Boo! Here's the Most Famous Ghost Story in Your State

Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially around Halloween. It's the ideal time to learn about all things spooky—and there's no better place to start than with the ghosts who haunt your very own home state. From tales of infamous hotel ghosts to legends about restless spirits who haunt backroads at night, these are the most prolific ghost stories from every state. Read on… if you dare!

America's industrial boom of the early 1900s required a constant flow of pig iron for the production of steel, and the high demand led to terrible conditions for furnace workers. The Sloss Furnace (that's a photo of the complex, above) in Birmingham, Alabama, was particularly dangerous, with graveyard shift foreman James "Slag" Wormwood forcing workers to take increasingly hazardous risks, resulting in at least 47 deaths. In 1906, the workers had enough, and as legend has it, they pushed Slag into the furnace. However, Slag seems to have gotten the last word—workers reported hearing him shouting "get back to work" and feeling him shoving them from behind.

It takes a lot of persistence to get to the ghost town of Kennecott, Alaska—your options are air travel and a haphazard gravel road. As hard as it is for us to get there though, it seems that spirits have just as hard of a time getting out. Once the site of a massive copper and gold mining operation (that's a photo of one of the buildings, above), Kennecott was abandoned in 1938 when the mines dried up, and it has never been repopulated.

Hikers in the area, which is now part of a national park, have reported seeing vanishing gravestones. In fact, according to the Student Conservation Association, "when state-sponsored construction crews tried to redevelop the area in the 1990s, they were so frequently terrified by phantom visions (including but not limited to tombstones) and the disembodied wails of long lost miners that they eventually had to abandon the project."

Known in English as "The Weeping Woman," La Llorona has a presence in nearly every Latin American culture, and Mexican immigrants have brought these stories with them to Arizona. La Llorona is a sort of banshee, the ghost of a woman who drowned her two children in a river in hopes of getting a wealthy man to marry her (as the story goes, he didn't want children). As such, she usually haunts river banks, and the Gila and San Pedro Rivers are two of her favorite spots in Arizona. "To this day, people still claim to see a woman dressed in all black in an outdated dress. She cries out to the streams looking for her children. It is said that she is cursed to walk the rivers until the bodies are given a proper burial," according to Weird U.S.

About 85 miles south of Little Rock is Gurdon, Arkansas, the site of a mysterious phenomenon that's been around since the 1930s. At night, a mysterious light hovers above the railroad tracks just outside of town. Explanations range from swamp gas in the air to quartz crystals in the rocks, but the most famous theory involves the murder of railroad foreman William McClain. During the Great Depression, jobs were scarce, and McClain's employee Louis McBride wanted more paid hours. In 1931, he killed McClain with a railroad spike by beheading him, and the Gurdon Light is said to be McClain's lantern, which he used to search for his disembodied head.

The Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, California, boasts a number of ghost stories, but the most famous is the one about Kate Morgan. In November of 1892, just before Thanksgiving, Kate, who was described by staff as a beautiful yet melancholy woman, checked in under the pseudonym "Lottie A. Bernard." Five days later, she was found dead on an exterior staircase of a gunshot wound to the head, an apparent suicide. But more than 120 years later, Kate's spirit still haunts the hotel, sometimes shoving products off of gift shop shelves or turning guests' television sets on and off.

Colorado's Stanley Hotel famously served as Stephen King's muse for the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, and the real hotel is every bit as creepy as the fictional one. Room 217, where King himself stayed, is reportedly haunted by former head housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson. A ghost named Paul haunts the concert hall, telling staff and guests to "get out" after 11 p.m. Room 428 is home to a friendly spectral cowboy, and the list goes on and on.

Connecticut's most famous ghost is named Frederick A. Jordan, and in life, he was the head keeper of the Penfield Reef Lighthouse. In 1916, while attempting to row back to shore to visit his family, Jordan drowned after his small boat capsized in a sudden wind. Record keepers have claimed to have seen Jackson's spectral form, and the lighthouse's log book repeatedly flips back to the day he died.

Rudolph Iten, the assistant keeper at the time, tried to save Jordan, but to no avail. He told the Bridgeport Sunday Post in the 1920s, "Some days later on, what was one of the worst nights in the history of Penfield, [when] the waves were dashing over the lantern, I was awakened—I was off duty—by a strange feeling that someone was in my room. Sitting up I distinctly saw a gray, phosphorescent figure emerging from the room formerly occupied by Fred Jordan. It hovered at the top of the stairs, and then disappeared in the darkness below."

Fort Delaware was practically cursed to begin with. Built as a prison to hold Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, the fort was presided over by General Albin Shoepf, more commonly called "General Terror." He's said to have thrown rats into crowds of inmates just to watch the prisoners fight over who got to eat the rodents. Nearly 2,700 soldiers perished in the horrendous conditions, and their ghosts still haunt the fort's halls and tunnels.

Just two weeks before the first manned mission to the moon was set to launch from central Florida's Kennedy Space Center in 1967, the Apollo I capsule caught fire on the launch pad of Complex-34, killing the three astronauts inside: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. NASA closed down that complex soon after, and today, only the launch platform still stands, but visitors and employees alike say that the location is not entirely abandoned. Some have heard the screams of the dying astronauts, and others have simply felt an overwhelming sense of dread and fear.

With its storied history and eerie hanging moss, Savannah, Georgia, seems to feature more haunted hotels and restaurants than almost anywhere else in the country. Perhaps the most notorious is the current site of the Moon River Brewing Company and restaurant, formerly the City Hotel. The hotel was used as a makeshift hospital during the city's yellow fever outbreaks, and the children who died there still run and play through the halls in the upper floors today. The basement is home to a ghost nicknamed Toby, who has been known to move bottles around and play tricks on employees.

Native Hawaiians consider much of the islands to be holy ground, and some of it is still used quite regularly by their ancestors' spirits. Places like Ka'ena Point and Kalama Valley are grounds for the huaka'i po, or Night Marchers—the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors traveling in formation. People who have encountered the Night Marchers see lit torches and footprints and hear chanting and the blowing of a conch shell. "Whatever you decide to do, don't look at them!" Honolulu magazine warns.

Fifteen miles north of Shoshone, Idaho, you'll find the famous ice caves, a series of hollow lava tubes buried deep beneath the ground. Even in summer, the temperature in the caves remains freezing. According to legends, Edahow, a Shoshone princess, was buried in the caves, and her spirit remains there. Tour guides swear they hear footsteps and hushed voices throughout the cavernous tubes.

There's an entire genre of ghost stories centering on the "vanishing hitchhiker," but Justice, Illinois, might be home to the original. According to Chicago Reader, one night in the 1950s, a man named Vince ended up at the Oh Henry Ballroom, where he met and danced with a woman named Mary, whose hands were as cold as ice. At the end of the evening, he offered to take her home, and she gave him directions to what turned out to be Resurrection Cemetery, where she got out of the car… and disappeared. Vince later found out that the real Mary had died four years earlier on her way to the same dance hall.

Alice Mabel Gray was a woman ahead of her time. Born in 1881, she obtained degrees from both the University of Chicago and the University of Gottingen in Germany, but employers refused to hire a woman for the jobs she sought. Disillusioned, she chose to live as a hermit in the Ogden Dunes by Lake Michigan, and she became something of a legendary figure for her unconventional way of life, which included a habit of skinny-dipping. Tragically, she eventually married a man who may have killed her. Now, residents sometimes see the ghost of a naked woman running into the waters of Lake Michigan.

The details are fuzzy, but legend has it that there was a horrific train crash around 1920 near Charles City, Iowa. The train cars at the time will still largely made of wood, which meant that if they caught fire with passengers inside, escape was nearly impossible. Sure enough, a train car full of orphans perished in the blaze, and their ghosts are said to haunt the woods near Iron Hill. Visitors report hearing the sound of children playing, and if the wind is just right, they can catch the scent of burning wood.

The famous Pony Express, which ran mail 2,000 miles from St. Louis to Sacramento, only operated for 18 short months, but it looms large in American history. The largest stop along this route was Hollenberg Station in Hanover, Kansas. Between the rough terrain and the severe weather, riding for the Pony Express was a dangerous job, so much so that the ads for the post contained the phrase "Orphans preferred." Hollenberg is now the only station standing on its original location, and visitors swear they can hear the pounding of hooves and the shouts from the men and horses who gave their lives to deliver the mail.

Opened in 1910 to house tuberculosis patients, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville was home to decades of human suffering. Some of the tuberculosis treatments were downright cruel, and the building contains a chute where corpses of deceased patients could be disposed of. All kinds of supernatural phenomena have been reported from the grounds of Waverly Hills, including the smell of baking bread, footsteps, and moving shadows.

If you like ghost stories, New Orleans is the place for you—there's a haunting on every corner of the French Quarter. However, for sheer number of ghosts, you can't beat the city's oldest graveyard, St. Louis Cemetery #1. Although it covers just one square block, it's packed with above-ground tombs and vaults, some crumbling and marked with indecipherable symbols. Both Marie Laveau, the famed Voodoo priestess, and Madame LaLaurie, a torturer of slaves, are buried here. Laveau in particular appears here and throughout the French Quarter with some regularity, usually wearing colorful clothes and a red and white turban.

Bucksport, Maine, is named for its founder, Colonel Jonathan Buck. His tomb, a large granite monolith, bears a very unusual stain in the unmistakable shape of a foot… or, some say, a witch's boot. According to legend, Buck sentenced a woman to die for the crime of witchcraft, and just before she was hanged, she cursed him—and later his grave—to always bear the mark of her death. There are variations on the tale, one of which claims the innocent woman was pregnant with his child out of wedlock and a sentence of witchcraft provided an easy out for Buck. Regardless, the woman's ghost continues to haunt his grave.

Although renowned horror writer Edgar Allan Poe lived in many places along the east coast during his short life, he's most closely associated with Baltimore. He's buried there, in the catacombs of Westminster Hall, and perhaps as a result of his mysterious death at the age of 40, his ghost is said to appear in various places all over the city. His former house, now a museum dedicated to his legacy, and the hospital where he died are said to be particular favorites of his.

In 1755, a 4-year-old girl named Lucy Keyes went missing from her family's home on the eastern side of Mount Wachusett, and search parties had no luck finding her. It's possible that she was murdered by a neighbor, who then hid her body, but it's more likely that she was adopted by a local Native American tribe. Either way, her parents were distraught, driving the family into poverty to keep funding the search for their daughter. On some nights, you can hear Martha Keyes crying out for her daughter and see child-sized footprints in the snow.

Lumber baron David Whitney, Jr., built himself an opulent mansion in the 1890s in Detroit (that's a photo of it, above). The unmistakable pink jasper exterior even contained the first elevator for personal use in the state. After Whitney's death, the building was briefly used as a hospice for patients with tuberculosis. Since the mansion was renovated in the 1980s, there have been sightings of Whitney's ghost throughout the house, but particularly on the elevator. The home is now a restaurant, and staff members report sounds of plates and utensils stacking on their own.

On the south shore of the Mississippi River where it crosses through St. Paul, the water has dug out a series of limestone caves. Over the years, these caves have served dozens of purposes—silica was mined from the caves, mushrooms were grown there, and mobsters hid from the law. It was even the site of a notorious speakeasy in the 1920s. Because of the caves' association with shady dealings, particularly the deaths of three men who were gunned down there in the 1930s, they have a reputation for being haunted. The caves are now a popular event venue called the Wabasha Street Caves, and visitors report a number of eerie happenings in these catacombs.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

Predating the foundation of the United States itself, King's Tavern in Natchez, Mississippi, still looks like something out of the 1700s. As a stop along a trading path, the tavern hosted merchants and boatmen, who in turn drew outlaws looking to rob these travelers, and so the inn saw a substantial amount of violence. When the owners attempted to renovate the place in the 1930s, they found three mummified bodies, one of which is believed to belong to a young female server who was murdered in the tavern. Her spirit still causes mischief for staff and visitors alike.

When it comes to hauntings, deaths by suicide are particularly potent stimuli for ghost stories. It's no surprise, then, that the mansion owned by the tragically-fated Lemp family of St. Louis, Missouri, would be overrun with ghosts. The family moved into the home in 1878, and between 1901 and 1949, four Lemp family members took their own lives within its walls. Now a restaurant and inn, the Lemp Mansion is one of the most haunted buildings in Missouri, and the Lemp family members seem just as troubled in death as they were in life.

During Prohibition, places that stored moonshine needed a front to explain why potential customers were lined up outside. At Reeder's Alley in Helena, Montana, the explanation was canaries. Resident Laura Duchesnay loved birds and kept canaries in her home—if anyone was stopping by for illegal liquor, they could simply say they were there to buy a bird. Prohibition ended, and when Duchesnay passed away, her husband brought her body home so the birds could say goodbye. The old house is now a restaurant, and staff often hear unexplained sounds, including the chirping and fluttering of canaries.

The Speakeasy restaurant in Sacramento, Nebraska, is one of the best places to get a steak in the whole state. It's also the site of a ghoulish haunting. Before it was a restaurant, the building housed a general store owned by a man named Fred, who cheated on his wife. His wife found out and was so angry that she murdered Fred and cut off his face. She disposed of the body in the well out front of the general store, and now Fred's ghost wanders the area. If you see a ghostly figure in a flannel shirt and overalls, don't wait until he turns around.

The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada, is sometimes called "the Jewel of the Desert." The five-story historic building was once the social hub of the mining town. An unnamed sex worker used to rent a suite of rooms on the fifth floor. Tragically, she was stabbed to death in the hallway outside her suite, and her spirit—known as the Lady in Red—can sometimes be seen wandering the hallway or in room 502.

Once the home and law office of Amos J. Blake, the Blake House Museum in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, is home to no fewer than 12 ghosts. Full of decorations and furnishings dating back to 1837, the Blake House contains rooms full of antique toys and medical equipment that'll creep out even the most skeptical visitor. The caretaker reports seeing objects move around by themselves, and paranormal investigators have recorded disembodied voices. There's even supposedly a ghost cat!

Many roads have a "dead man's curve," a turn so dangerous that many drivers wind up in accidents. The dead man's curve on Clinton Road, located in West Milford, New Jersey, is in such a desolate area that even the ghosts seem to be lonely. At a bridge just past the curve resides the ghost of a young boy; if you toss any coins down in the river, he'll toss them right back up to you. Some say that if you look in the river as you toss the coin, you'll see his face.

Although a national monument is all that's left today, Fort Union in Mora County, New Mexico, was a bustling outpost between 1851 and 1891. During that time, it's said that a young army lieutenant fell in love with a woman who promised that if he should die in battle, she'd never marry another. However, when the lieutenant went out to battle and didn't return, she only grieved for a short while before taking up with another man. On the day of her wedding, the door to the reception hall flew open, and, as the story goes, there stood the rotting body of the dead lieutenant. Without a word, he took the shocked bride from the arms of her new husband and waltzed her around the dance floor.

Fort Niagara, located north of Buffalo, New York, is most famous for undergoing a 19-day siege during the French and Indian War. The French eventually lost the fort to the British, but during the fighting, two French soldiers are said to have taken the opportunity to settle a personal score. Jean-Claude de Rochefort and Henri Le Clerc had fallen in love with the same woman and fought for her hand in marriage. Rochefort won the duel, beheading LeClerc and throwing his body down a well. Now, LeClerc's headless ghost can sometimes be seen emerging from that well, searching the grounds of the fort for his lost head.

In the middle of the woods in Chatham County, there's a circle about 40 feet in diameter. More than just a clearing of trees, nothing will grow in the ground here, and anything that's planted within the circle will die. Supposedly, dogs refuse to enter the circle and become anxious when brought nearby. Old Scots-Irish immigrants called this place the Devil's Tramping Ground and claimed the devil came up every night to pace its boundaries. Others say it was the spot of a Native American massacre where blood soaked the ground so thoroughly that nothing would grow there again. Regardless, it's not somewhere you want to be caught after dark.

There are plenty of places to get lost in North Dakota, but if you find yourself turning off of County Road 9 into Tetrault Woods, you might want to turn back. The road keeps getting narrower and narrower until cars can no longer fit. When you come to the run-down bridge, you'll feel overwhelming emotions of dread and sadness, and you just might see the White Lady who haunts the bridge. Legend has it she's either a young woman forced by her religious parents to marry a man she didn't love, or she's a teenager killed by a traveling salesman whom she refused to marry. Either way, everyone in the area knows that White Lady Lane is home to a restless female spirit looking for true love.

Punderson Manor in Newbury, Ohio, is home to some incredibly eerie ghosts. A teenage girl who drowned in the nearby lake was spotted on the shore a year later. Night watchmen report doors opening and closing on their own. And most chillingly, some employees in 1979 witnessed the apparition of a lumberjack's body hanging from a rope from the dining room rafters. The specter stuck around for three hours before fading away.

There are few true orphanages around today, and the abuses of the past make it clear why we've developed alternatives. The former Children's Home in Guthrie, Oklahoma, still bears the scars of its seedy past: the strict headmistress who beat four boys to death for misbehaving, the employee who hanged himself in the bell tower, and the many children who died of disease or accidents. However, multiple visitors have heard children's cries or footsteps and seen ghostly faces in the windows.

In the 1860s, Portland wasn't the only city that had trouble with "shanghaiing"—an issue where criminals would kidnap drunk or drugged men and force them into labor on ships—but it's notable for having an entire network of underground tunnels dedicated to the process. Today, these Shanghai Tunnels are supposedly the most haunted place in the city, full of the ghosts of unwilling sailors of the past.

When it opened its doors in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was supposed to revolutionize the purpose of prisons, allowing inmates plenty of time for quiet reflection to cure them of their lawbreaking ways. In practice, however, the combination of isolation and constant surveillance drove many prisoners mad. Today, Cell Block 12 is said to be the most haunted spot, though visitors to the guard tower have also seen the apparition of a former guard. Most famously, inmate Al Capone claimed to have been haunted by his victim James Clark while under lock and key at Eastern State. Today, you can book your own time slot for a paranormal investigation of the prison.

On the banks of the Ponagansett River near Foster, Rhode Island, stand the ruins of an old wool mill that dates back to 1799. However, the trouble began in 1822 when the mill's night watchman, Peleg Walker, got into a disagreement with the owners of the Ramtail Mill. Walker famously warned them that they'd have to "take the key from a dead man's pocket" to open the mill. Sure enough, Walker was found hanging from the mill's belfry the next morning. From then on, the sound of bells would emanate from the tower each night, even after the owners removed the actual bells. Ramtail Mill was declared "haunted" on Rhode Island's 1885 state census, and visitors declare that to this day you can still hear the bells at midnight.

A section of Old Buncombe Road through the Sumter National Forest is said to be haunted by the spirit of a large white dog. The story goes that the dog belonged to a traveling salesman who met his demise in Goshen. The townspeople mistakenly blamed the man for a series of petty crimes and hanged him from a tree. The faithful dog stayed with the body for days, howling and howling, until he, too, was put to death. Now, the spirit of a dog with burning red eyes stalks up and down the road, seeking revenge for his master.

The HBO show Deadwood introduced America to the real-life historical figure of Seth Bullock, the first sheriff of Deadwood, South Dakota. In addition to being a lawman, Bullock built and operated a hotel in his own name, and though he died in 1919, some say he still watches over his business from the grave. Staff and guests have seen his tall, ghostly figure on the second and third floors. He seems especially active when employees are standing idle, always wanting to make sure that staff members are working hard to keep his hotel in business.

A dispute over land in Adams, Tennessee, in the early 1800s led a woman named Kate Batts to put a curse on her neighbor, John Bell. She promised to haunt Bell and his descendants, and John's daughter Betsy reported years of torment from an unseen spirit. Although the Bell family's cabin was torn down in the mid-1800s, visitors say the spirit of the Bell Witch still haunts the cave on the family's property. A local filmmaker's attempt to make a movie of the story was hindered by a number of strange accidents and fires, and dozens of visitors to the property report strange occurrences in the cave.

The press called it the "Kiss and Kill Murder"—in 1960, high schooler Mack Herring shot his ex-girlfriend and classmate, aspiring actress Betty Williams. Nothing about the case was straightforward: Betty was from the wrong side of the tracks and had written a note asking Mack to kill her. Mack was the star football player, perceived by his hometown of Odessa as the true victim. Ever since, students of Odessa High School have seen and heard strange things in the auditorium where Betty performed.

Jean Baptiste came to the U.S. from Australia in 1855 and made it to Utah in 1859, where he found work as a gravedigger. Three short years later, a police officer accused him of robbing the graves he dug. Boxes of burial clothes were found in his home, and Baptiste was exiled to a small island in the Great Salt Lake as punishment. The last documented evidence that Baptiste was on the island was found six weeks after he was sent there, but after that, he simply disappeared, though human remains found in 1893 were thought to be his at the time. Legend says he now stalks the southern shores of the Great Salt Lake at night.

Evoking the story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, the Gold Brook Covered Bridge in Stowe, Vermont, is better known as Emily's Bridge. There are many different versions of who Emily is and how she died, but the most popular is the tale of a heartbroken woman from the 1800s who, abandoned by her lover, hanged herself from the rafters of the bridge. In truth, a local woman named Barbara Barawand claims to have made up the story in the 1970s. Nevertheless, there are records of a little girl falling off the bridge to her death in 1920—"Emily" may be fake, but the haunting seems real.

Built on the site of many casualties of Native American conflicts and the Civil War, St. Albans originally opened its doors in 1892 as a boys' school. However, the students quickly gained a reputation for violence, so the school was shut down in 1910. In 1916, a psychiatric hospital opened on the site, where brutal treatment regimens and a lack of staff turned the sanatorium into a nightmare. Dozens of locations within the hospital—which now serves as its own attraction on Halloween—are hotbeds of paranormal activity. There's even a room where you can exchange whistles with a ghost!

According to Pete Orbea, paranormal investigator and communications director of Port Gamble, there are only 85 living residents in Port Gamble today, but spirits of the dead haunt everything from the town's museum to its only set of guesthouses. The epicenter of the hauntings is the Walker-Ames House, an abandoned Victorian mansion where Orbea leads ghost hunting tours once a month. Supposedly, ghostly faces peer out of windows, furniture tips over for no reason, and guests experience extreme sick feelings when the ghosts are around.

Fewer settings are creepier than an abandoned amusement park, and at the ruins of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in West Virginia, you'll find much more than broken down rides. The land the park sits on already had a bloody history, thanks to conflict between Native Americans and European settlers in the late 1700s. The amusement park itself opened in the 1920s, and it's said that six deaths occurred there over the years. The last straw was the death of a little girl, who was riding on the circling swing set when a truck backed into it. The park was shut down in 1966, but visitors to the ruins have reported seeing her ghost.

If you take Highway 66 through Stevens Point, Wisconsin, locals say you may encounter the apparition of a woman in a bloody wedding dress haunting a bridge that connects the two sides of the highway. She's said to be the spirit of a woman who died in a car accident on the way to her wedding in the 1950s or 1960s, and it's not just the bridge she haunts. If you drive over the bridge at night, you may look in your rearview and see the bride sitting in the backseat of your car!

Fort Laramie, now a U.S. National Park and historic site on the eastern side of Wyoming, began in the 1830s as a fur trading post. Legend has it that the manager of this post brought his daughter with him. Although he forbade her from riding out on the plains, one day, she stole a horse and left the post, never to return. Decades later, in 1871, a young lieutenant said he saw a woman in a long green dress galloping toward him on a horse. The lieutenant chased after her, but she vanished. Supposedly, every seven years, this Lady in Green rides the plains around Fort Laramie. Even some National Park employees claim to have seen her. And if you want to know more interesting facts, check out the 50 Crazy Interesting Facts We'd Bet You Never Knew.

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