You might smell something burning when you walk past Candi’s Candies. Photo by Veronica Padua

On a cool fall evening in October the intrepid wanderer about town is more likely than usual to bump into strange apparitions dressed in out of date fashions.

Out of date by a century or two, that is.

‘Tis the season for the D.C. area’s many ghost tours. If you wander into Georgetown or Lafayette Square or Old Town Alexandria at the right hour, you may hear several storytellers, their grisly tales competing with each other across a dark alley. Whether or not you believe in paranormal activity, a good ghost tour provides history with gallows of edutainment. DCist recently met some ghosts and ghouls on the National Building Museum’s highly theatrical tour, and has previously covered the excellent downtown walking tour/street theatre act Historic Strolls. This weekend we toured Old Town Alexandria with Alexandria’s Original Ghost and Graveyard Tour, offered by Alexandria Colonial Tours, which has been telling ghost stories for 33 years. The results weren’t particularly scary, but we learned a lot about one of the oldest parts of the area.

One popular Old Town shop that trades in sugar is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a woman who missed out on sugar. Legend has it that if you walk by Candi’s Candies you may smell burning flesh. I’ve heard conflicting versions of this story — that it’s the smell of a burning bride, of a woman just getting ready for bed, and that the building is haunted by a young boy instead, but that’s the nature of stories, which over the decades, grow to be more legend than fact.

Scottish merchant John Carlyle completed his mansion on North Fairfax Street in 1753. At the time of construction, there was a popularly held belief that if you buried a cat in the walls of your house, the structure would be protected from ghosts and evil spirits. In the 1970s, workers uncovered the mummified remains of Carlyle’s talismanic feline. Did chaos ensue?

If you’re worried about sanitary conditions in modern restaurants, your tour guide will give you a sobering look into a once precious commodity that we take for granted today: Ice. Blocks of the stuff was harvested from the Potomac River and stored in ice houses and underground wells. One Old Town ice house served a dual purpose. In the days before embalming techniques, bodies were kept on ice to stave off decay. But the price of ice being what it was, what was an entrepreneur to do if a block of ice was somehow coursing with frozen bodily fluids? This leads to an apocryphal tale of how the “Bloody Mary” was named, but you’ve probably heard other theories.

Other stories include that of George Washington’s doctor and a disappearing dentist. While some private residences are discussed on the tour, guides lead you to a number of public sites you can return to and visit in the less spooky light of day. The family-friendly tour covers six blocks in about an hour, and ends up at a haunted graveyard. Old Town’s streets can be spooky even without the benefit of lantern light and ghost stories, so much so that even a playground scattered with children’s toys can take on a sinister edge. And you can get ghost stories with your dinner at any number of area restaurants that boast resident ghosts, like Gadsby’s Tavern (also home to a museum with its own excellent tour) and Il Porto.

Alexandria’s Ghost and Graveyard Tour isn’t the only ghost tour in Old Town. Alexandria’s Footsteps to the Past gives tours in October and November on Fridays and Saturday at 7:00 and 8:30 pm and Sundays at 7:00 pm.

Alexandria’s Ghost and Graveyard Tour is held every night in October at 7:30 pm. Fridays and Saturdays tours are held at 7:30 & 9:00 pm. Tours continue on weekends in November, Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 & 9:00 pm and Sundays 7:30 pm. Meet at the Visitor’s Center, 221 King Street in Old Town Alexandria. $13.