Flagstaff, Arizona
Author. Historian. Paranormal Researcher.
Excavating the secrets and mysteries buried in Flagstaff’s past.
For more than thirty-five years, Susan Johnson has studied and explored the dark side of Flagstaff’s history. The result: three books for The History Press and multiple award-winning tours for Freaky Foot Tours, the historical walking tour company she founded with her son Nick.
Explore the Books
The Books
Every book began the same way: a name in a ledger, a date on a stone, a story the town half remembered. Susan followed each one into the archives and wrote down what she found. The newest volume hands those stories to readers ages 8 to 12.
Susan’s hauntings, retold for brave readers ages 8 to 12.
The phantom bellboy at the Hotel Monte Vista and the railroad men who never left the depot: the stories from Susan’s Haunted Flagstaff, adapted for young readers by Julie Rathsack. The newest addition to the shelf, written to be read with the lights on.
Paperback ISBN 978-1467190039 · $12.99
About this book
The wild early days of northern Arizona’s largest city.
Saloons, swindlers, and rough frontier justice: the decades before Flagstaff learned to behave. Susan’s newest book was named a 2025 Viola Awards finalist for Excellence in Storytelling.
Paperback ISBN 978-1467156394
About this book
The hotels, the theater, the library: a mountain town’s documented hauntings, told with a historian’s sourcing rather than a campfire whisper. A 2023 Viola Awards finalist for Written Storytelling.
Paperback ISBN 978-1467150699
About this book
A Shocking 1937 Tragedy
The 1937 tragedy Flagstaff spent decades trying to forget, reconstructed with care from records and contemporary reporting. This is the case Susan brought to Travel Channel’s The Dead Files in 2022.
Paperback ISBN 978-1467147156
About this bookOn the Record
Featured on Travel Channel’s The Dead Files (2022). Susan brought the Walkup family case to the two-hour season finale, Special Investigation: The Haunting of Flagstaff.
Susan was interviewed for Fear in Flagstaff, the Season 26 investigation of the mountain town’s hauntings.
Susan curates the weekly Flagstaff History column for the Arizona Daily Sun. The Navajo-Hopi Observer carries her work across the region.
Episode 275, Haunted Flagstaff: the Weatherford, the Hotel Monte Vista, the public library, and the Walkup case, an hour of stories from Susan’s files.
A two-time Viola Awards finalist: Written Storytelling in 2023 for Haunted Flagstaff, and Excellence in Storytelling in 2025 for Wicked Flagstaff.
NAU’s student paper profiled the company’s origins, quoting Susan on the fifteen years of research behind the tours.
Every Week in Print
Most towns keep their history in a locked case. Flagstaff gets a fresh piece of its own every week. Susan curates the Flagstaff History column for the Arizona Daily Sun, pulling one story at a time out of the dark: a trial, a fire, a building everyone walks past without knowing why it matters.
One reader letter to the paper said it plainly in its headline: Flagstaff History gatherer applauded.
Read the Column ArchiveArizona Daily Sun
Flagstaff History · A Weekly Column
Also carried by the Navajo-Hopi Observer
The Historian
Susan came to Flagstaff in 1989 and has spent more than thirty-five years learning the town by heart. A registered nurse by training, she learned to listen to people long before she learned to read ledgers. Both habits show in her books.
This site is kept by her son, Nick Jones, her partner in Freaky Foot Tours and her first reader.
Read Susan’s StorySusan moves to Flagstaff and starts pulling threads in the town’s archives. The threads keep going.
She founds Freaky Foot Tours with her son Nick Jones, turning decades of research files into a nightly walk through downtown.
The History Press publishes her three books: Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders, Haunted Flagstaff, and Wicked Flagstaff.
The stories reach the kids’ shelf: The Ghostly Tales of Flagstaff, adapted from Susan’s Haunted Flagstaff by Julie Rathsack, arrives from Arcadia Children’s Books.
The Flagstaff History column runs in the Arizona Daily Sun. The research desk never closes.
Freaky Foot Tours · Founded 2015
In 2015, Susan and her son Nick Jones started walking people through downtown Flagstaff after dark, telling the stories she had spent decades pulling out of the archives. The company they built together now walks three Arizona towns, and the research still starts at Susan’s desk.
“Other tours chase our route. We wrote the books.”
1,000+ five-star reviews. Best of Flagstaff three years running.
Walk with Freaky Foot ToursFlagstaff · Tucson · Prescott
Susan’s Corner
Between books and columns, Susan keeps a corner of this site for the stories that do not fit anywhere else: archive finds, reader questions, and the odd tale still waiting for its footnotes.
Media & Appearances
From Travel Channel’s The Dead Files (2022) to the History Goes Bump podcast, producers and hosts have found Susan a generous, well-sourced guest. She speaks on Flagstaff history, the Walkup case, haunted landmarks, and how a historian checks a ghost story against the record.
Interviews · Podcasts · Speaking Engagements
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