Top 10 Scariest Haunted Places in America

With Halloween, comes the requisite “Top 10 Spookiest Places in the United States” list. And because I’m into that sort of thing I have perused the Internet to find and compile the ultimate set of scariest vacation places and haunted houses. I say you book a vacation rental, grab that 'fraidy cat brother of yours and start the tour of the country before it's Halloween, already.

10. Alcatraz in San Francisco, California
The Rock as they called it. Even before the crap-alicious Nic Cage flick. This has to be the scariest prison in America. This is where you get all those prison cliches from cartoons like eating only bread and water, getting chained to a giant iron ball and getting put in “sweatboxes”.

And don’t forget these are the worst of the worst: murderers, rapists, thieves. The inmates had five rights: food, clothing, a shower (once a week), a doctor, and rape. I mean a cell. Rape was an eventuality. Not a right.

So this place with its “holes” and chained imprisonment sent a lot of people to the insane asylum. That means dozens of insane inmates died within the prison walls. Therefore a haunting is something of an inevitability. Besides the typical “screams in the halls” and “inexplicably cold solitary confinement cells” there was a story from the 40’s that was really scary.

A guard said an inmate was locked in solitary for some reason. According to the officer, the inmate started screaming within seconds of being locked in. The prisoner said that some creature with "glowing eyes" was locked in with him. Everyone used to make jokes so, no one took the convict’s cries of being "attacked" seriously. The man’s screaming continued into the night until finally, there was silence. The next day, guards inspected the cell and they found the convict dead with a horrible expression that had been frozen onto the man’s face and marks of hands around his throat. The autopsy revealed that the strangulation could not have been self-inflicted. Freaky.

9. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Besides being a famous historical site, this is where thousands of soldiers lost their lives violently, tragically and in a relatively short period of time. Many places in town have had multiple ghost sightings by numerous people over the years since the battle. Rarely will anyone deny the possibility that there is some sort of presence here.

There was one such case of a “presence” in the form of a mysterious ghost known as “the Sentry” who still guards the cupola at the top of Pennsylvania Hall at Gettysburg College. The apparition of this rebel soldier has been on duty for the past 145 years. Seriously. Without even so much as a pee break.

In some ways he behaves like a typical poltergeist haunting, pacing back and fourth on the Cupola as though the college is still in southern hands, yet every now and then he aims his rifle at students on the ground. This behavior fascinates parapsychologists (that’s a niche field) because it is part of a trend of Intelligent hauntings in Gettysburg, which goes back hundreds of years. Everywhere else in the paranormal world “intelligent” hauntings are extremely rare, even when compared to the ghostlore of other battle grounds like Shiloh or Antietem, and no one knows why Gettysburg has so many of them.

8. Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky
Old sanatorium, ‘nuff said. The building once held hundreds of tuberculosis patients. It closed in 1961 to be renovated. It opened in 1962 as a geriatrics center and then finally closed in 1980. Rumor has it that there is an incredible amount of paranormal activity that goes on in this location. They have several types of tours ranging from a couple of hours to a full night. Some urban legends claim that 63,000 deaths occurred at the sanatorium. According to Assistant Medical Director Dr. J. Frank W. Stewart, the highest number of deaths in a single year at Waverly Hills was 152. Some independent researchers have suggested that 162 people died at Waverly Hills in 1945. Now, I don’t know much about sanatoriums but why would people die almost every other day there? I mean, I know these people are sick but I thought they were just mentally unstable, not physically unwell.

7. Salem, Massachusetts
Known as Witch City and home of annual Halloween revelry, this historic town holds a gruesome and unjust history of persecution, torture and mass hysteria. If you don’t know the story, some brats started accusing people of being witches to get out of trouble which led to those people accusing others and those people accusing others until the whole town imploded from stupidity. It’s probably one of our nation's most tarnished moments in history.

Besides slavery.

And Japanese internment camps.

And the whole native American thing.

And Macauley Culkin.

Giles Corey was one of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials. He was crushed to death under a wooden door that was piled up with stones. He cursed the people with his dying breath and swore to haunt them. But the Curse of Giles Corey was not just leveled just at the Sheriff but at “all of Salem.” It’s said that each time Salem has undergone a major tragedy (like the great fire that nearly destroyed the town), it was not long after a claimed sighting of the ghost of Giles Corey. Coincidence? Maybe. Still, could the words spoken by this tragic victim of hysteria have left an imprint that is still at work in Salem today? Go visit and find out. Let me know.

6. Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee
John Bell (not the former DJ on Z100, another guy) and his family moved to Roberson County in 1804. In the summer of 1817 some members of the family began seeing strange looking animals around the property. (I haven’t found to many details in this regard so don’t ask what a “strange animal” looks like). Then late at night they started hearing knocking sounds on the doors and outside the walls of the house. Later sounds were heard inside the house. Sounds of a rodent gnawing on the bed post, chains being rattled through the house, stones being dropped on the wooden floors, then gulping and choking sounds. When they asked the poltergeist who or what it was (because if you don’t know abut ghosts, that’s what you’re supposed to do), it gave different identities. It once stated that it was the witch of a neighbor woman named Kate Batts. This is what many people believed, and from then on, this unseen force was called “Kate” or “Bell’s Witch”. Her goal was the death of John Bell even though no reason was given by Kate (maybe she died during he period).The place continues to be haunted even now, nearly 200 years after Bell’s death.

5. The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, Missouri
The sudden deaths of the Lemp family haunt this location to this date. Unexplained tragedy after tragedy struck in their home, killing off each family member, one by one, until finally, the patriarch of the family took his own life. William Lemp Sr., heir to the Lemp brewery at the passing of his father, acquired the mansion in the mid-1800s. In 1901, he lost his favored son, Frederick, at the age of 28 to a heart attack. Next, his best friend passed away. His grief became more than he could bear. William Senior became the first Lemp to take his own life in the mansion. Three of his children, Elsa, Billy and Charles, followed suit in the following decades – two of those suicides also taking place in the home. Mental instability in their genes you say? Zeke Lemp (aka monkey-faced boy), the last child born to William Sr. and his wife, is said to have died in a fall down the stairs. A young girl, unrelated to the Lemps, is rumored to have died a violent death in the mansion's attic. Thats’ a lot of death in one place. This living ghost story replays itself over and over again in this very haunted destination. While the hotel itself, doesn’t like to advertise its haunted history, it is said to be one of the spookiest places on earth. Most of the visitors have an encounter of some sort.

4. Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts
The mother of all haunted houses. On August 4, 1892, someone killed Mr. and Mrs. Borden with a hatchet as they were in their home. Mrs. Borden was found in an upstairs guest room and Mr. Borden was found downstairs on the sofa. The accused was Lizzie Borden, the daughter of Mr. Borden and stepdaughter to Mrs. Borden. Despite her arrest, she was acquitted of the murders and died in 1927 still being labeled a murderer by many. Maybe she stuck around, as a ghost, because she never felt vindicated (haunting is a great way to convince people you’re innocent of murder). Paranormal recordings turn up creepy findings at this place all the time. If you think you could do it, find out for yourself what the experience is like by staying overnight. It’s available for visitors.

3. Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois
Located in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, this cemetery exists peacefully in the Rubio Woods. At first glance, it looks like a small, unimportant cemetery. The chain link fence is broken, with a big hole marring the protective metal. The cemetery itself is broken down, suffering from years of vandalism and trespassing. Some gravestones are dismantled. Although this sounds like a regular cemetery, its past is shrouded in despair and death. A white, uninhabited pond exists in the northwest corner of the cemetery. Mob bosses used it as dumping grounds for their victims in the early 1900s. They apparently stopped burying the dead in the 1960s. Since that time, people have reported many sightings, making Bachelor’s Grove the most haunted cemetery in the United States. Many of those sightings are seen near the pond. Sightings include a ghost called the White Lady. Clad in white, she roams the graves looking for her lost baby. Other sightings include a two-headed man(?) and a ghost house(??). Bachelor’s Grove is truly one of the spookiest haunting grounds in the United States.

2. Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California
For thirty-eight years starting in 1884, this architectural wonder was not constructed as the result of need; it was built under the orders of Sarah L. Winchester because, as rumors say, she believed spirits were giving her building instructions. Mrs. Winchester was the wife of rifle manufacturer William Winchester. After her husband and daughter’s deaths, Mrs. Winchester ordered the house to be built because she believed she was cursed by the ghosts of those whose deaths were a result of Winchester rifles, those who would also make her death happen if she did not continuously build a house for them. And trust me, that figure has risen exponentially since then.

What was once an eight-room house turned into a massive 160 room mansion. The construction took place day and night, all week and all year until her death in 1922. Stairs lead to the ceiling and doors lead to nothing. It is said that ghosts, including Sarah herself, haunt the house. Take a public flashlight tour on Halloween to see if you can have your own ghostly experience.

1. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado
Staff who work in the kitchen next to the ballroom after hours say they have heard parties going on when the room was empty. In one guest room people claim to have seen a man standing over the bed then running into the cupboard. It is further claimed that this same apparition is responsible for stealing jewelery, watches and luggage that has gone missing (or it could be that shifty bellhop, Gimpy). Some others reported that they have seen ghosts in their rooms in the middle of the night, just standing in their room then disappearing. Sometimes, people in the lobby can hear the piano playing from the ballroom. When workers check to see whats going on, there would be nobody sitting in front of the piano.

The historic ghost tour points out creepy and ghostly experiences that have taken place at the hotel. Although the tours are open to the public, reservations are required ahead of time. If you stay at the hotel, you may want to sleep with one eye open in case you get an unexpected ghostly visitor. If this all sounds a bit familiar it’s because Stephen King got the idea for The Shining after staying in the almost empty hotel on the night before it closed for an extended period. What’s scarier than Steven King?