Est. 1849 · Colton Hall — site of California's 1849 constitutional convention, National Historic Landmark · The Monterey Hotel, open since 1904 · Monterey as California's first state capital under American rule
US Ghost Adventures markets its Monterey program as "Monterey Ghosts," with both a roughly 1-hour flagship walking tour (Mist, Mayhem & Murder) and a separate Boos and Booze Haunted Pub Crawl, both meeting at Colton Hall Museum and Jail, 570 Pacific St. The walking tour's route continues to Stokes Adobe and ends at The Monterey Hotel, a hotel that has operated since 1904.
Colton Hall itself is a real National Historic Landmark: built in 1849 by Walter Colton, Monterey's first American alcalde (a combined mayor/judge/law-enforcement role under early California's Mexican-derived governance), it hosted California's 1849 constitutional convention. The operator's marketing recounts Colton's consolidated judicial authority in period-appropriate terms; this listing treats his historical office as documented fact, not as an accusation of wrongdoing.
Independent listings on TripAdvisor and Wanderlog, with current 2026 reviews, corroborate that the Monterey Ghosts program is actively operating.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/monterey-ghost-tour/
- https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g32737-d25433789-Mist_Mayhem_Murder_Monterey_Ghost_Tours-Monterey_Monterey_County_California.html
- https://wanderlog.com/place/details/7903468/monterey-ghosts-ghost-tours--haunted-pub-crawls
ApparitionsUnexplained ActivityReported Hauntings
The operator's marketing describes Walter Colton, Monterey's first American alcalde, as having wielded outsized judicial power in a frontier town, and ties reported activity at Colton Hall to that history; this is the operator's dramatized framing of a real historical office, not an independently verified claim of specific wrongdoing. At The Monterey Hotel, the operator describes reported sightings of guests in early-20th-century dress said to still walk the halls and stairs. At Stokes Adobe, the operator recounts a story of British sailor James Stokes posing as a doctor at the property using medical supplies from an abandoned ship, with reported hauntings tied to that account.
All of this is the tour operator's own marketing and narrative 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.
