The Old Bisbee Ghost Tour is now in its nineteenth year, entertaining visitors and locals alike with spooky tales and nighttime adventures around our magical, haunted town. It’s one of Bisbee’s most popular attractions, with hundreds of 5-star reviews.
The Ghost Tour is the brainchild of Renee Harper, author, maker, and collector, who moved to Bisbee shortly after having an Thanksgiving epiphany almost two decades ago.
“I came to Bisbee with my ‘practice’ husband, whose parents lived here. And in the middle of dinner I was like: ‘You know what? I think I’m gonna start a ghost tour in Bisbee.’ And every single person there laughed at me. They’re like, ‘It’ll never work!’”
Undaunted, she kept the idea in the back of her mind. After both she and her “was-band” (her euphemism for her first husband) were laid off the following January, Renee said to him:
“‘That’s it. I’m done living in LA. Let’s move to Bisbee.’ And we moved to Bisbee on my birthday, which was January 27th. His mother found us an apartment. In the beginning of March, I started the ghost tours. I spent a month just collecting ghost stories from the locals and putting together a website, press release, and sure enough…”
A Haunted Life
Renee’s life has always been filled with ghosts. She grew up in Philadelphia in what she describes as a “haunted house.”
“When I was young my parents put an addition on top of our house, and it was during all of the construction that it started, because paranormal activity always happens during construction. Weird stuff, like the front doorbell would ring. We would go to the door. Nobody would be there. And while we’re at the front door, the back doorbell would ring and nobody would be there. Toilets would flush by themselves. Once my mother was in the kitchen, she turned around and all the pots and pans were in the center of the room.”
Even her sister had paranormal experiences. “My sister in the 4th grade classroom, they had a ghost and they called it George Hassenfeffer. When something would fall off the wall by itself they’d say ‘Oh, there’s George.’ And that’s what we nicknamed our ghost. We said ‘Lisa, you brought home George Hassenfeffer.’”
Studying Folklore in College
Renee went to Otis College of Design, majoring in Toy Design. As an English elective she took a Fairy Tale and Folklore class. “We spent a few weeks talking about ghost stories and how it’s a type of folklore because it got passed down from generation to generation around the campfire, oral storytelling,” she said. “So I started collecting ghost stories around Los Angeles. I was always interested in it.”
At that fateful Thanksgiving table, it all clicked: “I’m sick and tired of working in a cube. What can I do that I will enjoy? And ghost stories fit perfectly. I need to do this.”
Renee admits it was a learning curve in those early years, and they tried lots of different tours, including a tour of Evergreen Cemetery. At first, they only did ghost tours on the weekends, but it became so popular, there are now tours 7 nights a week.
Renee is also the author of two books, Paranormal Arizona, and Southern Arizona’s Most Haunted, both for sale on Amazon as well as at Acacia Collectibles (in the pink coffin bookcase).
And, after 19 years, Renee has burned out from doing the tours herself, focusing instead on her business, Sweet Midnight, which specializes in creepy clothing and jewelry, vending at lots of Halloween and tiki conventions.
She also likes to spend a lot of her time at home, surrounded by an assortment of oddities and curios she’s collected over the years. “I used to have the Bisbee Mini Museum of the Bazaar and started collecting stuff and I never stopped. But I’m not a good shopkeeper. I don’t like being married to a store.”
She currently has three hearses parked in her yard, along with a vintage trailer. Renee allows very few visitors in her house, but often thinks about doing a YouTube channel devoted to her stuff. “But it’s a lot of work,” she sighs.
Her Best Ghost Story
So what is the scariest ghost story she has? It’s a doozy:
“We used to do a ghost hunt at the Copper Queen Hotel. We used to set up the equipment and teach the guests how to use it upstairs in the tower, which houses the elevator equipment.
I sent a group downstairs, looking for the ghosts. And, my cousin and I were cleaning up. I’m at a table, putting stuff away, and I look over into the room that houses the elevator equipment, which is over 100 years old, and it sparks, and looks like something out of a Frankenstein movie, right? And so I see a man wearing a top hat. And he had what looked like a blue glowing ball. And he was manipulating his hands around the ball. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.”
Currently, Old Bisbee Ghost Tours offers 4 different types of tours: the classic Walking Tour (7 pm), Bisbee After Dark: A Ghostly Tour on Wheels (6:15, 7:45, 9pm), Haunted Pub Crawl (Fridays 7:30pm, Saturdays 6:00pm) and the Ghost Hunt of Old Bisbee, once a month and limited to ten people. “Our guide Rob spends almost an hour in each location like the Bisbee Inn, with all the ghost hunting equipment. It’s much more intimate and fun.”
Plans for the 20th year are currently up in the air, but as for now the tours keep rolling on for at least the foreseeable future, a feat in and of itself. “I can count on one hand the number of businesses that were here when I started and are still here,” Renee said.
For more info visit Old Bisbee Ghost Tours
