Ghost Coast Festival

Galveston's haunted history is the thread, and the gathering splits across three days and three places. A pub crawl runs the Historic Strand, the main day fills the League Kempner Mansion, and the last day turns to ghost tours, cemetery tours, and haunted mansion tours. The mansion day brings celebrity guests, panels, speakers, paranormal investigations, psychic readings, kids activities, and entertainment, including a basement-to-attic look through the house. The same producers also stage Galveston's Steampunk and Pirate festivals, and this one is a collaboration with the mansion, a nonprofit house in Galveston.

Our take: Treat the Strand crawl, the mansion day, and the cemetery tours as three separate outings rather than one stop.