Town in New York offers ghostly trolly tour
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - With just a few weeks until Halloween, if you enjoy the spookiness of the holiday, there's a fun way to experience and explore the supernatural.
Saratoga Springs is offering guided ghost tours through some of their most infamous paranormal spots.
It's a unique trolley ride, offering a one-of-a-kind mix of history and horror, under a full moon.
The streets of Saratoga Springs are lined with history homes and events, both good and bad that have shaped it.
With some of these buildings well over 100-years-old, they've had their fair share of owners and visitors. Some who may have never left.
"They do see apparitions of a man standing inside the house, but they always smell a wet dog," said Charlie Kuenzel, a tour guide.
The ghosts of a man and his dog that's what some who've spent a night at the historic Bachelor Mansion on Circular Street claim they've seen.
It's one of the many stories people will hear on the popular ghosts of Saratoga Trolley Tour.
"One of the things to look for at the end of the night, is if you've had some kind of event yourself. I can't tell you the number of times I've given tours and the number of people who will see some thing and record it on their phones. The other thing that does happen quite often is that peoples phones dropped in power drastically. Spirits can amount of times in order to manifest themselves will take energy and place they can get it."
Charlie Kuenzel, tour guide
Kuenzel is an expert in Saratoga's paranormal places and events.
From the ghosts of women, dancing in their favorites dresses to a long dead mayor, still trying to rearrange his former home it's a mix of intriguing and disturbing tales.
Take for example: Lake Avenue Elementary. While children learn, laugh, and play and in these classrooms during the day at night different things have been at play since the school was built back in 1923 near a much older cemetery where some of saratoga's first residents were buried.
"As they were about to break ground on the property, they said they thought they got most of the remains out," Kuenzel shared.
Custodians assigned to clean the building soon began experiencing some unbelievable encounters.
"Quite often there would be two orbs of light that would come out and move around on the floor around their legs usually the first time that would happen that would cause the custodian to move down the staircase very quickly and to the head custodians office to want to know what was going on...they would say that happens to all of us. It's the girls. The girls want to play."
Charlie Kuenzel, tour guide
They say Saratoga Springs has a usual amount of paranormal energy due to the underground mineral springs pouring all sorts of energy into the town.
While the truth behind these supernatural stories may be blurry, there is no shortage of people willing to seek them out on dark october nights like this.
The ghosts of Saratoga Trolley Tours are a collaboration of the Discover Saratoga Tourism Bureau, and the Saratoga Springs History Museum. You can catch a ride for the next two Thursdays, including on Halloween.
