From haunted antebellum mansions to abandoned amusement parks built on Native American burial grounds, the southern states of America are home to some of the most haunted places on the continent. Some of the spirits that haunt them are benign; others, not so much.
We’ve gathered together the most spine-chilling locations and ranked them. Click through the gallery to discover which one we believe is the most terrifying… if you dare!
Drish House is a historic plantation house on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa. It was built by Dr John R Drish in 1837 and is said to be haunted by the ghost of his wife Sarah after she died in 1884. The opulent Italianate and Greek-Revival building slowly fell into disrepair, serving as a school, a church-run sanctuary and an auto parts warehouse for a wrecking company. In 2006 it was added to the 'Places in Peril' listing by the Alabama Historical Commission, before it was rescued, renovated and turned into a sophisticated events venue in 2016.
Reports of supernatural events at Drish House first surfaced at the turn of the 20th century. Stories include a fire seen by locals in the third-storey tower, which disappeared on closer inspection, plus a series of sightings of ghostly lights. Legend has it they are set by Sarah, furious that her relatives didn’t use the candles from her husband’s funeral at hers. Today, the lavishly restored Drish House leans into the legend with events like Dinner With The Dead, a spooky dining and ghost hunt experience, held in October.
'The Big Wisky' was one of the largest battleships operated by the US Navy and measures 887 feet (270m) long, more than the length of three football fields. Today it looms large over the Nauticus Museum and downtown Norfolk's Waterside Drive, and is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Visitors take tours of the vast vessel to hear about the battles the ship fought and the brave navy personnel who served on board... and the ghosts who roam the ship once everyone has gone.
Big Wisky’s most famous spook is an electrician who was killed while he was overhauling the air conditioning during the Korean War. A quartermaster who was on board during Operation Desert Storm had the most terrifying encounter with the spectre when it chased him around the harpoon launchers in the form of a 'billowy, white, shadowy thing'. If you fancy an encounter with the ghost, the Nauticus Museum hosts overnight stays on the ship.
When it opened in 1886, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs was dubbed 'the finest hotel west of the Mississippi', and even today the beautifully restored, palatial hotel is regarded as a beacon of hospitality in the beautiful Ozark Mountains. But in the intervening years the hotel picked up its fair share of spectres, especially during the late 1930s, when it served as a cancer clinic for pseudo-doctor and former vaudeville musician Norman Baker. Baker grew immensely rich by peddling 'miracle' cures for cancer, even though, unsurprisingly, many of his patients died.
The first ghost to haunt the hotel was that of a young Irish builder who fell to his death during the building's construction. You’ll find him in Room 218. Another dates from the hotel's time as a girls' college when a young student fell to her death – or was pushed from a top-storey window. Most of the ghosts, however, are former patients and hospital staff, who rattle gurneys through the halls and throw pots and pans around the kitchen. You might meet them on one of the regular ghost tours offered by the hotel.
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This intimidating fortress on Pea Patch Island was used to house Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. After the battles in Gettysburg and Vicksburg the prison population topped 12,000, and the conditions there were called 'a perfect hell on Earth'. The space was designed to house a maximum of 4,000, and around 2,500 prisoners died there during the war, many during smallpox epidemics in 1863 and 1864. It seems their souls are still trapped there, as some paranormal investigators regard it as the most haunted fort in America.
There are so many ghost stories attached to the fortress that local author Ed Okonowicz has been able to write an entire book about them, Civil War Ghosts at Fort Delaware. Fort Delaware State Park runs regular ghost tours in autumn, during which visitors claim to have heard clanking chains and seen a cloaked man carrying a lantern. Locals report seeing men in damp grey uniforms wandering along the coastline – the lost souls, perhaps, of escapees who drowned in the Delaware River’s swift current in their quest for freedom.
The Pink Lady who haunts this stunning hotel, nestled in the foothills of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, is a cheerful reminder that not all spirits are malevolent. This ghostly apparition appears either as a pink mist or an elegant young lady in a ball gown, and seems to take a mischievous delight in switching lights on and off, adjusting thermostats and rearranging things in guest’s rooms.
The Pink Lady has been roving the Omni Grove Park Inn since her untimely demise in the 1920s. She is said to have plunged to her death from a fifth-floor balcony and, while there is speculation as to whether or not her death was an accident, her playful demeanour suggests she doesn’t hold a grudge. Conventional wisdom says booking Room 545 gives you the best chance of an encounter, as she is apparently particularly active there.
The Capitol’s slide into the supernatural began when a clerk named John Lenthall was crushed by a collapsing stone arch during construction. Legend has it that he cursed the building with his dying breath and there have been all kinds of consequences since. The ghost of a Civil War soldier is said to pace the halls at night too.
The Capitol’s most famous spectre is the ghost of President John Quincy Adams (pictured). He can be heard crying "No!", the last word he uttered after suffering a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1848. But the scariest apparition is arguably a demonic cat first spotted by 19th-century night watchmen. The devilish feline grows to the size of a panther before vanishing down the Capitol's dark corridors.
There has been a lighthouse of sorts on the north coast of Anastasia Island since the Spanish built a wooden watchtower there in the 16th century. That tower was destroyed and rebuilt by the British, and then again by the Spanish, before being sabotaged by Confederate sympathisers during the Civil War. On 10 December 1859 the lighthouse keeper, Joseph Andreu, mysteriously plunged to his death. The current lighthouse, which was finished in 1874, stands 165 feet high (50m) and boasts a Fresnel lens hand-made in Paris.
According to a report in the St Augustine Examiner, Andreu was whitewashing the tower when the scaffolding collapsed. To this day, some visitors say they can smell the lingering odour of his cigars, even though it's a non-smoking site. And a shadowy figure wearing a blue jacket and a mariner’s cap has been spotted climbing the spiral staircase. The spectre of Joseph Andreu is not alone. Locals say the young daughters of Hezekiah Pittee – who moved to the island with his family to oversee construction of the new lighthouse – also haunt the site. Two of his daughters and an African-American girl all died in a tragic accident while playing near the lighthouse in 1872.
Locals will tell you those creaks and groans that you hear as you cross Euharlee’s wooden covered bridge are more than just centuries-old planks and beams expanding and contracting in the sun. Ever since the bridge was built in 1886 to replace a previous bridge swept away in a flood, there have been numerous accounts of spectres and hauntings – not least the ghostly apparition of the poor soul who lost his life when the original bridge was washed away.
Drop by the annual Euharlee Covered Bridge Fall Festival and you’ll find no shortage of locals with a ghost story to tell. A local restaurant claims to be visited by the ghost of an early settler who pops across the bridge from a cemetery on the other side. Others talk of the ghost of a young girl, forever swinging from the rafters by her hair after getting it caught there when she passed underneath them in a horse and buggy with her father. The most tragic is of a young Native American girl, hanged on the bridge and condemned never to reach the other side.
As bridges go, the low, concrete Decoursey Bridge in Cambridge, Maryland is fairly nondescript. But around the end of the Civil War it was here, in the Greenbriar Swamp it crosses, that the slave Big Lizz was supposedly decapitated by her Confederate plantation owner. He’d lured her to the swamp to help him bury money to keep it out of the hands of advancing Union soldiers. When her back was turned, he cut off her head with his sword and threw her body into the murky waters, never to be found.
There are several versions of the Big Lizz legend, but most assert that she stood over six feet tall (1.8m) and was sharing information with Union troops behind the back of the plantation owner – leading to her untimely demise. Today her spirit is said to haunt the Decoursey Bridge and on cold, dark nights at midnight you’ll see her holding her head in one hand, beckoning you to follow her to the spot where her master's money is buried. Local folklore says that if you follow her, you will never return.
Fort Reno is a former cavalry post just west of El Reno in central Oklahoma. It began as a temporary camp in July 1874 when the area needed protection from an Indian uprising that eventually led to the Red River War. It has served as a fort, a remount depot and a prisoner of war camp for captured Germans and Italians during World War II, leading to its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also regarded as one of the most haunted places in Oklahoma.
There isn’t one specific ghost that haunts Fort Reno. Rather, visitors have reported a number of strange occurrences: ethereal faces appear in windows, water taps turn on by themselves and mysterious orbs show up in photographs. Paranormal researchers lead monthly ghost tours on the site, reporting on their findings and leading guests to the areas where ghostly activity is strongest, including the cemetery. There is also an annual candlelight tour for the really brave.
Set in Charleston’s charming French Quarter, the Dock Street Theatre actually started out as a hotel. When it was opened in 1809 it was hailed as one of the most beautiful hotels in the South, but it fell into disrepair after the Civil War. In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, it was converted into a theatre, and today serves as the historic theatre of residence for the Charleston Stage Company. It's also the home, it seems, of an unlikely collection of spectres.
The most famous of the phantoms that haunt it is Junius Brutus Booth, the father of John Wilkes Booth – the actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Take in a show and you could well be sharing the stalls with the ghosts of former actors, theatregoers and courtesans. The most reliable attendee is the ghost of Nettie Dickerson, a courtesan who was struck by lightning on a second-floor balcony during the 1800s.
This Tudor Gothic pile in the Waverly Hills neighbourhood of Louisville was built in 1910 as a tuberculosis hospital and later served as a nursing home. In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was absolutely ravaged by 'the White Plague' – the phrase used by locals to mean TB. Such was the fatality rate among patients that a 'Death Tunnel' was built for the burial and disposal of bodies, devised to be out of sight so as not to panic the patients who were still alive.
The horrific conditions took their toll on the staff too. A nurse is said to have hanged herself in Room 502, and her spirit apparently walks the halls and tends to the ghosts of patients in that same room. Today the sanatorium offers historical and paranormal tours, where you can wander the eerie halls and experience the otherworldly chill for yourself. Should you choose to film your visit, don’t be surprised to find floating orbs and unexplained distortions in your footage.
The Myrtles Plantation is a historic home and former antebellum plantation in St Francisville, Louisiana. It was built by General David 'Whiskey Dave' Bradford in 1796 in the Creole cottage style popular at the time, and after his death it was taken over by his wife and later by his son-in-law, Clark Woodruff. Today it is a highly-regarded hotel, famous for its fine service and coterie of paranormal spirits that have led to the property being dubbed one of America’s most haunted houses.
Its hauntings should come as no surprise. The house was built on top of an ancient Tunica Indian burial ground. And the ghost of attorney William Drew Winter haunts the 17th stair of one of the staircases, where he died after being shot by a stranger in 1871. The most famous apparition is Chloe, supposedly a slave at the house who was hanged for killing the children in her care with a poisoned cake. The story is riddled with factual inaccuracies, but this photo purportedly shows her ghostly figure standing between two of the buildings.
Stuckey’s Bridge is a dilapidated truss bridge that crosses the Chunky River about 12 miles (19km) southwest of Meridian in Mississippi. According to local legend, it is haunted by the ghost of 'Old Man Stuckey', a member of the infamous Dalton Gang, who would use his lantern to lure exhausted travellers to his inn in the 1850s, with the promise of a bed and a warm meal. He would then rob and murder his hapless guests and bury them in shallow graves along the riverbank.
The authorities eventually caught up with Old Man Stuckey and he was hanged from the bridge that had just been constructed over the river. There have been numerous sightings since of an old man carrying a lantern along the river's edge, and loud unexplained splashes that locals say is the sound of Stuckey's body hitting the water after his noose was cut. Others report seeing a ghostly apparition of his corpse hanging from the bridge. In 2018, the Travel Channel featured the bridge in its series Most Terrifying Places in America.
The terrifying tale of a witch that tormented a family in the small Tennessee hamlet of Adams totally captivated America in the early 1800s. There are several versions of the legend: some describe a dog with a rabbit’s head roaming the property and a ghostly girl in a green dress swinging from an old oak tree. There's also the witch herself, who would paralyse the parents and scratch and poke the children as they slept. Future president Andrew Jackson was so intrigued he journeyed to Adams to investigate the horrid happenings for himself.
The story goes that the Bell Witch was Kate Batts, a neighbour of the afflicted Bells family, who felt that the patriarch, John, had cheated her out of some land. Today visitors can take a tour of the cave in the company of paranormal investigators, or explore a replica of the Bell family cabin, complete with artefacts from the original cabin like a chimney stone and an iron kettle.
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If you’re a man with tattoos, you might want to give the abandoned ruins of the Yorktown Memorial Hospital in southern Texas a wide berth. This imposing granite and concrete edifice was previously managed by the Felician Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church. The ghosts of the nuns reside on the second floor and are notorious for pushing and scratching men with ink. Meanwhile, in the chapel, a black spectre with red eyes growls whenever someone recites Bible verses.
The hospital closed in 1986 but the building itself was used as a drug clinic until 1992. The current caretaker claims to have seen the ghost of a young man staring out from behind the locked front doors, a bullet wound in his head. A group of paranormal enthusiasts run guided walking tours of the facility, as well as overnight investigations from 8pm to 9am, where guests have reported feelings of oppressive weight, cold spots and unseen things touching them.
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It is hardly surprising that the abandoned Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in West Virginia tops our list of the most haunted places in America’s South. It was built on the site of a bloody skirmish between settler Mitchell Clay and the local Shawnee Native American tribe, which ended with the death of three of Clay’s children killed, as well as several Shawnee warriors. When entrepreneur Conley Snidow built an amusement park on the spot in 1926, locals warned him that he'd built it on cursed ground.
The park shut down in 1967 but not before six people died on its grounds, including a little girl who died on the swings and a boy who drowned in the pond. The ghosts of both are said to roam the site, which lies abandoned and frozen in time. The little girl, in particular, has been spotted in a pink dress near the rusted remains of the swings (pictured). Today, the park runs appointment-only paranormal tours.
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