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.
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Cleveland, OH
Strange & Spooky Cleveland Tours is described as Cleveland's only locally owned and operated ghost walk, led by paranormal author and investigative historian William G. Krejci.
Galveston, TX
The Strand Historic District in Galveston was established as the city's commercial core beginning in the 1840s and became one of the most important commercial centers in Texas by the 1870s. The surviving 1877-era iron-front commercial buildings along the Strand survived the September 8, 1900 hurricane that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people in Galveston and destroyed most residential structures on the island. During the recovery period, the Strand district buildings served as mass morgues, triage stations, and temporary housing for survivors, a role documented in local newspaper accounts from September and October 1900.
Pensacola, FL
Pensacola History & Hauntings is a local Pensacola tour operator running ghost walks, a haunted trolley, a scavenger hunt, and a Seville Quarter dinner-and-ghost-tour product through the city's Seville Historic District, booked through pensacolaghostevents.com and listed on the official Visit Pensacola and Visit Florida tourism sites.