Every First Friday ends the same way for a lot of people: the galleries close at nine, the crowd is still on the sidewalk, and nobody wants to go home yet. Downtown has an answer for that, and it happens to be one of the venues on the official ArtWalk list. This is a guide to Freaky Foot Tours, the Flagstaff-owned walking tour company at 120 N San Francisco St, Unit J, and to the local history books its stories come from.
Who they are
Freaky Foot Tours is a mother-and-son company. Author and historian Susan Johnson and her son Nick Jones founded it in 2015, and it has guided downtown Flagstaff ever since, growing into Prescott and Tucson along the way. More than 30,000 guests have walked with them. It is Flagstaff's most reviewed tour company, TripAdvisor's number one nightlife activity in Flagstaff since 2021, and Best of Flagstaff's Guided Tour Company three years running (2023, 2024, 2025). Creative Flagstaff, the producer of the ArtWalk itself, named the company a 2024 Viola Awards finalist for Community Impact. The office and shop sit on Gallery Row, in the same 120 N San Francisco building as The Wild Below, which makes them an official ArtWalk stop as well as the thing to do afterward.
The Flagstaff tours
All four leave from downtown, all four are on foot, and all four book direct on the company's own sites. Prices below are the direct rates; the big booking platforms charge more for the same walk.
- Downtown Flagstaff Haunted History Ghost Tour. The flagship. 75 minutes of true crime, tall tales, and the Weatherford Hotel's resident spirits, leaving Wheeler Park at 212 W Aspen Ave, two blocks west of Heritage Square. Nightly at 7:00 PM, with a second 8:00 PM departure on Fridays and Saturdays, and Tuesdays too in October. Adults $29, students $25, kids $22. It is the one to book on First Friday: the 8:00 PM walk starts as the galleries thin out. Full details on the flagship site.
- Mountain Town of Madness. The adults-only version, 18 and up, for the stories the family tour leaves out. 90 minutes, about a mile, from the Wheeler Park lot. Fridays and Saturdays at 9:00 PM every weekend in October. Adults $39, students $35. Flagship page.
- Route 66 Walking Tour of Flagstaff. Ninety minutes on the Mother Road through downtown: depots, neon, and a century of Flagstaff history, in the road's centennial year. Meets at the Heritage Square flagpole, daily at 4:00 PM through November 1, which on First Friday puts you back at the square right as the walk starts. Adults $29, students $25, kids $22. Built with a grant from the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona. Flagship page.
- Flagstaff Mural Tour. The daytime companion to the ArtWalk: 90 minutes on the artists and stories behind downtown's biggest walls, starting at the Orpheum Theater and ending near Dark Sky Brewing's beer garden. Mornings at 10:00 AM most days in October. Adults $29, students $25, kids $22. Flagship page.
Groups and private dates, including the 21-and-up haunted pub crawl, book through the private tours page. Tours run rain, shine, or snow.
The books behind the tours
Most ghost tour companies work from a script. This one works from a bibliography. Susan Johnson moved to Flagstaff in 1989 and has spent more than thirty-five years researching the dark side of the town's history; the tours are built on what she dug up. Four books so far, all from The History Press and Arcadia, and the three adult titles are stocked downtown at Bright Side Bookshop, itself an ArtWalk venue:
- Haunted Flagstaff (2022). The Haunted America series volume on Flagstaff: the hotels, theaters, and side streets the ghost tour walks.
- Wicked Flagstaff (2024). The rougher side of the frontier town, from the Wicked series, and roughly the Mountain Town of Madness reading list.
- Flagstaff's Walkup Family Murders (2021). A shocking 1937 tragedy, and the true-crime backbone of the night tours.
- The Ghostly Tales of Flagstaff (2026). The kids' edition, in Arcadia's Spooky America series, out this August.
Her author site, susanjohnson.org, has the full list with where to buy each one.
How to fit a tour into First Friday
- Ride or park once. The ghost tours and the Route 66 walk both start within two blocks of Heritage Square, so the Center 2 Center ride or the City Hall lot covers the whole night.
- Do the walk first. Galleries run 5:00 to 9:00 PM. The 8:00 PM ghost tour, or the 9:00 PM Mountain Town of Madness, picks up where the art leaves off.
- Book before you go. October weekends fill up, and every tour caps at 28. Every link above goes straight to that tour's calendar.
Tour times, prices, and meeting points are from the company's booking calendar, read September 25, 2026; book facts from the publisher listings. Disclosure: the people who build this guide also work with Freaky Foot Tours, which is why it gets the after-the-walk slot on our homepage. Nobody pays for that placement, and the map and directory list every venue on the same terms.