Port Cape, the Sherwood-Minton House and Old Lorimier Cemetery are just a few places in Cape Girardeau that have an abundance of history and ghost stories.

The Haunted Downtown Tour is a walking tour that begins at the Boardman Pavilion across from Hutson's Furniture on Main Street in downtown Cape Girardeau, travels along Spanish and Lorimier Streets to the River Campus and ends back at the pavilion.

Christy Mershon, the assistant director of the Office of Extended and Continuing Education at Southeast Missouri State University, and local photographer Tom Neumeyer are the tour guides.

Mershon said during the tour she and Neumeyer talk about and visit different buildings downtown along the corridor where Broussard's, Buckner Brewery and Port Cape are located, depending on the time of night and how many people are in the buildings.

"Sometimes we go into some of the buildings, depending on how busy it is," Mershon said. "We've gone into Port Cape, the River Campus and the Glenn House property, a historic house right down from the River Campus."

Mershon said last year she heard some strange noises at the Glenn House while she was talking to a group of teenagers about the history of the building.

"It was a 16th or 17th birthday party, and the kids and their parents were with us," Mershon said. "I was in the process of telling the history of the Glenn House, and we heard what sounded like either sobbing or laughter inside the house. The kids thought we staged somebody, but we definitely didn't."

Mershon said there have also been stories of strange happenings during construction of the River Campus.

"When we do the haunted tours, we hear a lot of people who say 'I worked on that job site, and this happened,'" Mershon said. "It seemed to be a lot of things like tools being moved."

According to Mershon, the Sherwood-Minton House on Washington Avenue is arguably the most haunted place in Cape Girardeau.

"It's a house that is thought to be so haunted that in times that it's been sold, the real-estate signs disclosed that the house has been said to be haunted to avoid any lawsuits," Mershon said.

Joel P. Rhodes, a professor in the Department of History, said one association of its haunting is the idea that the Sherwood-Minton House was a smallpox hospital during the Civil War. The legend is that the soldiers who died in the hospital were carried to the Old Lorimier Cemetery at night.

"Some of the ghosts' stories that are associated with that involve bobbing lights over in the cemetery, which apparently connects to taking the bodies out at night using lanterns or candles," Rhodes said.

There is also folklore that there is a tunnel that connects the Sherwood-Minton House to the Old Lorimier Cemetery, Rhodes said. However, there never has never been any proof.

Mershon said that the alleged tunnel was used by the Union soldiers to take the dead bodies to the cemetery during the night because they did not want to show weakness or their forces thinning down.

"It's thought that potentially more Civil War soldiers died in Cape Girardeau than at the Battle of Appomattox, not because of the battle but because smallpox was so bad," Mershon said.

The tapping ghost is the most well-known story in Old Lorimier Cemetery, Mershon said.

"You're in the cemetery looking around, and you feel a tap on your shoulder, you turn around and there's nothing there," Mershon said. "Not a lot of people said they saw things, just felt a tap."

Mershon said people can bring flashlights and cameras, and they should dress appropriate for the weather and wear comfortable shoes to the tour.

The next scheduled tours are at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sunday. Each tour lasts 90 minutes.

Contact the Office of Continuing Education at 573-986-6879 for reservations.