Living the Life: Q & A with local ghost tour guide John Brennan

With Halloween just around the corner, Newport Life talked with Newport Ghost Tours guide John Brennan.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to be in Newport? How long have you been giving ghost tours?

A: I grew up in Rhode Island but had visited Newport less than half a dozen times. I was living in Woonsocket and trying to take my kid to see a whale that had washed up in Little Compton in 1996 but got horribly lost. I ended up in Newport on the then dead end that the Newport Playhouse is located on. 

I wandered in to ask directions during auditions, and was cast in a play. Soon, I left my job as a baker at Dunkin’ Donuts to become an actor at the Playhouse. I eventually met my current wife onstage at the Playhouse. She now owns Knitting Needles of Newport, the yarn store on Lower Thames, and I continue to perform regularly at the Playhouse.

In 2003, I answered a call for actors in Newport that turned out to be for the Olde Town Ghost Walk. I have been giving tours ever since. In fact, in 2013, my now-adult daughter Mackenzie’s first job was as a tour guide, and when I was hospitalized with a severe case of meningitis, she took over my tours for the summer. She started calling me the “Ghostly Ghost Tour Guide” since I was “late for my own funeral.”

Q: Have you always been interested in ghosts and other paranormal things? 

A: Not at all. I would have never considered telling ghost stories for a living, as we were raised with deep skepticism of the paranormal. Shortly before I was offered the job of ghost tour guide, my brother survived the Station Nightclub Fire on February 20, 2003. He was in a coma for two weeks, and when he recovered, he spoke of having given up in the flames. He had decided that he wanted to die somewhat peacefully rather than panicked. My grandmothers appeared to him in the flames and told him that it wasn’t his time yet. One had died the previous fall, and the other had died just a few weeks earlier. 

For one so skeptical of ghosts to have such a powerful connection with a ghost story gave me a new perspective on the paranormal. If I had known when I answered the actors call that it was for a ghost tour guide, I would not have responded. Fortunately, I didn’t find out until I was ready to accept the possibility that there were answers outside of what we can measure. Sometimes, we have to accept that we just don’t know, and probably never will.  

Q: What inspired you to write a book about the ghosts of Newport?

A: The History Press contacted me and asked me to write the book. When I was in college in New Jersey, I worked for several of the school newspapers. I discovered a love for journalism and research (and tequila, which is why I am not a biomedical engineer today).

This was in 1987, when cut and paste involved exacto knives and hot wax machines. I was a photojournalist, and learned how to research and interview, how to find truths and put them into words and pictures. After being relieved of my student status, I continued in journalism. I worked for a few local papers and ran my own short-lived newspaper with a friend. With the advent of the internet, I continued to work for my friend’s automotive website as an automotive journalist and researcher. I also wrote and researched extensively as a hobby. 

The opportunity to write a book about the community that I love and its history was unexpected, and I thought it might be a mistake, so I wrote the book before they had the chance to realize their error. I researched and interviewed people throughout Newport, culling ghost stories and verifying what I could from various sources. To me, our ghost stories are the keys to our hearts and culture. They tell our story, in some ways more accurately than the written histories we rely on. They speak to our hopes and our fears, and to our dreams and our failures. 

We are our stories, and for those who believe in the paranormal, they are incredible stories. For those who are skeptical, and I still count myself as guarded when considering the paranormal, the stories tell the future who we are. After all, what are we if not ghosts inhabiting electrified meat on a skeleton of existence? 

Q: What is something you love about guiding ghost tours? How many do you give a week? 

A: I am a storyteller, and I love sharing my passion for storytelling. I tell my guests each tour that I love Newport and our stories and culture, and that I want to share that passion with them. I believe in magic. Stories are magic, and at their best, I can see my magic stories casting spells on people who are connecting with Newport. Sometimes, they are locals learning a part of their history that they had never been shown before. More often, my guests travel from distant lands and cultures and learn about people from a time and place unlike theirs. Perhaps they make connections with the stories and the people, and take that magic home with them. 

As a storyteller, whether in my tours, my writing, or onstage as an actor, I live for those moments where I have an audience so invested in my story that they dare not breathe until I release them from the moment. I transport them to someplace where they are not themselves, encumbered with their challenges, inviting them to be different people with different challenges just for a moment. I am a storyteller, and I hope to educate and entertain, but at my peak, I get to transform people. I live for those moments.

I am also a brain injury survivor. I face challenges that limit my stamina, so I do fewer tours now. The Olde Towne Ghost Walk runs April through November, and seven nights a week during the summer through Halloween time. I try to limit myself to one or two tours a week.

Q: How would you describe your process of getting ready for a tour?

A: After 21 seasons, and the challenges of brain injury, I have developed a long routine. I have assembled a fantastic, flamboyantly goth costume with a leather skirt and vest, tuxedo shirt and spooky bowtie, and leather top hat with a Puritan Death Head skull hat band made from a thrift store belt buckle that is a replica of a common headstone in the area. I use a cane, and my tour cane has a heavy skull decorating the top. 

I carry two bags strapped around my waist. One contains local ghost pictures and a field thermometer for finding ghosts. There are assorted trinkets and tricks in that bag as well, because I like to be prepared for the bizarre. The other contains a small bag of spooky toys for kids who join my tour as parting gifts- small snakes and eyeballs and such. It also contains a thermos of sweet rose tea and honey. I like to sit in the graveyard after the tour and have tea for my voice with my dearly departed friends. 

I also carry a lantern. Most guides use battery operated lanterns, and I have no objection to them. They are far easier and more reliable in the wind. I am the last, stubborn guide who uses a black, dented and repainted oil lantern. Yes, I could give a story about the invention of the lantern. I like to understand my tools. I never stop looking for better ways to tell stories. I never stop researching and examining the stories I tell, and I always enjoy exploring new tales and new landmarks to highlight on my tour. The inventor of orange soda is here in Newport, and there are bodies everywhere. 

Q: Do you have any advice for others interested in becoming a tour guide or sharing ghost stories? 

A: You need to be heard. I was trained to project as an actor. I can take out fairly large groups because of that, but you always need to know your limits.

You need to be flexible. If your normal stop is blocked by circumstances – and there are limitless obstacles in a city like Newport – you need to be able to shift the story or tell a different one. The more flexible you are, the more satisfied your guests will be.

Play to your strengths. There is a script, but you decorate that script with your personality. 

I am first and foremost an entertainer. I hope to educate people about this extraordinary place and its people and history, but at the same time, throwing names and dates at people is useless. You have to give the people and the figures LIFE. The easiest way to do that is to be fascinated with your stories yourself. I have been telling some stories for 21 years, and they are fascinating to me because history is alive. The stories have depth, and humanity, and as long as I can see that, I can find the fascination in telling them to others, and they can feel my sincerity. If you are writing the story, or telling the story to friends, speak from the heart, and from the truth. The better you know the truth of the story, the better your story will come across. 

Q: What do you hope people take away from your tours?

A: Newport is an extraordinary place, and extraordinary things have taken place here. Yet I find the most interest in the ordinary. I have books about ladies shoes in the 1800s, about the history of milk, about the history of cod, about all kinds of details about the universe and history that might bore most people. Wherever you are, whatever your life is, that is important. Your story is important. Your beliefs are important. 

Our everyday moments are valuable, and we should all be asking our parents and grandparents what they were doing on the day that Ronald Reagan was shot. We should ask them what they did for fun, what they did that got them in trouble. We should turn to each other and say, “Tell me your story,” and we should all know deep in our hearts that our own story matters. History has a tendency to erase stories – especially of people of color, women, and queer individuals. Now, historians are desperately trying to recover those truths. We are a generation that has the amazing opportunity to write our stories down, and they all matter. Especially the stories or people who believe that they don’t matter. Who among us still wants to hear the story of the richest man ever again? I want your story. 

Q: What do you do when you’re not guiding ghost tours?

A: I am married to Michelle, who owns Knitting Needles of Newport on Lower Thames. We like to watch the late night talk shows, and I like to post a lot on Facebook. We have a child at the Met School who is mentoring with the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals and got to perform in the last Newport Folk Festival as a part of that. I also have two adult children, Mackenzie and Michael, who live off-island.

I wrote Newport Live and Newport Eats with my dear friend, artist Rafael Medina. Newport Live is a collection of his paintings of “the ordinary people in the extraordinary setting of Newport” along with my stories about our culture and history. Newport Eats is a collection of his paintings of restaurants in Newport with the story of Newport food told through descriptions of some of our local eateries, and a full restaurant guide in the back. I also have a selection that appeared in the Rhode Island Bards Poetry Anthology 2024.

I like to perform as often as I can at NEE Jam at the Firehouse Theater. I love to play music, and NEE Jam is a wonderful venue for musicians of all skill levels. I am irresistibly drawn to performing wherever I can. I am just finishing a show at the Newport Playhouse, and I am in the next show there as well, which will run through New Year’s Eve. 

We call our house the Odditorium. We have a secret library – pull a candle sconce and the bookshelf opens to reveal a library. We collect books and curiosities, and our house is full of antiques and oddities that would make Ripley believe he has been bested.

I have a lifelong fascination with the Titanic, and in my large cookbook collection, I have The Last Dinner on the Titanic. Each year, I throw a Titanic dinner party, cooking foods from all three classes on the ship. We watch a real-time computer simulation of the sinking during dinner, share friendship and fun, and mark the sinking with an April clothing-optional swim in the harbor. 

I dress in bright, flamboyant colors of skirts, sports jackets, bowties, and top hats whenever I go out, even if just to the hardware store, but of course, it is black at night. for the tours. It is a dangerous world, and if I step into it, I will sparkle. 

So, really, I lead a normal, run-of-the-mill life.

Q: What’s a spooky memory you have from Newport?

A: My wife and I were sitting on the sea wall near the Newport Harbor Light on Goat Island, admiring a view of the Newport Bridge. Coincidentally, and we didn’t know this at the time, we were sitting on the mass grave of 26 pirates hanged in Newport in July, 1723.

As we watched, about 2 dozen glowing lights floated from the north end of Narragansett Bay, traveling very quickly about 2-3 feet above the water. They drifted above the water past us and disappeared to the south. It was beautiful. I always say that the breathers are more spooky than the ghosts, though. This city is full of living people, who walk through the dead as though they own the space now, and often forget that it is their children who own it, and their children’s children. 

Q: What’s your favorite thing to do around Halloween time? 

A: I keep busy with ghost tours, but I always take Halloween off to have a great party and welcome trick-or-treaters. We live in a neighborhood with lots of trick-or-treaters, and we decorate extensively. In many ways, our maximalist house is always Halloween ready. 

We have a guillotine out front, a large two-headed dragon on the roof, and a giant, carnivorous plant with electric lighting. Our house is memorable all year long, but we take comfort knowing that to some of the kids in the neighborhood, we are the “Halloween House.” I throw a concert on the porch as we serve candy through a tube.

In 2015, I was scheduled for brain surgery. After a night of trick-or-treaters, I was about to close for the night, when two women walked by, one of whom I knew. We invited them in, and after a few drinks, my new friend whom I’d never met before agreed to shave my long hair for brain surgery.

We left a Mohawk, and on the Day of the Dead, my kids sculpted liberty spikes from that long Mohawk, and then my Mom finally got to shave my head entirely. My brain surgery was successful, and I have not cut my hair since that day. 

That is why we make such a celebration of Halloween, of life and death, of the magic of this moment. That is why our stories matter, and why I will always love telling them and hearing them and learning about this incredible world I am not supposed to still inhabit. 

Read more installments from our Living the Life series, spotlighting people and happenings around town.