The United States is known for its vast sky and golden waves of crops, but it is also home to many ghost stories. Take a comprehensive tour of America’s most haunted locations, including hotels, abandoned asylums, broadways theatres, and even a city zoo, where lingering souls stalk the hallways.
But if ghosts aren’t your thing, don’t worry: these destinations are loaded with culture, history, and stunning landscape and architecture to keep you firmly anchored.
1. Bodie, California
Bodie, which once had a population of 10,000 people, saw a boom in the 1870s and 1880s when gold was discovered in the hills near Mono Lake. It’s currently a State Historic Park, with certain portions of town preserved in a state of arrested decay. It includes tables with place settings and strangely filled supply shops. It’s hardly unexpected that there have been several tales of paranormal activity in this area, including ghost sightings and music coming from closed pubs. There’s also a tradition that anyone who takes anything from Bodie, even a rock, will be cursed with bad luck and health issues when they leave.
2. Calcasieu Courthouse, Lake Charles, Louisiana
Toni Jo Henry, a former sex worker, gained global notoriety in 1940 when she murdered a man in cold blood. Toni Jo was the one and only woman in Louisiana to be killed in the electric chair after a jury found her guilty after three trials.
On the other hand, her ghost is claimed to have lingered in the courthouse, where employees can sense her presence and smell her flaming hair. Many people believe she messes with the employees’ daily lives at the courts by shutting doors and tinkering with office equipment in order to make their lives more unpleasant.
The Banshee Cries
Enter the World of Shadows series with a short story based on the world created by Patricia Morais.
3. Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
The Crescent Hotel has functioned as a luxury resort, a conservatory for young ladies, and a junior college since its establishment in 1886. The oddest chapter in its history occurred in 1937 when Norman G. Baker became its new owner.
Baker was a multimillionaire who decided to dress up as a doctor without having any medical expertise and transform the hotel into a cancer-curing hospital. He was finally apprehended and sent out of town; however, reports claim that his ghost returned to the site—and found some unearthly company in the process. The Crescent Hotel, which is still in operation, is reported to be haunted by at least eight ghosts, ranging in age from a five-year-old child to a bearded man dressed in Victorian dress.
4. Dock Street Theatre, Charleston, South Carolina
This landmark in downtown Charleston, one of America’s oldest theatres, has seen a lot of turbulence and drama through the years. The Planter’s Inn was constructed on the site after the old theatre was destroyed by fire; it was restored again to a theatre in the 1930s.
Nettie Dickerson, the most colorful ghost here, is said to have been hit by lightning while standing on the hotel’s balcony. Her red gown-clad shadow has been seen gliding down the second level of the theatre.
5. Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, Illinois
Tigers, lions, and… ghosts? One of Chicago’s most popular sights, it appears out, is also one of its most haunted, with far more than monkeys prowling the premises.
From the 1840s through the 1950s, the municipal cemetery was located in the center of Lincoln Park, which housed around 35,000 dead. Because of its proximity to the city’s water source, the cemetery was eventually relocated, and most of the bodies—but not all—were relocated as well.
If you’ve ever watched a horror movie, you know that tampering with graveyards is a certain way to become haunted, and the Lincoln Park Zoo is no exception. The Lincoln Zoo is the most haunted, with individuals reporting seeing spirits and ghosts there since it opened 150 years ago.
PATRICIA MORAIS
When I’m not eating popcorn and roaming through Wikipedia looking for weird monsters. I’m writing supernatural fantasy books, in Portuguese and in English, about hunting those monsters. But my real mission to help other writers write, publish and market their books.
