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A wise man once said, “A city tour is only as good as its sights.” San Francisco Chinatown Ghost Tours takes that to heart and delivers some of the most unique and riveting city spectacles: real, live ghosts. Here's just a sampling of the amazing sights you may or may not see:

• A ghost licking every pastry in a Chinese bakery storefront.
• A ghost-operated cable car transporting ghost tourists.
• A storeowner's ghost selling you a fake Rolex.
• Bruce Lee's ghost stuck in a Chinese finger-trap in the middle of a busy street.

Details

Today's Groupon brings you an exciting new way to experience Chinatown. For $12, you can go on a ghost tour through the largest Chinese community outside Asia with San Francisco Chinatown Ghost Tours (a $24 value). Walk through the streets on a 90-minute tour starting at 4 Seas Restaurant at 731 Grant Ave.

Your entertaining guide will tell you the history of the oldest Chinese community in the United States, focusing on Chinatown's urban legends and folklore. Blending history and storytelling while traversing some of Chinatown’s lesser-known streets by lamplight, this tour will teach even longtime San Franciscans plenty of surprising new things about our city. You'll learn the fascinating San Francisco adaptations of ancient Chinese mythology and folklore, including the secrets of the magic moon cake. If folklore about magic cake makes you hungry, fret not because the tour includes a brief visit to a Chinese tea shop for a tea tasting and a fortune cookie factory. (It is said that at the factory, if you listen closely, you might hear the whimpers of the ghosts of broken fortune cookies.)

You'll want to make sure some of your friends get Groupons so you have someone to grab when the ghosts shout "Boo" and "氾伴伴箸." Or if you ain’t afraid of no ghosts, you and your friends can role-play as Ghostbusters, battling the Chinese equivalent to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man: Giant Red Bean Cake Man (end boss of the tour).

Reviews

A handful of Yelpers give San Francisco Chinatown Ghost Tours four stars; reviewers at TourCorp give it a perfect five. Here's what people are saying:

• "When people visit me from, well, any place other than San Francisco it's a challenge to find something touristy that satisfies me as well as my guests. If that happens to you, San Francisco Chinatown Ghost Tours is a great answer...The woman who leads it is a combination of historian/storyteller. I learned a lot about the history of Chinatown." – Bruce S., Yelp
• "A very entertaining and enlightening tour that even kept our skeptical and hard-to-entertain teenagers interested." – Kim H., TourCorp
• "This tour, unlike some others I've experienced, takes you through a good part of Chinatown that's off the beaten path. This was quite exciting to see some of the beautiful alley ways that are otherwise not in the usual "tourist" route." – Alice T., TourCorp