the tours fault. New Haven traffic at night can be loud and occasionally the bus traffic can drown out the guide but with a little adjusting and closing in around your guide it ended up being great. At no point did I feel like our guide would be unwilling to repeat herself if necessary..

Just did the Wallingford tour and it was great! Super informative and fun. Tour guide Adam was awesome

I am relieved that I only spent $ 10 on this through Groupon. Scheduling was difficult — the number the website tells you to call has this horribly recorded voicemail and they never pick up (at least not when I called). When I had to reschedule the guy got really mad and he took awhile to respond to my emails. The tour was interesting and the guide was very friendly and quite knowledgable — she had a lot of neat stories but one could have googled the whole thing. We didn’t go inside anything– we just stood outside of buildings.

Have to agree with pretty much everything the previous poster said. Our tour guide was a local high school senior, and she was a sweetheart. She had note cards to help her remember the facts/​stories about each location and certainly did a better job than I could have done when I was 18. She didn’t forget anything and was able to answer some basic questions about each location. It was just VERY bland, like hearing a book report presentation in school. I’ve been to these kinds of tours in other cities, and usually they hire theatrical types who are really good storytellers as the tour guides, so that no matter how much of a stretch the particular story or fact is that they’re sharing, the guide can make it sound interesting. Not the case here.
I certainly cannot blame the guide entirely Not only was she young (and so possibly would have been better paired with a more experienced storyteller — if they have any!), but the tour is just weak. They don’t actually have access to any of the «haunted» locations — the Grove St. Cemetery, any of the Yale buildings, even the NH Public Library — so pretty much everything is left to the imagination while you’re standing outside on the sidewalk, and without a very skilled and entertaining tour guide, that means this tour lost on both content and presentation. I understand they can’t get access to everything, but if they could arrange entry to at least a couple of places this would be much better (the only place we went in was to the war memorial area of the Yale music school, which is an open-​air public lobby).
The worst part, as mentioned by the previous reviewer, was the mention of the Winchester Mansion, which is located in San Jose, CA. First of all, this is a famous house known all over the world so it was nothing new to most of the tour participants. More importantly, sure the Winchesters had connections to CT, and it’s a cool story, but who cares if the house is across the country?
The only positives I can say about this tour were that it was a lovely walk through New Haven on a nice evening, and that I got discounted tickets on Groupon so I didn’t lose much money.
Too bad, New Haven has lots of cool ghost stories and this could have been really interesting and fun.

Before the tour even started, a friend and I had a bad experience with this tour company. The confirmation email for reserving a space led us to go to the wrong intersection (of East, rather than North Main Street in Wallingford).
The first thing the tour group found out was that the company gave him three days notice to give his first ever tour, which became painfully apparent.
When I informed the manager via email, she insinuated that I was asking for perfection. So I explained to her that what I experienced was a teenager who read (badly) from a set of papers. Not only that, the tour was only 55 minutes, rather than 90 as advertised.
The guide reiterated his skepticism of ghosts, which didn’t make it feel like a ghost tour at all. But even if it you take this tour for historical interests, don’t be surprised if you miss a stop like I did, or if you have to find things in the cemetery on your own. My tour guide was unable to find anything in the cemetery, but fortunately one of the members of the tour group found a couple key gravestones.
Despite the above information that I shared with the manager, she simply gave me a sarcastic «thank you for your criticisms.» I thought she might at least give me the opportunity to experience a better tour, in their other location of New Haven.

I’ve been away from Unilocal for a few months (gasp!) and my experience with «Ghosts of New Haven» has inspired me to return. That might be the only good thing that came out of the waste of time that is the New Haven ghost tour. Oh — and the fact that I bought the tickets through Groupon, so it wasn’t as big of a waste of money as it could have been.
It was promoted as a tour of haunted locations in New Haven, and their website promised that it would «enchant, entertain, inform, and scare» me. That, combined with the possibility of a dinner in New Haven, sounded like a great night out.
We arrived at Starbucks at the appointed time. The tour guide did not greet us, and we only found out she was the tour guide when she started complaining that 4 people still hadn’t arrived. She had no name tag, clipboard, or anything else professional-​ish to identify her. Just a gothic-​looking prom dress-​type outfit, which frankly didn’t stand out much near the Yale campus.
Our first stop on the tour was Vanderbilt Hall. The tour guide could not remember the name, until another tour participant pointed out the large sign outside with the name on it. Another point where a clipboard may have come in handy, perhaps? The tour consisted of the group standing outside a building (never went inside any building or the cemetery) while the guide told us ghost stories with very few historical references. (The typical ghost story started with: «There was a guy. We’ll call him Joe.»)
Although the guide mentioned that she has been giving tours for over a year, and is also an elementary school teacher, she seemed completely unable to focus and easily distracted. Every passing car seemed to derail her from her poorly memorized presentation. It quickly became apparent that she had no knowledge about the subject matter other than what was included in the presentation.
The most ridiculous point in the tour came when we stopped outside of a church, she told us that there were no ghosts there that she was aware of, then proceeded to take from her pocket a picture of the Winchester Mansion, a haunted house in California, which she had ripped from her mother’s copy of Rachael Ray magazine. Apparently she didn’t read the article that was most likely attached to said photo — when a tour participant asked a question about the house, her response was: «I have no idea.»
Shortly after that, we nearly abandoned the tour when we walked by a nice-​looking pizza place. Unfortunately, we decided to continue — and had the pleasure of experiencing a very awkward moment at the end, when the tour guide asked for tips, and all 12 tour participants walked away, with not so much as a «thank you.»