On Oct. 3, the annual Haunted Auburn Walking Tours returned for the 13th year in a row. The tours are the ideal way to learn about paranormal events that have happened around some of Auburn’s most iconic landmarks.
The tours are at 8 p.m. every Friday and Saturday from Oct. 3 to Oct. 31. The event is free and open to the public, so interested participants can meet at Toomer's Corner to join the walking tours. Beginning with some accounts of unexplainable events around Toomer’s Corner, the tour makes its way through Auburn University’s main campus as well as notable locations in the downtown area.
Throughout the hour and a half exploration, guests will get to visit some of Auburn’s most haunted locations, learn about the eerie stories of employees that worked at each spot and get firsthand accounts of the creepy things that the tour guides, themselves, experienced. Many of the stories are accompanied by pictures and other evidence, so the tour is perfect for believers and skeptics alike.
The tours are rated PG-13, so families with young children may want to get a babysitter before attending. Older guests, especially ones with a passion for the paranormal or just a general love of ghost stories, are likely to enjoy the tour while also getting some exercise and a chance to enjoy the fall weather.
While the tours are focused on chilling stories, it also includes clever puns, local legends and the interesting and dark history of locations around Auburn, including the Auburn University Chapel, the Haley Center, Pine Hill Cemetery and even the historic Samford Hall, among many others.
Sightseers will also have the chance to hear about things seen by other tour-goers on previous walking tours over the years, and maybe even have a paranormal experience of their own. John-Mark Poe, one of the organizers and tour guides, recounted that about 99% of the stories come from people who are on the tour.
"They say ‘Hey. This happened to me here,’ and then we start adding their stories. We’ve been able to add stories over the years. Every year we’ve probably been able to add a few stories because people say, ‘this happened to me when I was here.’ It’s one of the coolest things,” Poe said.
Brandon Stoker, the other organizer and guide of the haunted walking tours also gave a comment about how visitors have contributed over the 13 years the tours have been running.
“When you come on the walking tour, I’m amazed at how many people say, ‘Oh yes, I’ve had that experience,’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard the footsteps,’ ‘My door has rattled,’ ‘Yes, I’ve seen the lady in white,’ or ‘I’ve seen something over here as well,’ so it’s very interesting how much is still going on, and unfortunately it’s not that well known," Stoker said.
The walking tours are organized and led by Auburn locals with extensive backgrounds in paranormal research. One of the tour guides, Stoker, is an Auburn University alumni that appeared in “The Walking Dead,” as well as “Zombieland 2.” In addition to acting professionally, Stoker is a well-versed expert in folklore and paranormal investigations. The other tour guide, Poe, is a fellow paranormal investigator and an accredited historian, who wrote a book detailing hauntings across the Auburn-Opelika area.
Stoker and Poe are lifelong enjoyers of mysterious and unexplainable circumstances, leading them to become experts in their respective fields and making them the perfect people to lead the haunted walking tours.
"I've been interested in paranormal things for almost 40 years now, but I've been investigating for 35 years," Poe said, regarding his experience with paranormal investigations.
According to Poe, Auburn also has a substantial amount of haunted places in comparison to other places he has investigated in the past.
“It’s interesting because a lot of places have a haunted place here, maybe a haunted place over here and another one over there, but you can actually just come down College Street and go there, there, there, there and there. People call this the Loveliest Village on the Plains. I consider it the most haunted Village on the Plains,” Poe said.
Stoker’s lifelong curiosity into the strange and unusual began during his childhood when he had his own paranormal encounter. Although frightened at first, Stoker's fear quickly turned into fascination.
“That goes back to my personal experience I had when I was very young, probably about nine or ten years old, and I had my name spoken to me in a house that was brand new,” Stoker said. “I asked my mom and other relatives, and there seems to be paranormal occurrences throughout my family, both sides.”
Similar to Poe, Stoker also believes that Auburn has high levels of paranormal activity on campus and in the town.
“A lot of other universities have hauntings as well, but Auburn is extremely close together, and if you’ve been on the tour, you’d see we go from this building to this building, and they’re within less than a football field of each other. It has a really strong history and a really strong amount [of paranormal activity]. It ranks way up there,” Stoker said. “I think Auburn, per square mile, is very condensed, so it has a lot of very unusual activity that goes on inside of it.”
Poe and Stoker’s shared love for the supernatural and the paranormal is clear from the way they have developed and expanded the tours over the years. Believers and skeptics are sure to leave the walking tour with more knowledge about the surprising and extraordinary history of Auburn and maybe even see for themselves why Poe describes Auburn as “the most haunted Village on the Plains.”
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