For over sixteen years, the Museum on Main Street has hosted the Ghost Walk every October. The Ghost Walk is a guided tour of the haunted sites of Pleasanton, with actors lurking around every stop, waiting to enlighten guests about local history and hauntings. Some of these actors are Amador students who are a part of the award-winning Improv troupe, Creatures of Impulse.
Traditional Haunt in Downtown
The Ghost Walk is both frightful and educational, teaching guests about the history of famous Pleasanton locations including Gay Nineties, the Rose Hotel, Kottinger Barn, Blue Agave, and more. During the walk, guests are treated to the ghastly histories of different haunted buildings around Pleasanton’s main street.
“It’s about two and a half hours of getting into costume and makeup and those kinds of things. Our directors will provide us with costumes—or we can provide our own costumes—and they’ll provide us with make-up…that way we look ghastly. Usually we’re kind of hanging out and just talking, making jokes, listening to music and those kinds of things,” said Ghost Veteran Sophia Garcia (‘25).
For Creatures of Impulse, it is both a good experience to get to know others around Pleasanton.
“I feel like it was a really good experience because I got to bond with a lot of [creatures] who I really wanted to be friends with. I was also able to bond with the community,” said Troop Member Hayoon Jung (‘28).
Haunting Based on Facts
For the guests going on the walk, they get a different take away. The Ghost Walk, while being a frightfully fun experience, also gives a well researched look into the paranormal history of downtown.
“We’ve got our research into the history of the place and the families. And then there’s material that has been gathered by parapsychologists coming in with instruments and devices to record for activity and try to hear voices… plus the stories that people who live and work at these places have told us about haunting like episodes, have all kind of come together to form the ghost stories that we present through Ghost Walk,” said Museum Curator Ken MacLennan.
The education also goes both ways. Many of the rehearsals before the tour mostly consist of the ghosts researching into local history.
“It was actually really cool because I didn’t know about it [the history] until Ghost Walk, so I was able to learn a lot,” said Jung.
This all serves to help add to the depth of each storied old building downtown, while drawing in new crowds to Pleasanton’s historical side.
“Not everybody thinks to come down here and actually see and just visit the museum. This is another way that we can do outreach and introduce a lot of the key concepts of Pleasanton history, not all of them, but at least some of them, to an audience in a way that that particular audience will respond to,” said Maclennan.
The Ghost Walk provides patrons with both a frightening and educational experience. The experience thrusts guests into the land of the dead, where each ghost delves into their frightful story.
