On a Saturday evening in October, a small group will gather on Main Street at the top of Lock 3 Park, just to the left of the Akron Civic Theatre, and set off on foot into the darker corners of the Rubber City. The Original Akron Ghost Tour, run by Black Cat Tales & Tours, is a roughly 90-minute walk of just under a mile through downtown, trading in mysteries, mayhem, and things that go bump in the night. It bills itself as the only locally owned and operated ghost tour in Akron, and it returns for a 2026 season with dates on October 10, 16, and 24.
The tour begins at a site with more history than its current life as a concert and skating venue suggests. Lock 3 takes its name from the Ohio and Erie Canal. Akron itself grew up around the canal, and 24 locks were built through the city, the most famous being locks 1, 2, and 3. The canal carried freight until 1861, when it was opened to private lease and the Lock 3 area was put to other uses. A lumber yard gave way in 1884 to Samuel Dyke's American Marble and Toy Manufacturing Company, whose machinery could mass-produce clay marbles and sell a handful for a penny. The factory burned to the ground in 1904, and by 1920 the site had become a parking lot for O'Neil's Department Store. Only in the 1990s, after O'Neil's closed, did the city tear out the lot and build the park that stands there today.
Just beside that ground sits the Akron Civic Theatre, the tour's most famous haunted landmark. Opened on April 20, 1929, as Loew's Theatre, it was designed by the Viennese architect John Eberson in the lavish "atmospheric" style, its ceiling painted to resemble a night sky and still capable of rotating. It is one of only a handful of Eberson atmospheric theatres left in the United States and the last surviving theater of the 11 opened by Marcus Loew, founder of the Loew's chain. It seats 3,000 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Local legend holds that the Civic is haunted by at least three spirits. One is a young woman said to have drowned herself in the canal behind the theater; witnesses have reported seeing her walking along the water's edge, weeping, before vanishing beneath the building. Another is a longtime janitor named Fred, who is said to have died during a work shift and who reportedly still patrols the building, guarding it against vandals and unruly visitors. A third is a well-dressed man seen sitting alone in the balcony. The weeping woman's story is often said to predate the theater itself, tied to the old canal that once ran behind it.
That blend of documented history and handed-down legend is the raw material Black Cat Tales & Tours works with. The company leads ghost tours in Akron, Canton, and Massillon, and its schedule is seasonal, beginning when the warm weather arrives. In Canton, guides meet guests outside the Doubletree with a lantern to check them in, and the tour covers the mysteries, murders, mayhem, and ghosts of that city's downtown. The Akron tour follows the same model: a guide, a route through the city's oldest streets, and a stack of stories researched over years rather than invented for a single Halloween.
The Akron walk is designed to be accessible to anyone who shows up. Tickets are booked in advance, but there is no need to print anything; guests bring the confirmation under the name they booked. The route includes one moderate hill, and it ends close to where it began, near the Civic Theatre and the canal locks that gave the park its name. For a city whose identity was built on industry and the waterway that fed it, the tour is a chance to hear the other side of that history, the part that lingers after the factories and the freight boats are gone.
The 2026 dates fall on Saturday, October 10, Friday, October 16, and Saturday, October 24, each beginning at 7 p.m. at Lock 3 Park, 200 S Main St. Whether the weeping woman makes an appearance is, as ever, a matter of luck and belief. The stories, at least, are guaranteed.