Spooky Date Idea: Graveline Tours
Have you ever wanted to ride around in an old funeral limousine to tour some of the most terrifying, sinister, haunted and tragic places of the greater Los Angeles area? Are you a lover of true crime but not overt scares? We have the perfect date idea for you! Graveline Tours has multiple true crime tours, each varying in price, length, and macabre factor. It's the perfect activity to scratch that spooky itch during the haunt off-season. Keep reading for our experience on The Black Dahlia tour…
We are always in search of spooky events, eerie happenings, and bone-chilling experiences available in the greater Los Angeles area, which is how we stumbled across Graveline Tours. Both of us dabble in true crime, but (perhaps obviously) we prefer fake scares to the very real ones surrounding brutal and gruesome crime cases. However, we do find ourselves watching documentaries and specials about infamous cases and wanted to see how this interest might translate to a true crime tour. When deciding which tour to pick, as Graveline offers four, we ultimately decided on a longer tour that focused on one case, and not just any case, but one of the most infamous unsolved murders in America’s history: The Black Dahlia.
For those not familiar, let’s just say this was a grisly case that fascinated the media long before media sensation was what it is today. The victim, Elizabeth Short (later named The Black Dahlia by the media), was relatable and therefore quite easy to pin our collective fears onto after her horrible and untimely death. Those not from Los Angeles often equate the city with glitz and glam, but there is a real underbelly that chews up and spits out many who enter.
We booked our tour for a Monday, so we suspected it might be calmer than a weekend tour option, and we were right! We were lucky enough to have a private tour, but the maximum amount the restored Cadillac Fleetwood can carry is only eight, so regardless, you will have an intimate tour experience. We received detailed instructions on where to meet our tour guide in Hollywood, and we were quickly off to the limousine, which greeted us with the moniker “We Put Death on the Map” and a license plate that reads YODO - you only die once. We actually thought that the limo is what made the tour memorable and more immersive—probably even more so for the cases that aren’t as old as the Elizabeth Short case.
When you get settled in, they give you a QR code to scan to access an organized website of the locations you’ll be visiting that have drop downs with relevant images, some quite gruesome. I really like the option that you can take or leave this addition depending on what feels right for you! We then proceeded to visit some of The Dahlia’s final known locations and really got to know the suspects surrounding her death. Our tour guide was Blaze, and as we all know, it’s really the guide that makes a tour memorable and unforgettable. Blaze does just that, excellently blending the seriousness of the subject matter with the darkly macabre sense of humor that fans of horror really appreciate. This tour includes some iconic locations throughout Hollywood and Downtown LA, such as Boardner’s, the Cecil Hotel, and the Murder House.
The price point is very comparable, if not actually much lower for the intimacy and immersion that you get, to other tours available in Los Angeles. Prices range from $65-$85 per person, and they do sometimes run promotions, so follow Graveline on social media and check their website!
We were able to get out at both the Cecil and the Murder House for photos and to stretch our legs. As an early fan of American Horror Story who still hasn’t ever visited the Murder House, I found this to be a special surprise! Our tour was right around three hours and jam-packed with information, the ability to ask questions, and the chance to truly tailor the experience to your interests. For this reason, we would recommend checking out this tour, or one of the other offerings, for the perfect addition to a spooky date day. You could easily pair this with a coffee stop at Horror Vibes Coffee in North Hollywood, a visit to one of the sinister museums LA has to offer, or just have it be a standalone activity for you and your boo.
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