To his horror, the head pleaded with him to return it to her body. Finally, he relented and returned to Prague to restore the head to the corpse of his beloved. But, to this day his troubled spirit it is said to stalk the alley of the Ungelt. The specter can be recognized, we are told, because it wears a turban and carries the blonde head of the maiden wherever it goes.

According to tradition, the ghost of the Turk escapes the eye of every tourist: It is able to disappear or hide in pictures painted in old houses. Nonetheless, the Prague ghost tour promises ghosts, and it delivers. I was able to photograph the “Turk” when a turbaned figure lurched out at me in the middle of the street. He was every bit as horrible as any demon you would meet at your door on Halloween.

The priest and the whore. At the south portal of Tyne Church, Jelínková tells the story of two unhappy phantoms that appear in Celetná Street. Well known in Prague, these ghosts are the whore and the priest. The story goes that one day the whore met the priest in Celetná Street. “It was at the end of summer, and you could hear music from the church,” she explains. “The priest, having been trained in Rome, was prideful of his knowledge and position, and he hated the dirty, poor people.”

The whore brazenly pulled open her bodice before the priest. Her impudence outraged him. In anger, he struck the woman with his heavy metal cross, killing her on the spot. Passersby in the street were shocked and gathered round the priest, threatening him. The priest tried to defend himself by arguing that he had done a good deed. (“You know, we don’t like these prostitutes,” Jelínková comments, alluding to Prague’s booming sex industry—a topic of daily controversy in the city’s newspapers.)

“The priest became so frightened and upset that he suffered a stroke,” she continues. “He died in the same street. But after death, neither the whore nor the priest have any peace. They emerge into the light in Celetná Street. The whore lures the priest, who runs from her back into the shadows.”

The old tanner. Jelínková’s tour ends at a small brick alcove near the entrance of Kozna Street, wide enough for only the smallest of compact cars.