When Old Salem's Museums Close, Its Ghost Stories Play On
A WalknTours app code plays Moravian ghost stories at Salem Tavern, God's Acre and the Single Sisters' House, any day and any hour, in 50 to 60 minutes.
No one meets you at the start of this walk. The booking buys a code for the WalknTours app, and the app does the talking from outside the Salem Tavern Museum: a story at each stop through Old Salem's streets, Salem Square and God's Acre, ending at the Single Sisters' House on Church Street. The listing puts it at 50 to 60 minutes, entirely outdoors, without entering a single building.
That matters in Old Salem, whose museum buildings open only Wednesday to Saturday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and close for all of January. Old Salem Museums & Gardens notes that the historic district itself stays open to explore on the days its buildings are closed. One visitor who could only come on a Monday, with everything else shut, wrote that the walk "was a great way to explore."
Read the confirmation before you head out. It carries the app download link, the unlock code and a number to text the operator if something goes wrong.
Old Salem's Ghost Self Guided Outside Walking TourSelf-guided app audio · 50 to 60 minutes · Starts outside Salem Tavern Museum · Ends at the Single Sisters' Housewww.viator.comYour Ticket Is an Unlock Code
The confirmation lists three steps: download the WalknTours app, register an account, then pick Winston-Salem, open the Famous Ghosts of Old Salem Walking Tour and enter the experience code from the confirmation. Don't buy the tour inside the app; the code unlocks the one you have already paid for. If several people want the stories on their own phones, each registers a separate account with a separate email and uses the same code. The operator's FAQ says a downloaded tour runs offline, GPS map and audio included, so load it before you set out. The listing adds that the app has a built-in EMF reader, included, that you can use at any point.
WalknTours, not Old Salem Museums & Gardens, runs this tour, so questions go to the operator. The confirmation describes it as a tiny company, just its owner, Greg, and gives a number to text and an email address.
God's Acre Has Its Own House Rules
The graveyard stop deserves the most care. The Salem Congregation sets the rules for God's Acre, and the ground looks unlike most American cemeteries: flat, recumbent stones with no monuments to set rich graves apart from poor ones, and men, women and children buried separately under the old Moravian choir system.
The congregation's rules allow visitors at all times, which suits a tour sold for any hour. Visitors are asked to stay on the avenues and walkways, leave food and drink outside, and keep their voices down. Dogs have to sit this stop out: Old Salem welcomes leashed pets on its streets, but the congregation bars pets other than service animals from the graveyard's burial areas, walkways and Cedar Avenue, leashed or not. If a burial service is under way, staff may ask you to come back later.
The Tavern Took the Sisters' Bricks
The first stop and the last are tied together by a load of bricks. Old Salem Museums & Gardens says the brick made for the Single Sisters' House went instead into rebuilding the Salem Tavern in masonry after a fire, which set the Sisters' building back a year: the tavern dates to 1784, and work on the Sisters' House began in 1785. The walk opens at the building that took those bricks and ends at the one that waited a year for its own.
George Washington spent two nights in Salem in 1791 and stayed at the tavern, and the listing says the app's first stop covers his visit. Old Salem's own staff tell a tavern ghost story too. Jacob Chilton, an interpretation coordinator at Old Salem, told WFMY News 2 in 2025 that a traveler named Samuel McCleary stumbled in after dark in September 1831 and died that night, and that tavern keeper Heinrich Sinsman "liked to stir up the pot" to drum up business. The listing doesn't say whether the app tells this one.
In between come the Single Brothers' House on Main Street, which housed the town's unmarried young men and their trade apprenticeships, and Salem College on Church Street. The little red man said to haunt the Brothers' House traces to a real death. The Moravian records for March 1786 describe Andreas Kremser being buried one night when the cellar being dug for an addition to the house caved in, and dying hours later. The 1941 published edition of those records notes that his death gave rise to the legend, "though in fact it offers no foundation for a ghost story." The tragedies told at the college come from the operator's own telling.
Tickets, Timing and Access
As of October 25, 2026, the listing prices adult tickets, for ages 16 and up, at USD 7.75 and child tickets, for ages 5 to 15, at USD 6.00, with up to fifteen people per booking and an adult on every booking. You still pick a date: cancel at least 24 hours ahead of it for a full refund, and inside 24 hours nothing comes back. Once unlocked, the tour does not expire, according to both the listing and the operator's FAQ.
The listing says most travelers can participate but marks the walk as not wheelchair accessible, and WalknTours' own booking page says the same about wheelchairs and adds that it is not stroller accessible. That page also allows pets, while the listing names only service animals; the graveyard rules above apply either way. Old Salem Museums & Gardens posts an accessibility map of the historic district with distances and steps. Food and drink are not included.
📍 Start outside the Salem Tavern Museum at 812 South Main Street, tour downloaded and phone charged. The last story plays outside the Single Sisters' House at 621 South Church Street, across Salem Square from where the Brothers once lived.