Plattsburgh Dark-History Tourism · Battle of Plattsburgh Memory · Beaumont and St. Martin Medical History
The Greater Adirondack Ghost & Tour Company was started by Matt Boire, an eighth-generation Plattsburgh resident whose ancestor fought in the 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh. Boire guides in period dress, with a stovepipe hat, tailcoat, and lantern, and describes his approach as surfacing history hidden in plain sight rather than chasing scares for their own sake.
The tours operate seasonally, April through November, with several regular routes plus private bookings. They wind through about a mile of downtown Plattsburgh, a city on Lake Champlain with a layered past as a military post, a 19th-century county seat, and the home of a notable chapter in American medical history. Boire pairs each stop with documented events: the city's murders and public hangings, the War of 1812 battle and its dead, and the case of Army surgeon William Beaumont, who in the 1820s conducted a long series of experiments on the exposed stomach of fur trapper Alexis St. Martin after St. Martin survived a gunshot wound.
The company anchors a small ghost-tour ecosystem in Plattsburgh and is the operator most often credited in regional coverage of the city's haunted reputation. Schedules, routes, and ticketing are posted through the company's Facebook page, which serves as its primary point of contact. Tickets run about fifteen dollars for adults, with reduced pricing for children.
Sources
- https://www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/touring-haunted-plattsburgh-with-a-costumed-guide-2402316
- https://www.wcax.com/content/news/The-Haunted-History-of-Downtown-Plattsburgh-452842093.html
ApparitionsSense of presenceCold spots
The Greater Adirondack Ghost & Tour Company builds its routes around the parts of Plattsburgh's past that lend themselves to ghost stories. The narration touches on allegedly haunted houses downtown, on the city's record of murders and public hangings, and on the war dead from the 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh, fought on the same lakefront the tour overlooks. A separate cemetery-focused route extends the program into Plattsburgh's burial grounds and the former military post.
One of the tour's recurring subjects is the medical history of Dr. William Beaumont, the Army surgeon who studied digestion through a permanent opening left in Alexis St. Martin's stomach after a gunshot wound. The case is presented as a genuinely uncomfortable episode of 19th-century medicine rather than as a haunting, and it illustrates the tour's habit of leaning on documented dark history.
Because the company treats the paranormal and the historical as inseparable, the ghost claims are atmospheric and tied to places rather than to verified individual sightings. The founder's stated emphasis is on the real history behind each stop, with the ghost stories serving as the hook. Visitors encounter the legends through the guided walk itself; the company does not run indoor paranormal investigations.