Bidding War for Ghosts Drives Up Costs of Local Ghost Tours

The hyper-competitive walking tour business in Ybor City heated up this year with multiple companies trying to sign Ybor’s best spirits to exclusive deals.

“It just makes sense to lock these spooky specters into long-term, restricted use contracts,” said Max Herman, proprietor of Ybor City Historic Walking Tours and The Official Ybor City Ghost Tour. “If I want to provide the best possible experience for people who take my tours, I can’t be sharing ghosts with some other company trying to accomplish the same thing.”

Herman knows that not only is there competition but some of the area’s best ghosts are simply not available.

“The legendary Fink Finley has an exclusive, multi-century deal in place with Tampa Theatre. There’s no chance of prying him away from that place,” he said. “Even if we could, it would put us way over the cap.”

”So you gotta get out there and negotiate with these phantoms. And you have to be tough but fair,” he said. “The last thing you want is a vengeful wraith from the realm of the beyond believing you screwed them.”

Herman has assembled a roster of notorious dead bootleggers, gamblers and other Ybor gangsters from the early 20th century but his star is the infamous, terrifying Brown Man, who may or may not be the ghost of Henry Plant, the 19th century transportation magnate largely responsible for establishing the city of Tampa as a major railroad and steamboat hub.

“We’ve done very well this year. Even though it’s cost more than it used to in order to put a line-up like this together, and we haven’t had to pass that expense along to the consumer yet, I’d have to say it’s been worth it,” said Herman. “Unfortunately, we all saw this coming when the ghosts re-negotiated their collective bargaining agreement back in 2020.”