Columbia’s Haunted Lantern Tour is a non-profit community theatre located in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Our annual performance offers a portal into the afterlife through an hour-long historical walking tour, where costumed actors bring the people and stories of Columbia’s past to life through dramatic reenactments and original theatrical scenes. Each year’s ever-changing script is written by Columbia native Sara Mimnall, creating a carefully balanced combination of historical education, reenactment, and theatrical entertainment.
Article in TownLively.com ~
“History Will Glow in Lantern Light” – by Cat Shannon – September 23, 2025
Our 2026 Haunted Lantern Tour
Tour Dates and Times – October 16, 17, 18, 23, and 24. Tours leave every half hour, beginning at 6:30 pm.
Ticket prices – $25.00 each. Special rates for groups of 10 or more are now available!
Location – Tours leave from St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, located at 616 Locust Street, in Columbia, Pennsylvania.
Venue – Mount Bethel Cemetery
Reservations ~ Call Holly at 717-587-5368 or click the button below.
Annual Themes ~
2026 | WRIGHT’S FERRY’S LEGENDARIES
We invite you on a lantern-lit journey through the lives of the remarkable men and women whose vision, courage, sacrifice, and determination shaped the community that would become Columbia, Pennsylvania.
Meet founders and reformers, poets and physicians, entrepreneurs and abolitionists. Listen as forgotten stories emerge from weathered stone, and history comes alive through moments of humor, heartbreak, and humanity.
2025 | FATALITY’S LAST STAND
A poetic reckoning with the past – and a fierce promise to the future.
2024 | THE AFFLICTED
Exploring the agonies of love, longing, loss, and grief.
2023 | CIVIL WAR
The most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history.
2022 | INDUSTRY ASCENDING
Reveling in the stories of visionaries and entrepreneurs.
2021 | UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
Invoking the spirits left behind by history’s tragedies.
2020 | AUTHENTIC ILLUSIONS
Columbia’s history of bewitching tales, superstitions, and haunting lore.
2019 | URBAN SPIRITS
A showcase of the stimulating night life of the 1920’s.
2018 | MORTALITY WITHIN
Thousands of lives could be swept away in a matter of months.
2017 | SPIRITS RISING
A resurrection of our ancestors and the awakening of their memoirs.
Columbia's Haunted Lantern Tour 