Real Haunts

Stull Cemetery lies in the most unincorporated area of Douglas County, Kansas. This bleak, and semi-isolated cemetery appears on the surface to be nothing more than a rural and eternal resting place for northeastern Kansas folk. However, what is it about this cemetery that was rumored to cause His Holiness Pope John Paul II to actually give Vatican pilots instructions to fly around it when he visited the United States in 1993? Is the Stull Cemetery in Kansas Haunted? In 1857, the tiny area of Stull was just beginning to surface on maps. Read more…

The Midwestern United States has a long history of bizarre killing sprees, with the most infamous being the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas. The murder was aptly documented by author Truman Capote in his book In Cold Blood. Years before the 1959 slaying was another, one that had double the body count and was so gruesome that it knocked the sinking of the Titanic off the front-page headlines. Murder comes to Villisca, Iowa Villisca, Iowa in 1912 was home to a quiet and small corn farming community. Read more…

Zac Bagans’ The Haunted Museum Las Vegas is a desert oasis that’s capable of quenching the most distinguishing of thirsts. The constant gleam of neon lights, ringing slot machines, and Vegas nightlife draws millions of visitors to the Silver State every year. Located less than one mile off the famed Las Vegas strip on the side street of East Charleston Boulevard is the Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum. It caters to a different crowd, featuring artifacts and stories of paranormal history. The museum is downright frightening and wholly exciting. Read more…

It is certainly understandable that some bed and breakfast establishments prefer to downplay any association with ghostly hauntings taking place on their property as it serves as a reminder of a sometimes violent past. However, for the Chapman Inn of Bethel, Maine they not only embrace the fact that their place is haunted but take things another step further by openly saying they are “officially haunted”. The Haunted Chapman Inn William Chapman built the home somewhere near the turn of the 20th Century. Read more…

Easily one of the most recognizable images anywhere, located in Griffith Park the Hollywood Sign is a beacon for those yearning to be a part of the entertainment industry. Perhaps nobody yearned more for celebrity than aspiring Golden Age stage actress Peg Entwistle. Is the Hollywood Sign Haunted? Originally from Wales, Peg Entwistle turned her sights on Hollywood to catch her big break in show-business. Having made a previous stopover in New York City on Broadway, Entwistle traveled to the Los Angeles area and was making a huge name for herself as a talented stage actress in the area. Read more…

People looking to embark on careers as famous comedians naturally gravitate towards Los Angeles. Landing a gig at the Comedy Store, a landmark comedy club, is just about the best audition one can land to get that big break. So why exactly would a place that has such comedic reputation be haunted? Is the Comedy Store in Los Angeles Haunted? Prior to being established as the Comedy Store, the building was a famous Sunset Strip club and restaurant called Ciro’s. All of Hollywood royalty and some reputed gangsters frequented the club from 1940 to 1972. Read more…

Council Bluffs, Iowa is one of the more unsuspecting locations for paranormal activity. The rather small and simple city is situated on the Missouri River directly across from the Nebraskan city of Omaha. Home of Pottawattamie County, the area was named after the heavy presence of a contingent of Native Americans in the area. However, another heavy ghostly presence still remains in Council Bluffs at the old Pottawattamie County Jail, within an area of cells known as, “the squirrel’s cage”. Read more…

Prison escapes are one of the rarest events to occur inside correctional institutions across the world. But what if there was a way to ultimately prevent escapes? It should come as no surprise that in 1934, a maximum-security federal prison called Alcatraz was opened on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. To authorities then, if inmates escaped, the raging waters would drown them. If the thrashing waves didn’t kill them, then the sharks surely would. Decades after closing, Alcatraz remains one of the top haunted prisons in all of North America. Read more…

Missouri was made an official state in 1821, and by 1836 a fully functioning and surprisingly large stone penitentiary dubbed the Missouri State Penitentiary was dolefully open for business. 183 years later, the remains of the prison are more haunted than ever before. In fact, Time Magazine once referred to the prison as, “the bloodiest 47 acres in America.” Is the Missouri State Penitentiary Haunted? Governor John Miller was the fourth governor in Missouri’s new state history, and he was responsible for helping establish Jefferson City as the state’s capitol. Read more…

Gold was first discovered in the Wyoming Territory in 1842 right near the Sweetwater River. Legend has it that the man who first discovered it was so envied for his find that he was murdered before he could even make it home with his new treasure. For the next three decades, the area boomed with ruthless and violent prospectors who would stop at nothing to strike it rich. With so much crime in the High Plains, it was only a matter of time before justice would have to step in and be meted out. Read more…

Castellated with turrets and battlements, the imposing Gothic-styled West Virginia Penitentiary looked every bit as intimidating on the outside as it was violent on the inside. Prison breaks, riots, and scores of executions on inmates for a prison constructed to hold 480 people before swelling to over 2,000 in the decades to follow. Even the object of a Supreme Court case in 1986, the prison was eventually decommissioned and inmates transferred elsewhere. Read more…

The very idea of a ghost town brings to mind the visual of an abandoned Western town, all boarded up and desolate. Thrust into solitary locations with no signs of life whatsoever, they are among the most chilling of memorials to life that once was. But what about cemeteries connected to ghost towns? Bodie, California is the site of one such lasting cemetery ghost town. This former gold mining town is tucked away within Bodie State Historic Park, just outside the Bodie Hills on the Nevada state border. Read more…

It goes without saying that cemeteries and graveyards are the final physical resting spots for a loved one’s remains. Dignity, proper decorum, and an overall sedated sort of existence, these cemeteries and graveyards are not the places for noisy human behavior. As it so happens in Troy, New York, at the Forest Park Cemetery, the quiet surroundings there have been unduly violated by the ghosts who long haunt this hallowed and sacred ground. The stretch of land that makes up the cemetery is believed to have been used as a graveyard all the way far back as 1856. Read more…

Over the decade’s many hotels have both risen and fallen among all the countless stories of Sin City. However, one popular hotel mainstay seems to have a supernatural side that is starting to emerge, and for some, these ghost stories are rather intense. In the thick of them is the immediately recognizable and towering Luxor Hotel and Casino. The Luxor is one of the newer hotels on the Strip, as it was constructed and opened in 1993, with a staggering cost of $375 million dollars. Read more…

Southwestern Montana is not nearly as busy as it once was in the late 1800s. With the railroad, and gold rushes galore, the area was highly traveled by industrial workers, prospectors, businessmen, and even dangerous outlaws. Read more…