I’ve wanted to visit Jerome since I moved to Page and found out about it. I was SO excited to go and do a ghost tour and see the town and to write this post, and then I went.

And now I’m not looking forward to this post because I, uhh, did not like it. Every expectation I had of Jerome was wrong. But, I won’t say I’ll never go back because I would to do a different ghost tour and stay at a haunted hotel.

The town is tiny (that didn’t really surprise me), the streets are so narrow, parking is not easy, it’s really busy, and the stores that I saw, aside from the Kaleidoscope store, are pretty typical tourist town stores.

There’s nothing wrong with tourist town shops, but you can really only go to so many.

Thinking about it now that I know what I know, these things make sense. At least about the town size/layout. I do understand the charm of the town, don’t get me wrong, I just didn’t love it like I thought I would.

My expectations for Jerome were very high, too, which really didn’t help. I don’t want this to just be a negative post but I do want to keep it real here.

I also don’t think you should take this as a sign to just never visit Jerome because it is an interesting place. It’s just not a place I love (like Sedona) and I want to share when I don’t like things, too. I think it’s important to not just share everything and say it’s all amazing because it’s not. And that’s ok.

Our tour experience

I just want to share about the tour we did, the Spirit Walk with Ghost Town Tours. Obviously experiences will be different with different tours and even just different groups on this tour, that’s just the way things are. This was just the experience we had.

I did confirm these thoughts and things with my parents to make sure I was remembering things right and they confirmed it. It’s not a bad history tour butt it’s not a great ghost tour.

It’s just an hour walking tour that (directly from the website) “guides you through the historic buildings and ruins of central Jerome. E.M.F. are available and this tour includes history, ghost sightings, and accounts of re-occuring paranormal activity.”

And looking back, it is accurate, but it definitely leaned more toward history than haunted, which isn’t bad but just wasn’t what I expected.

We did get to use some kind of box thing (I think it was called a spirit box?) to ask questions and possibly get answers from spirits, which is cool and definitely paranormal, but I did not like this.

It was just my parents and I on the tour because the other people rescheduled so it felt like there was a lot of pressure to ask things but it just felt awkward and I had no idea what to ask. It just felt weird.

But I’m also very shy and don’t like public speaking in any way and while this obviously wasn’t that, it was very quiet and everyone could hear everything so it felt like it.

The history of Jerome is really interesting and very dark, which makes for a perfect ghost tour but the way it was delivered wasn’t the best.

Like, in St. Augustine or at the Stanley Hotel, they would say something like this person lived here, they died horrifically in this room, and now these are paranormal things that happen here but on this one it would be more like this is where prostitutes lived and worked in awful conditions usually against their will or six prisoners shared this twin bed in terrible conditions but then wouldn’t have any paranormal experiences or these swings just move on their own in no wind but there’s not explanation of who might be haunting it.

Maybe the lack of specifics is because so many people lived and died here in awful ways there is no way to know specific stories and it’s just a generally haunted place. I don’t know.

I did like the history that we learned because it was extremely interesting. I mean, 15,000 people lived here in it’s heyday and now there are less than 500. That’s wild.

There are tunnels under the town that people used to use to get from the upper part of town where the wealthy people lived to the lower parts where they could visit prostitutes and get drugs. Diseased and injured people were also transported through them so people wouldn’t have to see them.

So many people died, they had to use blast furnaces to get rid of the bodies which was then used in building around town. Yup, concrete and what not with people in it. If that’s not a recipe for ghosts, I don’t know what is.

Ghost Adventures even came to film an episode here but we didn’t really even get to hear what they came to look for/experienced other than they filmed at the Holy Family Church and were forced to not show any of that.

There was another story of a woman working in a store that had a dream of someone telling her to move the children, then the next day at work, she saw a group of kids outside the store and told them to move, only for the rock and sign above the door to collapse right where they were standing.

The material is there for wild ghost stories, we just didn’t really get to hear them this time. The focus definitely felt like it was on history over ghosts and we just expected more spooky.

Again, it’s not necessarily a bad tour, it just wasn’t what we expected. I would still go back to do another ghost tour, maybe a longer one though or one that is specifically a ghost tour since some are labelled history instead of ghost. This one was labelled ghost though, so who knows.

If you want a more haunted/ghost specific tour, I would skip this one and choose something else but if you want history with a touch of spook, this would be a good choice. There are other history tours as well.

What kind of Jerome ghost tours are there?

For being such a small place, there are quite a few ghost tours in Jerome to choose from. There are also specific history tours if you want a little less spook.

There is the Spirit Walk we did which I would say is a dark walking tour of Jerome focusing on history with a few haunted things (but very minimal haunted things.)

There are combination walking and shuttle history/ghost tours as well as longer ghost tours that involve equipment to look for spirits and paranormal activity.

There’s even a tour (four hours) that leaves from Sedona if you still want to visit Jerome but aren’t staying there and don’t want to drive and worry about parking (the parking is terrible.)

There are also private tours available if you would prefer to do something like that or without strangers, which I also totally get. We basically had a private tour but I think we just got lucky. We also did go in the late afternoon instead of at night which could have been part of it.

I think next time I would try the Pandoras Box one from Jerome Ghost Tours. It’s two hours and has exclusive access to four locations. I have no idea what the tour is like but it sounds interesting. It is more expensive though at $84 per person.

Can you see ghosts on a ghost tour in Jerome?

Probably! Hopefully! We didn’t but that’s probably just luck and may depend on where you go or when you’re there, who knows. They’re ghosts, you can’t make them do anything.

You’re probably more likely to experience something on a longer tour or on one that uses special equipment, but it can also probably happen anytime. There isn’t any one thing to guarantee any experience. And this isn’t backed up on any of the tour websites, it just makes sense to me, in my head.

How much is a Jerome ghost tour?

Jerome ghost tour prices vary from $30-$90 depending on type of tour and company but can be up to $150 for a private tour. All prices are per person (adults) and kids are usually less.

Is a Jerome ghost tour worth it?

Yes, even if I didn’t love ours, I think choosing one that is more specifically haunted or spooky would be better. They’re more expensive but I think the extra cost would be worth it.

Have you been on a Jerome ghost tour? Which. one? How was it? Do you want to go on one?