One of York’s most popular ghost tours has opened its first bricks-and-mortar venue.
Located at 4 Grape Lane, The Deathly Dark Tour Company have opened a permanent ticket office and shop, which offers a variety of ghostly-themed gifts and trinkets.
The venue was previously home to beauty and nail salon Beauty Bar One, which closed its doors in August 2025 after 18 years on Grape Lane.
The Deathly Dark Tours was founded during the first lockdown in 2020 and is a staple of the city’s spooky offerings. YorkMix spoke with husband-and-wife duo Dorian and Dede Deathly to find out more about their new exciting venture.
“We knew we were going to take on some kind of bricks-and-mortar place at some point,” Dorian Deathly told YorkMix. “We were looking at 2027 or 2028, or four or five years down the road from now.
“This coming up right on the dot where we start our tour from was wild.
“The next morning we were in here with the letting agent and within the hour we emailed over to say we’ll take it.”
The renovation presented the biggest challenge – mainly taking the bright white of the previous nail salon to the signature gothic look fitting for the Deathly Dark Tours.
What’s also fitting is, like the rest of the business, Dorian and Dede transformed the building completely by themselves. “It’s just the two of us that do all this,” said Dede.
“There were definitely some days where we were completely overwhelmed because it was just the two of us with hand tools.,” said Dorian.
“We’re a local family business and we’ve been here for six years,” Dede continued.
“It’s not just about the spooky things,” she added, “Our whole business is about sharing the history and heritage of York – which surely is a good thing for locals and tourism.”
The ticket office also has a gift shop element – which offers products made by local creators with everything from art prints, to books, to pin badges, to trinkets, and more.
“The flow of people coming in throughout the day is quite steady, surprisingly so,” said Dorian. “Then you get that pocket around tour time for about 20 minutes where people are turning up and suddenly 35 or 40 people are in the room and it’s small – so figuring that out around Halloween time will be interesting.”
Having a bricks-and-mortar site has also meant its able to have a prominent, fixed location for the tour – as well as attracting footfall. “One thing we’ve never been able to do, which other tours are able to do, is have physical tour boards,” explained Dorian. “We would have people ringing us, struggling to find us and such.
“So having this is almost like having a really big, very expensive board.”
Now that the ticket office and shop is up and running, the team are focusing on making it the best that it can be. “We were talking about launching another tour later this year and we decided to put that on the back burner now to next year, or maybe even the year after,” said Dorian.
Dorian and Dede encourage anyone who hasn’t experienced a Deathly Dark Tour before to come down and give it a go.
“Come and experience it and see what our local, independent York family business has done – enjoy it and have a bit of fun with it!”
To find out more and pre-book your tickets online, visit their website here.
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