Elderberry Park and the Oscar Anderson House (1915) · Downtown Anchorage's early railroad-era hotels
US Ghost Adventures, a multi-city ghost-tour chain, operates its Anchorage program under the local consumer brand 'Anchorage Ghosts,' with the specific tour marketed as 'Arctic Abyss: Ashes to Ice Anchorage Ghost Tour.' Tours meet nightly outside the Oscar Anderson House Museum, a 1915 log home in Elderberry Park considered one of Anchorage's oldest surviving structures, and cover about a mile of downtown on foot over roughly an hour.
The route covers the Historic Anchorage Hotel, opened in 1916 as one of the city's first hotels for railroad-era travelers; the Hotel Captain Cook, a mid-20th-century downtown hotel; and the Boney Courthouse, a 1970s-built federal courthouse. The narration situates these stops within Anchorage's history as a railroad-founded town that grew rapidly through the 20th century, including the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and subsequent oil-boom development.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/anchorage-ghost-tour/
- Trustpilot reviews for usghostadventures.com, including Anchorage-specific reviews dated July-August 2026
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsCold Spots
According to US Ghost Adventures' own tour material, the Historic Anchorage Hotel is described as home to multiple apparitions, including a man the operator names John J. 'Black Jack' Sturgus, said to have died from a gunshot wound inside the hotel, alongside other reported figures including children and a bride. The Hotel Captain Cook's reported haunting is framed around an angered female spirit said to disturb guests. The Boney Courthouse's reported haunting centers on an apparition described as a former guard or justice-seeking figure who patrols the building.
All of this is the tour operator's own marketing material, not documented history independently verified for this listing; it is included here as a description of what the tour covers, not as an endorsement of any specific claim.
