Haunted Houses & Ghost Tours in Atlanta, GA

The history

Atlanta's haunted anchors are two institutions with dates that check out. The Fox Theatre opened on Christmas Day 1929 — a grand 1920s movie palace built with Islamic and Egyptian design elements, which still operates as a performing-arts venue and still gives tours. Among its original features, remarkably, was a hospital room dating to 1929, which survives as a stop on the theatre's own accounts of itself.

Oakland Cemetery is older: established in 1850, it holds more than 70,000 burials and is Atlanta's oldest public park as well as its historic cemetery of record. A burial ground of that scale, founded before the Civil War and filled through it, is documented ground — the prominent figures of Atlanta's history are buried there, and the cemetery runs its own tours and events on the strength of the real record.

Between a 1929 theatre and an 1850 cemetery, Atlanta's ghost tradition has something many cities lack: haunted sites that are also staffed, curated historic institutions, whose own programmes — the Fox's haunted history tours, Oakland's October events — are the primary tellers of the stories attached to them.

The legend

The Fox Theatre's reported phenomena, as Encore Magazine's account of its haunted history tour records them, are specific: sudden blasts of icy air, shadowy figures gliding across walls, and doors creaking shut with no explanation — reported, in particular, in the theatre's original 1929 hospital room and its sub-basement. A local haunted-Atlanta guide adds the theatre's boiler-room tradition: a ghost called Roosevelt, who maintained the boiler room until his death in 1945 and is said to slam doors and turn off lights when disturbed in his work. Both strands are reports and local tradition, attributed here as they are attributed in their sources; the theatre building, its opening date and its hospital room are the documented part.

Oakland Cemetery's legends, as the same Atlanta guide recounts them, are Civil War-flavoured: the specter of a Union soldier hanging from a tree, ghostly voices of soldiers calling roll-call, and a young woman still searching for her lost love.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 8 places in Atlanta, GA. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Capturing the Spirit of Oakland — ghost tour, 374 M.L.K. Jr Dr SE, Atlanta, GA 30312
• Fox Theatre — haunted place, 660 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA
• Fox Theatre Haunted History Tour — ghost tour, 660 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30308
• Marietta Ghosts: Ghost Tours and Haunted Pub Crawls — ghost tour, 85 Atlanta St SE, Marietta, GA 30060
• Oakland Cemetery — haunted place, 248 Oakland Ave SE, Atlanta, GA
• Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse — haunted place, Midtown Atlanta, GA (street address not in source)
• The Ellis Hotel (former Winecoff Hotel) — haunted place, 176 Peachtree St NW, Atlanta, GA
• The Wren's Nest — haunted place, Atlanta, GA (street address not in source)

Fox Theatre Haunted History Tour

The Fox Theatre is a haunted-history tour that begins with an unfair advantage: the building. Opened on Christmas Day 1929, the Fox is a working landmark of Islamic- and Egyptian-influenced design, and the theatre's own tours operation — linked from its official site — is the channel through which its haunted history programming, a seasonal October fixture in local coverage, is sold. This is an institution telling its own ghost stories, on its own stage.

The reported phenomena come principally from Encore Magazine's account of the tour, and they are quoted here as reports: staff and visitors have reported sudden blasts of icy air, shadowy figures gliding across walls, and doors creaking shut with no explanation, including in the theatre's original 1929 hospital room and its sub-basement. The hospital room deserves its sentence of plain fact amid the apparitions: the Fox really was built with one, in 1929, and it really survives — a piece of movie-palace-era planning that needs no ghost to unsettle a visitor standing in it after hours. Local tradition adds a named presence in the boiler room: Roosevelt, the engineer said to have kept the boilers until his death in 1945, who reportedly slams doors and kills the lights when disturbed — a workplace ghost story, attributed to local telling.

For a visitor, the proposition is precise: an after-hours look inside a documented 1929 landmark, guided by the institution that maintains it, with its reported hauntings presented as reports. Current tour dates and tickets are on the Fox's own tours page; the haunting, as ever, is not guaranteed — the building is.

Capturing the Spirit of Oakland

The legends it trades in are the cemetery's own folklore, as recounted in local haunted-Atlanta coverage: a Union soldier said to hang from a tree, ghostly voices of soldiers calling roll-call, and a young woman still searching for her lost love. These are presented in this story as they are in the source — as the hauntings attached to Oakland in local telling. The documented layer underneath them is heavier than most: a public cemetery established in 1850, the burial place of generations of Atlantans, and the city's oldest public park. A night tour in a place like that is working with the real atmosphere of a real historic landscape; the actors and guides, as a local guide notes of the cemetery's October after-dark programming, supply the residents' voices "in actor form, of course."

Two practical notes follow from the sources. First, tickets for Oakland's October events are reported to sell out fast — the local guide's warning, worth repeating. Second, the cemetery is tourable year-round on its history; it is this programme that is October-only. Confirm the current year's dates and availability on Oakland Cemetery's own events page, which is both the source for this listing and the place to book.

Sources

• Fox Theatre — Tours at the Fox — https://www.foxtheatre.org/tours-at-the-fox
• Encore Magazine — Fox Theatre haunted history coverage — https://encoremagazine.com/fox-theatre-gets-in-the-spirit-for-halloween/
• Oakland Cemetery — Events — https://www.oaklandcemetery.com/events/?category=illumine
• Paige Minds the Gap — "13 Most Haunted Places in Atlanta, Georgia" — https://paigemindsthegap.com/haunted-places-atlanta-georgia/ (fetched 2026-10-22)
• Metro note: Netherworld Haunted House is physically in Stone Mountain, GA — see ga-stone-mountain.md.