The Haunted Père Lachaise Tour, Honestly

The haunted Père Lachaise tour is a two-hour guided walk of the famous graves told through the cemetery’s legends, and it runs in daylight: the cemetery closes at 18:00, or 17:30 from 6 November. UTG Experience Europe’s version is the best-selling tour of the cemetery, from $24.72 as of October 2026 and rated 4.6 from 4,326 reviews. Think storytelling with a shiver, not a fright show.

What the haunted walk covers

The operator’s listing promises the famous graves, Jim Morrison’s among them, alongside the stories of “the many spirits that are said to haunt the cemetery grounds” and the “paranormal phenomena reported within the cemetery”. The description names three threads:

• The celebrities and the ordinary Parisians buried on the hill, and the long history of the cemetery itself.
• Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, buried in division 44, and the strange cults associated with the place.
• The hauntings: the phantoms said to linger and the tales told about them over the years.

You walk about two hours with a live guide, in English or French, on uphill cobbles. Reviewers name their guides and praise the anecdotes and the energy; one notes that a guide learned the first names of a group of 44.

See the haunted walk's dates →

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits first-time visitors who want the famous graves with more colour than a straight history tour, couples and friends, and older children who like a ghost story.

Think twice if walking is hard for you: the listing calls the route “moderately demanding”, with uphill paths, and marks it unsuitable for people with mobility impairments. It also lists people over 70 as not suited, which is the operator’s caution rather than a rule; if that applies to you, ask before booking, or choose a shorter visit on your own. It runs rain or shine.

If you want it scary, it is not. Père Lachaise is a working cemetery with funerals every day, so expect stories rather than scares.

Is there a night tour of Père Lachaise?

No. The cemetery’s gates close at 18:00 from mid-March to early November and at 17:30 the rest of the year, and staff clear the paths fifteen minutes before. Every tour of the cemetery runs within those hours. For a ghost walk after dark, Paris has evening ghost tours through the old streets, outside the cemetery.

Three alternatives with a darker streak

Prices, ratings and review counts as listed in October 2026; operators change prices, so treat them as the shape of the market, not a quote.

Side Routes’ tour is new on GetYourGuide, so its nine reviews are a small sample. Its listing is unusually clear about the cemetery’s etiquette: the guide pauses near any ceremony, and it suggests parental discretion for children under 10, since the tour covers death, violent history and ghost stories.

Legends on the hill you can see for yourself

If you go without a guide, three stops carry most of the cemetery’s folklore:

• Allan Kardec, division 44, the founder of Spiritism.
• Victor Noir, division 92: a bronze effigy of a journalist shot in 1870, polished in places by visitors hoping for love or a child.
• Jim Morrison, division 6, and the tree near his grave covered in chewing gum.

The famous-graves guide maps them, and the tour comparison covers the four straight-history tours too.