Haunted Phoenix

Listen to 41 minutes of eerie ghost stories and hauntings of 23 locations across Phoenix on this 4-mile GPS guided ghost tour. Take it in person or from the comfort and security of your own home!

This limited version features 5 locations. Get the full tour by downloading the itourmobile app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itourmobile.app

You may also subscribe at https://www.itourmobile.com/checkout/ to get access to more than 90 tours across the world!

Founded in 1867, Phoenix sits near the confluence of the Salt and Gila rivers as a farming community growing alfalfa, cotton, citrus, and hay. Later, when the railroad came through, it became an important cattle market and remained true to its agricultural roots through World War II. After the war, high tech industries moved in, and the city experienced tremendous growth—thanks also, in part to, the introduction of air-conditioning. Today, it is the sixth largest city and the most populous capital city in the United States.

Even though the city itself is relatively young, this patch of Sonoran Desert in Central Arizona has a long history. The Hohokam lived in what would later be Downtown Phoenix, creating a system of irrigation canals that would survive them and later become the basis of the city’s modern canal system. It’s believed the Hohokam left after several severe floods, and what is today Maricopa County remained largely uninhabited until gold was discovered in Wickenburg. The U.S. Army established Fort McDowell on the Verde River in 1865 to protect the prospectors coming into the area and to suppress Native American uprisings.

Jack Swilling would discover the ancient Hohokam canals the following year, and along with his friend Phillip Darrell Dupe, he founded a small farming community based on them. It was Duppa that suggested the name Phoenix, noting that the city was born from the ruins of a former civilization. The name stuck. Phoenix was incorporated in 1881 with a population of roughly 2,500.

Since then, Phoenix has had a colorful history. For a while, it was a Hollywood playground, attracting the big names of the big screen — Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, to name a few. The mafia had a foothold here: one of Al Capone’s car is rumored to be buried in a parking lot under the Westward Ho, and one of the most infamous murders of a journalist, thought to be carried out by the mob, occurred in front of another Phoenix hotel. There have been business deals gone awry over the years, countless suicides, tales of lost loves and lost fortunes, all the elements of a good ghost story. So, forget about Phoenix’s 300 plus days of sunshine—it’s what happens when the sun goes down that really tells the city’s story.

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Phoenix tour, Phoenix walking tour, Phoenix audio tour, Phoenix ghost tour, haunted Phoenix, Phoenix history, Phoenix AZ