In case you weren't aware — understandable, given all the Barbie and Oppenheimer dominance — Disney's Haunted Mansion has finally landed in theaters. And that inspired me to ask the foolish mortals of the BuzzFeed Community about the haunted houses (and other places) in their area. Here are their spooky responses:
1. "The Whaley House, in the Old Town area of San Diego. It's one of the oldest structures in Southern California, and it's also been called one of America's most haunted houses. Many people died there in the 1800s, including the family's 18-month-old baby and a daughter who died by suicide when she was 22."
2. "Cheesman Park in Denver, Colorado used to be a large graveyard, but the city decided to develop on the land in 1893. Workers were paid $1.90 for each corpse they could dig up and cram into a small box for relocation. There were large protests when the public found out, so the project was halted. Ten years later, the city simply plowed over the remaining bones. Today, nearby residents often report seeing the ghosts of these souls in their mirrors."
3. "Pennhurst State School and Hospital, aka Pennhurst Asylum, in Pennsylvania. It’s turned into a tourist trap much to the dismay of the people who know the history of the horrific shit that went on there. It's a former institution for people who were mentally or physically disabled. Over 10,000 people lived there over the course of a few decades, and half of them died partially because the living conditions were so bad."
4. "The Buffalo Naval Park in New York is said to be SUPER haunted. One of the ships there was named after the five Sullivan brothers who all died in the same ship in the Battle of Guadalcanal. It’s said that you can hear the footsteps of one of the Sullivans in search of his brothers. A couple stopped to ask an officer for directions, and when they went to find him later in the day, they were told that there were no officers on board. And that’s not even the only ship available to tour. There’s the USS Sullivan, the USS Little Rock, and the USS Croaker (submarine), and all are said to be haunted."
5. "The old Don Jail in Toronto, Canada. It was notorious for mistreating prisoners, and people say that they can feel the presence of an inmate who hung herself there to this day."
6. "The house directly behind mine is a burned out husk without a roof or walls. In 2016, a massive fire engulfed the entire residence, taking the lives of a young mother and her 7-year-old daughter. After their charred belongings were trucked away, what remained of the walls were taken down to discourage squatters. And so for seven years now, this poor house has sat abandoned in this sad, burned-out, empty state. It doesn’t need any ghosts to haunt it. It’s haunting enough on its own."
7. "Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. If you visit, gird your loins. Those crumbling cells seem fraught with the ghosts of the prisoners. Swear to god, it’s chilling. From NPR: 'The prison, which closed in 1971, is considered by several sources to be one of the most haunted places in America.'"
8. "The Lemp Mansion in Benton Park, St. Louis, Missouri. The name Lemp is synonymous with both a beer brewing empire rivaling that of Anheuser-Busch and the ill-fated, tragedy-marked Lemp family who ran said empire. The mansion in particular is said to be haunted by a few members of the family who all died by suicide within its walls."
9. "Where I live, actually in my town, there is a road that has 13 potholes/bumps, and no matter how many times the road is paved over, the 13 bumps come back, and superstition says it's the ghost of 13 witches that were hung around there. Not to mention the stories tell that if you drive down that road at night, after bump 13, a lady will appear in your rear-view."
10. "My house. I live in a home built in the 1890s where children, animals, and probably more have been buried here. The last owner's husband died in the bathroom, and their two children were apparently buried in the backyard. Things get hidden from us and moved around a lot to the point that we know that if we need something, it probably won’t be there until we don’t need it anymore, and it’ll show back up where we left it. Nothing malevolent as you see in the movies has happened. It just feels like they are always there. Watching."
11. "In my town, there’s a church that people say is haunted. I'm still on the fence about if ghosts are real or not, but this church is swaying me in the direction of 'yes.' Apparently, about two hundred years ago, a woman who was about to get married in that church murdered her soon-to-be husband and was then killed by the enraged townspeople. As she died, she said, 'It wasn’t my fault; she told me to do it,' then died before she could elaborate."
12. "We had an old haunted house in the rural area of Louisiana where I grew up. It was called the 'Old Spanish Trail Nursery' since it sat where the Old Spanish Trail used to be. The place was notorious. It appeared in a famous book called Ghosts Along the Bayou and in multiple local news reports, and for years it was vacant. Strange phenomena were reported, like human imprints spontaneously appearing in beds, footsteps walking up the staircase, religious objects thrown from walls, furniture, and other objects moving on their own..."
13. "Oak Ridge, Tennessee has the Alexander Inn, aka the Alexander Guest House. Oak Ridge is where they worked on the atomic bomb during WWII, so Oppenheimer actually stayed in the guest house back then. It's locally considered to be haunted. Disembodied footsteps, blood on the walls, people peeking out the windows of empty rooms, etc. It was abandoned for a long time but is now a senior living facility!"
14. "The Black Cross or Wooden Cross Cemetery in Butler County, Pennsylvania, which is a mass grave of victims from the 1918 influenza pandemic that's notoriously haunted."
15. "The Witch's Wall in Palm Beach Island, Florida. The short version of it is that there was a witch that lived on top of a coral ledge on the island. The witch would snatch kids' souls and put them in the holes in the limestone. She was put in a cage on that same wall. There is another version that says that the witch was put there by her evil son, and if you touch the cage, you release a soul. There's also lore that the cage glows at night if the witch is calling to you. I have absolutely seen that cage glowing, in real life, very late at night. There is no power source there at all. I even went the following day to set myself straight. Never did find out how it would glow."
16. "In Milpitas, California, it's Marsh Road. There's a creek up in the foothills that's supposedly haunted. In 1981, Marcy Conrad was murdered by her boyfriend, and he left her body in the creek. He brought friends up to see her. It was a rite of passage for teens to go up to the creek on Marsh Road and put their car in neutral to see if her ghost will push it. They made a movie about the murder (not the haunting) called River's Edge starring Keanu Reeves. The movie was banned from video stores in Milpitas."
17. "Lehi Hospital in Lehi, Utah was haunted for a long time. When it was running, the crematorium had to cut bodies in half to put in the incinerator."
18. "In Banner Elk, North Carolina, there is a college called Lees-McRae. It's a small college, but it has a nice library and dorm rooms. In one dorm room, though, in the women's part, there is supposedly a ghost named Emily Draughn. She was said to have died of tuberculosis inside Tate Hall, one of the halls of residence."
19. Finally, "There are a couple of stories from Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, but the most famous is the Richmond Vampire. Supposedly, there is a vampire buried in the mausoleum of W. W. Pool. One story is that he was run out of England for being a vampire, but the most common legend comes from the tunnel collapse in the Church Hill neighborhood."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Reminder...if you love haunted houses or are just a ~fan~ of Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, the movie is in theaters now! And you can watch the official trailer here...if you dare:
