Salisbury is not the most obvious place for a ghost walk, but it has a surprisingly well-mapped paranormal side. The city's ghost tours are built around a small cluster of genuinely old buildings, and they lean more on history and folklore than on jump scares, which makes them easy to drop into an evening without much commitment.
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The most established version is run by Salisbury City Guides, with Blue Badge guides leading a tour of about an hour and a half. It sets off from outside the Salisbury Information Centre, and the 2026 prices are £12 for adults, £6 for under-18s and students, and free for children under 12. You can book through Eventbrite, in person, or by phone at the Information Centre on 01722 342860, and private walks are available on enquiry. Dogs are generally welcome, and under-16s are fine, though the recommended age is 10-plus; wheelchair access varies by tour, so it is worth confirming with the organisers beforehand.
For something a bit more hands-on, Haunting Nights runs an interactive paranormal walk that lasts an hour and costs £10 a head, and it is wheelchair accessible but aimed at over-16s. Extours Wiltshire also covers the same ground, bringing along EMF meters and dowsing rods, with family-friendly early sessions and later ones kept for the over-16s.
Regardless of which you pick, the stops are pretty much the same. Salisbury Cathedral is the obvious start, where a long-standing legend tells of white birds circling the spire before the death of a bishop or member of the clergy, with records of it going back to 1885 and 1911. Inside there is the tomb of St Ormond and the remains of Lord Stourton, who was hanged for murder on 16 March 1557; a wire rope was left over his grave for 200 years before it was taken down in 1780. Then there is The Rifles Museum, known as The Wardrobe, which was built in 1254 to hold the Bishop of Salisbury's clothes and is now described as one of the most haunted museums in Britain, with reports of a Cavalier, a grey lady, cold spots, flickering lights and footsteps. Finally, Mompesson House, a Queen Anne mansion at 53 The Close that the National Trust has owned since 1952, is linked to the Demon Drummer of Tidworth case involving John Mompesson around 1660, with a bronze child's drum badge found there in the 1950s.
If you want to keep going after the walk, the Red Lion Hotel on Milford Street is worth knowing about. It is a haunted hotel with 800 years of history, built in the 13th century, and its list of hauntings reads like a directory: footsteps from above in Room 33, a tall, thin man seen in the Alderman Suite since 1920, a woman's voice in Room 55, three faces appearing in a selfie in Room 29, a crying baby and an old cradle in Room 93, a woman called Betsy on the stairs by The Boardroom, chairs rocking at Table 3 in the Vine Restaurant, a moving four-poster bed in Room 17, floating belongings in Room 42, and a cold spot in the Boardroom, which has a ducking stool history. There are medieval children's shoes found in Room 19, a clock with skeletons in the reception, and a Seamstress Suite with a cast-iron bathtub. Between the walks and a place like that, Salisbury makes a decent case for a spooky evening.
Published Date
9 November 2026
