Did you know the historic Lohman Opera House building on High Street used to be a hog pen?
Or that a historian was raised in the Cole County Jail and Sheriff's House attached to the Cole County Courthouse, and sheriffs and their families lived there until the 1970s?
Downtown Jefferson City is packed with history. The Jefferson City Paranormal Society put countless hours of research into the history for its new haunted and historical walking tours that kicked off Sunday.
Jeff City's Most Haunted History & Ghost Walking Tours will take place this season until Nov. 26 and then continue every spring, summer and fall. The paranormal society plans to expand the tours, change up the facts and locations and provide a trolley tour, said Matthew Ousley, co-founder of the paranormal society.
This season's tour dates are Oct. 24, 27 and 29 and Nov. 5, 14 and 26. The limited dates will allow the society to find its feet with this new endeavor before it launches a full schedule in the spring, Ousley said.
Starting and ending near the Capitol, the tours are about 1.25 miles around downtown Jefferson City. Tours at 4 p.m. and earlier are history walks, which cover some of the well-known or unknown bits of Jefferson City chronology, mostly focusing on buildings and the town's development.
When the sun goes down, things get spooky. Tours after 4 p.m. are haunted ghost tours where guests learn about murders, strange deaths and mad stories the society has resurrected for the tour.
"Jeff City was crazy at the turn of the century," Ousley said. "There were some very scary things, very scary people. You will not believe what we dug up about this place."
There will also be "extreme ghost tours," which go an hour longer than the normal ghost tour and feature professional ghost-hunting gear.
The Jefferson City Paranormal Society decided to create these tours after taking part in a ghost tour in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and wondering why Jefferson City didn't have something like it, said tour guide Erin Geiser, a member of the paranormal society.
"It's such an old location with so much history; it was just a no-brainer," Geiser said.
Tickets for this season's tours are $10, and the society plans to donate proceeds back to the community through charities.
Some times have been sold out, so visit the event page at bit.ly/2Z9V0l1 for availability. Cancellations are also possible as a minimum of five tickets sold is required for each tour, so stay tuned for email updates once you sign up.
CORRECTION: This article was edited at 10:20 a.m. Oct. 25, 2021, to correct the required minimum number of tickets on each tour to five.