Life can change on a dime. That’s just one of many lessons tourgoers, especially tourists, absorb almost daily on The Black Cat Shoppe’s ghost walks that explore the Port City’s paranormal past.
A 2025 winner of the Jane Peterson Tourism Legacy award from the Wilmington and Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB), the gift shop at 8 Market St., home to the Ghost Walk of Old Wilmington, is known for its quirky gifts and goods that, according to its website, “defy the norm.”
Kim and John Hirchak, founders and owners of The Black Cat Shoppe, launched the first formal 90-minute ghost walk in 1999, but the walk’s planning began years before that…