HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Dover's colonial Green and its old government buildings anchor the city's evening ghost walks
The Green, Dover, DE 19901
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
The Green itself is free to walk. Commercial guided ghost tours of the district are ticketed; prices vary by operator.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved sidewalks and brick walks around an open public green and along Loockerman Street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1722 · Dover Green Historic District · Kent County Seat from 1722 · Colonial Civic Square
The Green sits at the center of historic Dover and has been the city's civic heart since the colonial period. A courthouse was built on the square by 1722, fixing it as the seat of Kent County, and over the following century The Green hosted the courts, public markets, militia musters, and the working government of both the county and, after 1777, the state.
The old courthouse functions later moved into and around the buildings that still face the square, including the Old State House, which served as the Kent County courthouse until 1873. The surrounding blocks, running up Loockerman Street, grew into Dover's commercial and legal district, and the whole area is now protected as the Dover Green Historic District on the National Register.
This concentration of early government buildings, a colonial cemetery, and the streets that connected them is what makes the district the natural route for Dover's evening ghost walks. The tours are commercial, but the stage they use is genuinely old: the same ground where the colony's courts sat and where Delaware's first state government did its business.
Sources
The signature figure of the Dover Green ghost walks is a 'grumpy judge,' described by guides as a stern presence who paces among the cemetery markers and out across the public square he once worked beside. The stories lean on the district's long role as a place of courts and judgment, and on the cemetery that sits a block away, to frame a route where, as the tour copy puts it, the living and the dead share the same old streets.
These are walking-tour legends, drawn from operators' scripts and local haunted-place lists rather than from documented investigation. The specific named characters that appear in some tour versions are presented here only as folklore, since the underlying crimes and identities are not established in primary records. The appeal is less any single ghost than the setting itself: a compact colonial square where the institutions of early Delaware, and the people they tried and buried, are all within a short walk.
Notable Entities
Walk The Green, Dover's colonial public square ringed by the Old State House, the old courthouse buildings, and Christ Church cemetery, then up Loockerman Street into the historic commercial blocks. Free and open at all hours.
Several operators run evening ghost walks that use The Green and its government buildings as the spine of the route, covering courthouse history, the Old State House, and the cemetery, with stories of the district's hauntings. Ticketed; book through the operator.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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