A history of hauntings: Lititz Walking Tours launches ghost tours for October

Historic Lititz Walking Tours LLC started selling tickets online Tuesday night for its ghost tours, dubbed Lititz Ghosts and Departed Spirits Tours.

Tickets were sold out by Wednesday morning. 

“It’s a good problem to have,” said Cory Van Brookhoven, founder of Lititz Walking Tours.

Lititz Walking Tours has partnered with two members of the Lititz Moravian Archives Committee – Tom Wentzel and Bill Oehme – to organize the tours. The Moravian Archives Committee used to offer tours of the Lititz Moravian Cemetery, but stopped a few year ago.

Lititz ghost tour organizers originally scheduled four 12-person tours – two on Oct. 23 and two on Oct. 30. Due to the demand, the company is adding a third day of tours on Oct. 22 and increasing the group to 15 people, so there are tickets available again.

Tour times are at 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on all three days.

The tour groups will travel down Main Street, learning about 10 different possibly haunted buildings, starting at the General Sutter Inn.

The tours will end at the Moravian Church property, where there are two buildings with a chilling history – one was a military hospital and the other was a corpse house.

Many local businesses, such as Candyology and Matthew 25 Thrift Shop, shared their personal accounts of ghost sightings or experiences in their buildings with Van Brookhoven.

Over the years, some of the businesses have had professional ghost hunters come into their buildings, Van Brookhoven said.

Van Brookhoven, who is a third-generation Lititz resident and president of the Lititz Historical Foundation, provided history on the buildings to the ghost hunters.

The tours will be family friendly, with no gory stories, Van Brookhoven said.

Lititz Walking Tours started in April

Van Brookhoven launched Lititz Walking Tours in April of this year, and since then Van Brookhoven has given a couple hundred people a historic tour of Lititz, he said.

Most people on the tours are from out of town.

He’s run into some challenges along the way, such as inclement weather and noise from trucks passing by, but overall the tours have been successful.

“I always envisioned the ghost tours coming in October. It’s never been done in Lititz before,” Van Brookhoven said.