Providence Ghost Tour is ranked second among the 10 Best Ghost Tours in the U.S.
As night falls over the city of Providence, Kelly McCabe ’09, with a lantern in hand, shines a light on some of the city’s most famous ghostly sites. She walks the line between the living and the dead, leading a group of brave souls through the spooky world of Providence’s East Side, revealing long-held secrets that refuse to stay buried.
McCabe is a tour guide for Providence Ghost Tour, a company founded in 2006 and ranked second among the “10 Best Ghost Tours (2025)” in the United States by USA Today.
A theatre performance major, McCabe landed this job in 2008. “One of my suitemates at RIC saw a posting for Providence Ghost Tour auditions on Craigslist and thought, ‘Oh, spooky stuff. Kelly will love this,’” says McCabe. “I went to an audition and the rest is history.”
She says extensive research was done by Courtney Edge-Mattos, the owner and founder of Providence Ghost Tour, who spent many hours in the archives digging into the history of these locations, supporting the stories the guides tell. Guides dress in Victorian Gothic-inspired costumes to set the mood and to give the tour a certain level of theatricality.
Stops along the tour include the Providence Athenæum (est. 1836) and Brown’s University Hall (est. 1770), once used as a Patriot hospital and later a hospital for French troops during the American Revolution.
At different stops, guests have felt odd presences, captured inexplicable things in photos and witnessed strange manifestations, such as shadowy figures holding candles walking by the windows inside the buildings. At other times, McCabe herself has experienced abnormal occurrences.
“My lantern has turned itself off on multiple occasions at the Athenaeum, and every season for 17 years, I’ve had guests capture images of faces in the windows of University Hall,” she says. “Another guide, Alura, also a RIC alumna, saw what they believe was a full-blown specter appear on her tour.”
When asked why people are drawn to the supernatural, McCabe suggests it may be our way of reaching for light in the dark corners of the unknown.
“What happens after we die is one of the biggest questions we all speculate about,” she says. “What they realize is that maybe when I’m gone, I’m not fully gone. Being able to connect with someone after they’re gone may also be appealing.”
McCabe credits her time at RIC for strengthening her performance skills and for shaping the storyteller she has become, all of which now echo through her ghost tours.
“Bob Colonna was my biggest mentor at RIC,” she says. “I am a better performer because of him. I learned so much about the power of pacing, tone, voice and articulation – all incredibly important for storytelling – and about how to use my delivery to try to evoke particular responses from a listener.”
In addition to haunted history tours on College Hill, Benefit Street and the Providence River, Providence Ghost Tour offers non-haunted historic tours and Christmas tours, such as the Parasols and Pocket Watches and Christmas on Benefit Street. On these tours, visitors can learn about the rich history that shaped Rhode Island and see how Christmas and its celebration have evolved over the years. Private tours can also be scheduled at any time of year.