To promote local history and small businesses, Augusta’s favorite year-round ghost tour has recently added a new experience – a haunted pub walk – for those looking to change up their typical Saturday nights.
Partnering with Tip Top Taps and 2nd City Distillery, participants of the tour were met with delicious and unique cocktails as award-winning tour guide Michael Wolff imparted some of Augusta’s haunting tales.
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Awarded Destination Augusta’s 2023 inaugural President’s Award for his bolstering efforts in local tourism, Wolff, owner of Augusta Adventure Tours, said his passion and business is founded in instilling a love of Augusta in others via “edutainment.”
“I’ve been doing tours here for 20 years now, and one of the things I’ve learned that reigns profound is that just because you live in an area, doesn’t necessarily mean you know the area,” he said. “Anybody who says there’s nothing to do in Augusta is one of the most guilty people of not walking out their front door to explore.”
After working for several years in the Walt Disney Company, Wolff hopes his historic knowledge and clever jokes not only keep tour participants laughing throughout the night, but teaches residents to see their hometown in a whole new light.
“This has been so much fun for a lot of different reasons – when you do tours you build relationships with people,” he said. “For me, that is one of the most important things – it’s making friends with the wonderful people of Augusta.”
Trekking the streets of downtown, participants learned about a haunted pillar, Augusta’s mysterious Isabella, historic bricks, local superstitions, James Brown, art, royalty, architecture and so much more.
Pub walk participant and history enthusiast Peter Rowe, who moved from Atlanta two years ago, said he loved how the tour sprinkled in just a “bit of everything.”
“It’s good to know about where you live and what happened here. I mean there’s a cemetery just down the street with a Confederate general in it, and I didn’t know about that until a couple of months ago,” he said. “… why walk around ignorant of where you live?”
To Rowe, learning about one’s community is the best way to get invested and – with a little bit of vision – he believes history can become a big industry for Augusta, like it is for Savannah. However, Rowe said such a goal can only be accomplished with more visionaries spreading the word, such as Wolff.
“I thought the tour was pretty cool. I’m a big history buff,” he said. “I’ve asked the locals here before ‘what is there to do?’ and they come up with nothing … so even the locals need to go out and find out what’s here.”
While most tour attendees sipped on Olympic-themed cocktails at 2nd City Distillery, some were treated to mocktails to accommodate those who were simply tagging along for Wolff’s exciting Augustan expertise, before enjoying tastes of locally brewed beers at Tip Top Taps.
Nick Pahe, bartender at 2nd City Distillery, said he believes Wolff’s tour is showcasing how various mom and pop shops in the area are actively supporting other small businesses to liven up the downtown area.
“It’s all about keeping it local and growing the business – promoting the local economy,” he said. “The good thing about the small business, hometown feel is that you can handcraft things with the right ingredients.”
Whether one is a brand new Augustan or a CSRA lifelong native, Wolff’s tour promises to share little unknown tidbits of the city’s history and development, while promoting the best aspects of Augusta.
Regular tour attendee and recent Augustan Catherine Teran said she and her husband loved Wolff’s tours as each offered something different.
“This is our third tour … I really love [Wolff] and all the information he provides,” she said. “This one was a little shorter walking distance-wise, some of them are a little farther, but I think with drinking that’s kind of better, and it was still great information.”
Teran, who brought her sister into the mix, said she was also always a big fan of meeting fellow ghost enthusiasts, as it made each experience fun, but her favorite part had to be learning the lesser known history, such as the city’s old haunted pillar.
“You get to see some parts of Downtown Augusta that you might not otherwise – like the LaFayette Square. That’s not something I’ve noticed before,” she said.
Other popular ghost walks with Wolff include a dessert tour, a broadway and theater history focused tour, a graveyard tour, a real-life ghostbusting 101 tour, holiday tours and more.
“This is all about educating people in an entertaining way,” said Wolff. “Yes, I do tours, but it’s really about a much greater picture. This is about building a tourism community for Augusta and relationships, because I want people to gain a greater appreciation for the city.”
With Vance’s Bakery Bar soon being added into the experience, Wolff hopes to partner with even more nearby pubs and bars in the near future to expand the tour’s partners.
To view upcoming events with Wolff’s Augusta Adventure Tours, please visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AugustaAdventureTours.
