Grand Rapids Historic Downtown · Amway Grand Plaza Hotel · St. Cecilia Music Center · Grand Rapids Public Library · Peck Building (1916 Waite poisoning case)
The Grand Rapids Wraiths & Witches Ghost Tour is operated by US Ghost Adventures, the multi-city tour network that runs equivalent products in Detroit, Chicago, and other markets. As of August 2026 tours depart from 187 Monroe Ave NW in downtown Grand Rapids; the guide is identified by a branded shirt and a hand-carried lantern.
The route is structured around several anchor properties. The Amway Grand Plaza Hotel incorporates the original Pantlind Hotel, opened in 1916, whose upper floors have generated decades of guest reports. The Michigan Bell Building and the Peck Building anchor the early-twentieth-century commercial core; the Peck Building is tied to the well-documented 1916 arsenic poisoning of John and Hannah Peck by their son-in-law Arthur Warren Waite, who was convicted and executed. The Grand Rapids Public Library (the Ryerson building), opened in 1904 in a Beaux-Arts plan, is included for documented overnight reports by staff. Veterans Memorial Park covers the city's Civil War and later military heritage, and the St. Cecilia Music Center, opened in 1894 as one of the earliest dedicated women's music clubs in the United States, and the city's Masonic Temple round out the route.
The tour runs nightly year-round. Bookings are available through the US Ghost Adventures website and through third-party platforms including Viator, GetYourGuide, and Expedia.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/grand-rapids-ghost-tour/
- https://www.michigan.org/property/grand-rapids-wraiths-and-witches-ghost-tour
- https://www.experiencegr.com/articles/post/tour-of-grand-rapids-ghostly-history/
ApparitionsPhantom footstepsCold spotsObject movementDoors opening/closingEMF anomaliesOrbsShadow figures
The Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, occupying the original 1916 Pantlind Hotel structure, generates the bulk of the route's hotel-based phenomena reports — phantom footsteps in the original upper-floor corridors, occasional doors closing without contact, and intermittent guest reports of figures in early-twentieth-century clothing, along with the operator's account of a fatal elevator accident on the property.
St. Cecilia Music Center is presented as the tour's most active stop: over a century of after-hours staff and performer accounts describe footsteps and chair movement in empty halls, instrument sounds without a player, and an elevator reported to activate with no passenger. The Peck Building's ghost story is grounded in a documented 1916 case: Arthur Warren Waite poisoned his in-laws, John and Hannah Peck, at the family's Grand Rapids home and was convicted and executed for the murders; the operator ties reported footsteps and a woman's apparition in the building to the case. The Michigan Bell Building, Grand Rapids Public Library, Veterans Memorial Park, and Masonic Temple each contribute supporting narratives — a reported 1920s murder-suicide, library-staff reports of book movement, and a shadow figure reportedly captured by paranormal investigators at the Masonic lodge. None are presented as theatrically as the music-center stop. The cumulative effect is a downtown walk through several properties whose haunting reports are independently documented alongside operator marketing.
