A popular downtown tour for visitors and locals alike, the longstanding Ghost Tours of Anchorage welcomed people on walking routes through Alaska’s largest city for nearly 20 years, highlighting historic and haunted stories spanning the timeline of the city.

As of this week, a message on the Ghost Tours of Anchorage website says the tour has been “discontinued because of the decline in the vitality, cleanliness, and safety of downtown. We can no longer offer assurances of a positive ghost touring experience.” Social media pages of the tour group have also been shuttered, as of last check.

“The ghost tour of Anchorage was just — it was conceived for me,” said Goodfellow, who has personally been treating people to stories — including true accounts — of Anchorage’s haunted history. “I thought this would be fun. And it was for a while.”

“Every year sampled the same bit,” he said. “[There were] some changes in the tour, but the big change was the harassment, the generally undesirable behavior, moving further and further west.

“But [problems] just started happening more and more and more,” he added, emphasizing his concerns over the prominence of people experiencing homelessness, and the issues they presented while Goodfellow’s tours were underway. “And really, by last year, it turned into, ‘Is there going to be another problem tonight?’ I’m gonna say, life is too short for this.”

Goodfellow, who said he started the tour as a passion project, also said he’s staying out of politics, but that what he’s been seeing in the city the past few years is difficult to ignore.

“I don’t think anybody says downtown is thriving,” he said. “And politicians always like to point fingers at somebody else. And in my experience, the decline of downtown has been a successful bipartisan cooperation.”

He said he’d like to see downtown Anchorage cleaned up, and turned into the true tourist destination that it has the potential to be.

“Anchorage is an amazing place,” he said. “I don’t know any place that has as many visitors, concentrated in a small area, and does less to amuse them. Look at Fourth Avenue. It’s shop after shop after shop, trying to sell you a ticket to get out of town.

“I’m really a history nut,” he said. “And I saw what I still think is the best ghost tour in North America in Victoria, B.C. And I was down there, and I said, ‘Whoa, Anchorage should have something like this.’”