Ghost Tour Near Me by St Paul's: Ghosts of the Old City Walk

Ghosts of the Old City starts at 7.30pm every Saturday just outside exit 2 of St Paul's Underground station, costs £20 for adults, £15 for students and seniors and £5 for children, and ends back at the same station two hours later. It is run by London Walks, the walking-tour company whose ghost guides are almost all trained actors. For anyone searching ghost tour near me in the Square Mile, it is the slow, on-foot alternative to a bus, built around churchyards and back lanes rather than landmarks seen through glass.

St Paul's station sits on the Central line, one stop east of Chancery Lane, and its exits come up a few steps from St Paul's Cathedral, whose address is St Paul's Churchyard, London EC4M 8AD. The guide waits just outside exit 2, and the group sets off once the payments are done. Because the walk finishes back at the station, you do not need to plan a route home from somewhere unfamiliar. The Central line takes you west to Oxford Circus or east to Bank and Liverpool Street in minutes.

London Walks does not need you to book a fixed seat the way a theatre does. The company sells reservations online, and its guides also take payment in person at the start, which is how the Discount Walkabout Card works. That card costs £5 on top of your first full-price walk, after which adults pay £15 and over-65s and full-time students pay £10 on every London Walks tour for six months. If you plan to do a Jack the Ripper walk or a pub walk on the same trip, the card pays for itself quickly.

The City empties after dark, and that is the point of the walk. The route moves through back streets whose names are older than most countries, from Aldersgate and Cloth Fair to Charterhouse and Threadneedle Street. The company's own description lists the characters you will hear about: the She-Wolf of France gliding through a churchyard, a dark figure rattling his chains on the line of the old Newgate wall, the Black Nun keeping a lonely vigil, and something nameless behind a very small window.

The She-Wolf of France is the nickname of Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, and her story belongs to the area around the ruined Christ Church Greyfriars, now a small garden on Newgate Street. The Black Nun is the City's best-known Bank of England legend, a woman said to keep searching Threadneedle Street for her brother. Newgate Prison stood where the Old Bailey courts are today. Expect the guide to connect each story to a real wall, tomb or doorway that you can put your hand on.

London Walks says the reason its ghost walks work is that all but one of the guides are actors. Shaughan leads as the Duke of Darkness, Adam as the Shadow Walker, and Karen as the Woman in Black. Karen won the London Tourist Board's Guide of the Year Award, and London Walks quotes a Travel and Leisure ranking that called her the world's greatest guide. Adam is the one guide who is not an actor, and reviewers on the London Walks site still single him out for his timing.

That focus on performance changes the mood. There is no fake spooky voice and no costume shop props on a normal Saturday, just a guide with presence who knows when to drop to a whisper in an empty churchyard. A walker who joined the special 4pm departure in late October 2024 wrote that the group started in sunshine and finished in moonlight, passing plague pits, execution sites and stories of roasting hearts and missing skulls along the way.

The busiest dates are the ones around Halloween. London Walks has scheduled a special Halloween departure of Ghosts of the Old City for Sunday 25 October 2026, from 4pm to 6pm, again from St Paul's, which suits families and anyone who would rather not be out late. In 2026 Halloween itself falls on a Saturday, the walk's regular night, and the company says that on Halloween it puts several guides out at once to split the crowd into smaller groups, with many walkers and guides in costume.

One honest warning: a large Saturday group in late October can make it hard to hear at the back. Stand near the guide at each stop and keep up between them, because the best lines come straight after the group arrives. If a Saturday does not fit your trip, the Barbican Centre is a ten-minute walk north and runs its own Ghost Tours on Wednesday to Sunday evenings until 13 December 2026, from outside the Barbican Shop on Level G, with standard tickets at £26.50.

Arrive early and spend twenty minutes around the cathedral steps, where the floodlit west front is at its most dramatic after dusk. Paternoster Square, just north of the cathedral, has cafes and benches, and the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern starts a short walk south down Peter's Hill. After the walk, the riverside path below the bridge is a calm way to come down from two hours of plague and execution stories.

Smithfield and the church of St Bartholomew the Great, near Cloth Fair, are about ten minutes on foot from St Paul's and give you a feel for how old these lanes really are before you hear what supposedly walks them. Closer still, the garden inside the ruined walls of Christ Church Greyfriars on Newgate Street is a quiet place to sit before the walk, and a good spot to picture the She-Wolf of France story you are about to hear.

Ghosts of the Old City by London Walks, meeting point just outside exit 2 of St Paul's Underground station, close to St Paul's Cathedral, London EC4M 8AD. Saturdays at 7.30pm, finishing about 9.30pm back at St Paul's. Adults £20, students and seniors £15, children £5. The company says its walks last two hours and go ahead rain or shine.

Wear flat shoes with grip, because City lanes and churchyard paths can be slippery on October nights, and bring a layer since you will spend long stretches standing still. The route is outdoors and on public streets, so there is nowhere to buy a drink once you set off. Children are welcome at the £5 rate, though the stories of execution and plague suit older children more than toddlers.