One of the ten ghosts in downtown Louisville is lying to you, and by the end of the night you'll have to say which.
That's the job in this self-guided ghost hunt, played with the Questo app on your phone. The route starts at Fort Nelson Park on West Main Street, a block from the giant Louisville Slugger bat, and loops past Metro Hall, City Hall, the Cathedral of the Assumption and Fourth Street before coming back to Main.
At each stop a ghost is stuck on whatever killed it, and you catch it by solving a puzzle: a code buried in an actor's monologue, a list of antiques with forgeries hidden among them, a hotel fire you have to evacuate on paper. Every ghost you catch leaves a clue. The ghosts and their stories were invented for the game.
About 1.4 miles, roughly 90 minutes, and you start whenever you want. Hints are in the app if you need them, and support is open 24/7. A good one for Halloween, or any evening downtown.
The game starts at Fort Nelson Park on West Main Street. After booking, we'll message you a code and activation link. Activate with your own email, then log in to the Questo app with that email. No message? Open the app, tap "Bought a quest somewhere else?" and enter your booking reference number.
Fort Nelson Park, on West Main Street, is where the app connects you and checks that you have the sight, using a glowing circle with one numeral gone. Your first ghost is a few steps away by the 21c Museum Hotel: Elena, poisoned by a flower slipped into her own wedding bouquet.
South on Sixth Street, by the statues of Louis XVI and Thomas Jefferson outside Metro Hall, a flu-ward doctor from 1952 needs the right blood type read off his chart, and an actor killed by a falling spotlight hid a four-digit code in his final lines. A block on, by City Hall and Jefferson Square, you'll rebuild a senator's corruption case from five evidence folders dated only against each other.
On Fifth Street, beside the Cathedral of the Assumption, a teacher's ghost keeps writing a pupil into her registers who never sat in her class. You'll go through four years of class lists to find the one boy who was real.
The next stretch takes you up Fourth Street and back along Market. You'll unmask the forgeries in an antique dealer's stock, find which book holds the key to a librarian's locked closet, line up a professor's artifacts from oldest to newest, and decide who should have left a burning hotel last.
Back on West Main, near the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, your tenth ghost is a priest who disappeared in 1984 after spotting a cult's carving on his church organ. Since then, people say, the organ has been playing on its own.
You'll finish in Fort Nelson Park, a block from the Louisville Slugger Museum and its giant bat. The app lays out the ten clue cards you've collected, and the last puzzle asks you to name the liar among your ghosts before it slips away again.
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.
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