SARATOGA SPRINGS — Kevin Veitch was just 9 or 10 when he saw the strange man walking through his house.

Veitch lay on his bed staring out into the hallway, waiting for morning to come. “Just out of the blue, this gentleman comes down the hallway toward me.” The man wore old-fashioned clothing with loose sleeves, and walked down the stairs.

“I mentioned it to my mother. She said, ‘You were dreaming.’ But I wasn’t dreaming.”

For his first 18 years, Veitch lived in what is now the Olde Bryan Inn and can attest to its being haunted.

That building, as well as two other local pubs, Gaffney’s and The Parting Glass, are featured on Haunted Pub Crawls which will start on June 5.

The pub crawl probably will feature local history and folklore, as well as architecture, the paranormal, occultism and ghosts, said Joel Reed, executive director of the Saratoga County Arts Council, which is sponsoring the events that will be run by Buffalo-based Haunted History Ghost Walks.

The company also puts on the downtown ghost tours on Friday nights during the summer, which still will happen in addition to the scheduled pub crawls, Reed said.

Haunted History Ghost Walks founder Mason Winfield will lead the pub crawls himself. Local actors are employed for the downtown ghost tours, Reed said.

Winfield researched the city’s history and the history of the three pubs by visiting the Saratoga Room in the Saratoga Springs Public Library, Reed said.

“He knows how to research and he knows how to realize the more dubious stories from the more documented stories.” He also weaves the natural history of the area into his talks, Reed said.

So the tour employs more storytelling than promising to produce ghosts. “It’s not like high-tech ghost hunter types that do all their work with computers and cameras,” he said.

On the three-hour pub crawls, people will have the chance to socialize and enjoy a cold brew at each stop.

“We expect 20 to 40 people the first time around,” said Gaffney’s owner John Baker.

Haunted pub crawls are slated for June 5, July 10, Sept. 12 and Oct. 30. The cost is $20. Call the arts council at 584-4132 to register.

Baker doesn’t have any evidence that his building is haunted, although there’s a legend of a “woman of ill repute” who haunts it from the days when John Gaffney built the 1903 building, he said.

But the Olde Bryan Inn is definitely haunted, Veitch said. Besides his own experience, which also included sometimes hearing voices and the feeling that he was being watched as he did his homework near what is now the bar, two of his sisters also had spooky times in the house.

His sister, Nancy Dragonette, arrived home alone after an early dismissal from high school and settled into her bedroom beside the upstairs bath. “All of a sudden the shower started running in the other room,” Veitch said. “She yells out, thinking it’s one of us.”

But when she went into the bathroom, no one was there.

His other sister, Karen Korson, was brushing her hair in front of a mirror when she saw a woman standing behind her. When she turned, no one was there.

Dragonette never told her twin sons, Thomas and Jon Dragonette, about the family’s strange encounters there before they all went out to eat at the Olde Bryan Inn to celebrate the boys’ graduating from high school.

One of them went upstairs to use the bathroom. “A few minutes later, he comes back down white as a ghost,” Veitch said.

The teen had seen a woman floating through the air as if she was walking up stairs.

Unbeknownst to the twins, there used to be a winding staircase in the open area where he saw the ghostly woman.

Veitch accepted the strange sights and sounds when he was growing up, and his family joked that George Washington had returned to the inn where he once slept. “We always used to make the joke that it was George,” he said. “If some of those things happened when I was older, it would probably freak me out.”