For some reason, Great Britain has more than its share of mansions, estates, and old homes that are reported to be haunted.

Leeds Castle is said to be haunted by a dog. He pays no attention to the people who visit the castle, but he’s said to bring bad luck to anyone who spots him. (Image credit: Flickr user Gauis Caecilius)

St. Donat’s Castle is a 12th-century Welsh castle that’s now a boarding school …and they say a ghost panther stalks the corridors. In a parlor, a piano plays itself …even when the lid is closed.

Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire supposedly has a mischievous spirit that loves to fling open doors. Billionaire J. Paul Getty said it once terrified him by barging into the room.

Chatham House is haunted by the ghost of the “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys, the former Chief Justice of England who liked to hand out death sentences. Jeffreys is said to walk around Chatham House in his black judicial robes, carrying a bloody bone.

(East Riddlesden Hall image credit: Flickr user floato)

East Riddlesden Hall in Yorkshire hosts the “Grey Lady.” She reportedly paces up and down the stairs, looking for her lover,  who was sealed in a room by her jealous husband and left there to die.

Dover Castle is said to be haunted by a boy murdered during the Napoleanic Wars. The headless ghost stalks the halls, drumming.

(Raby Castle image credit: Flickr user Mark Loveridge)

Raby Castle near Durham is the home to the “Old Hellcat” -a ghoulish old woman who sits in a chair, knitting. (If you get close enough, you can feel the heat coming off her glowing red knitting needles.)

The Kylesku Hotel in the Scottish Highlands has a ghost who likes to pop his head through a trapdoor in the ceiling. They say he’s friendly -he only does it to startle visitors.

Rufford Old Hall in Lancashire is haunted by a young woman in a wedding dress who, the legend says, waits for the return of her fiance, who was killed in battle. The dining room is also reportedly haunted by Queen Elizabeth I.

(Netley Abbey image credit: Flickr user _moonpie)

Netley Abbey, a semi-demolished medieval nunnery in Hampshire, is haunted by the ghost of Walter Taylor, a builder hired to tear it down. A stone from an arch struck him on the head and killed him. The demolition was never completed, and now Taylor’s spirit wanders around the ruins accompanied by the sound of falling bricks.

Inverawe House, a hotel in Scotland, has “Green Jean.” Instead of trying to scare people, he actually assists the staff, leaving fresh soap and clean towels for the guests.

At Berry Pomeroy Castle, the “White Lady” haunts the dungeon and towers. It’s supposedly the ghost of Lady Margaret Pomeroy, who was imprisoned in the dungeon by her sister for 20 years and starved to death. People who see her report feeling a wave of depression and fear.

And the U.S. has fewer castles, but plenty of places people go to see ghosts.

(Alcatraz image credit: Flicker user Punchup)

Alcatraz, the island prison near San Francisco, is no longer a working penitentiary. It’s a tourist attraction. On the “night tour,” guides say, you can hear the screams of long-dead prisoners, footsteps of jackbooted guards, and the slamming of jail doors that remain motionless before your eyes.

Huntress Hall at Keene State College in New Hampshire is a freshman class dorm. Who else lives there? The college’s benefactress (and the building’s namesake), Harriet Huntress. Her wheelchair is stored in the attic, and students say it can be heard rolling around in the middle of the night.

Belcourt Castle, in Newport, Rhode Island, is famous for its ghosts, the spookiest of which is a spectral monk who appears in front of a lion statue, walks away from it, then disappears. Then he comes back and repeats the whole process over again.

At the Radisson Suite Hotel in Ogden, Utah, a ghost named Mrs. Eccles lives in the elevator. She died on the fifth floor, the story goes, so the elevator always stops there, whether anyone has pressed the button or not. You can’t see Mrs. Eccles, but when she walks past, you can feel her brush against you and you can smell her perfume.

(Image credit: Big Bay Point Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast)

Big Bay Point Lighthouse in Michigan is haunted by the ghost of its first keeper, Will Prior. If you go, he’s the red-haired ghost. They say he’s harmless.

The old high school in Brunswick, Maine, is said to be haunted by a student who died there. She was rehearsing  play on  balcony when she fell to her death. The building is now used for school board meetings …which are sometimes interrupted by slamming doors and flying books.

Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri, is the haunt of former WWF wrestler Owen Hart. During a 1999 match, Hart was being lowered from the ceiling to the ring when the cable holding his harness snapped. He fell to the floor and died instantly. In his wrestling trunks, mask, and harness, Hart has been seen floating near the ceiling.

At the Vanderlip Mansion in Palos Verdes, California, legend says Mrs. Vanderlip killed her entire family (including the dogs) and then committed suicide. At night, the faces of the family stare out the windows. The dogs run around and bark at squirrels in the woods behind the house.

(Lizzie Borden House image credit: Flickr user Stewart Robotham)

The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts, where Borden notoriously murdered her parents with an axe in 1892, is, according to locals, home to a ghost. One of Borden’s parents? No -its the ghost of Lizzie’s cat. The invisible feline is friendly: it likes to rub up against tourists’ legs and sit in their laps.

The Hardee’s in West Union, Iowa, was built on top of a 189th-century cemetery -and ghosts now hang out at the restaurant. Employees find objects moved and hear their names being called when nobody’s there, and the building has icy spots that stay cold year round.

In the desert outside Anthem, Arizona, the ghosts of Native American warriors on horseback have been seen riding at night. And it hey see anybody …they shoot (ghost) arrows at them.

At the Gregory Graveyard in Lancaster, South Carolina, you can hear the children laughing and a minister giving a eulogy over a grave. As you leave the graveyard, you may see a path to the left that wasn’t there when you came in. If you walk down that path, you’ll see several ghostly human figures. On Halloween night, the path is said to glow green.

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This article was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

Hidden in a Chicago suburb is a funeral home with a 9-hole mini golf course in the basement! Fred Abercrombie made a stop in Palatine, Illinois to visit Ahlgrim Acres, a community room hidden underneath Ahlgrim Funeral Home and took quite a few pictures of the infamous golf course with a haunted theme.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by unnecessaryumlaut.

Check out this award winning short film (it’s only 3 minutes long). It’s a nice shoutout to the gothic horror films of the 20s and 30s. Simple but effective.

Plot Synopsis:

A leasing agent prepares an apartment with a mysterious past for an
afternoon viewing. While awaiting the arrival of the prospective client
the leasing agent learns that she’s not alone in the apartment.

– via fightingowlfilms

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Gukbe2000.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride is quite possibly one of the best attractions Disney’s Imagineers have created during the theme park’s history. From the tombstones surrounding the mansion’s decaying exterior to its cobwebbed interior, the whole ride creates a pitch-perfect atmosphere of gothic glee.

This year the attraction celebrates its 40th anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, one of Disney’s favorite artists, Shag, has been commissioned to create original artwork inspired by the ever popular attraction.

>“Represented in the artwork are some of the attraction’s most beloved scenes, including the Stretching Portraits, the Ballroom, the Séance Room, the Attic, Graveyard, among others. This unique collection is a must have for any Shag and Haunted Mansion enthusiast.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

Below are a few of the (allegedly) haunted hospitals I found most intriguing – hopefully you will too.

Fairfield State Hospital (AKA Fairfield Hills)

photo from fairfieldstatehospital.com

Despite their best efforts, the city of Newtown, Connecticut has been unable to squelch Fairfield State Hospital’s eerie reputation. Then again, they have allowed it to be used for several decidedly spooky shoots, including Sleepers and MTV’s Fear.

The asylum has been in Newtown since 1931, but most of its buildings have been standing empty for the past 13 years. At its peak period of operations, it housed almost 4,000 patients.

Fueling the scary stories is the fact that its numerous buildings are all connected by underground tunnels. Were these simply for transporting patients during bad weather, or was it an easier way to dispose of dead bodies?

Glenn Dale Hospital

photo from The Glenn Dale Hospital Mission
Glenn Dale opened in the same era as Fairfield State – the 1930s was a popular time for mental institutes, apparently. Well, actually, Glenn Dale wasn’t originally used for that purpose – it was a tuberculosis hospital with one building for adults and one for children. Eventually the tuberculosis problem died down and Glenn Dale was repurposed. It closed in 1982 due to asbestos and structural problems, but before it closed it was (supposedly) home to the criminally insane. As with Fairfield State, the buildings are connected via underground passageways, which people have been exploring since the day Glenn Dale officially closed its doors.

Exploration might not be the best idea, though, and not just because of the asbestos (although that should be an obvious deterrent). One rumor says that when the hospital closed, the remaining patients were just turned loose. Having nowhere else to go, many of them simply broke back into the abandoned buildings and lurk there even today.

Another story goes that a police officer went to check out the buildings himself after getting a call that the buildings were being vandalized by a bunch of kids. After he went in, someone in the vicinity heard gun shots and called the police. When the police arrived, they found the first officer standing in one of the rooms, staring straight ahead at nothing. He had emptied his gun firing at something that no one ever found.

Norwich State hospital

photo from creepyconnecticut.net

Connecticut is a popular spot for haunted hospitals, I guess, because Norwich State Hospital can be found in Preston and Norwich, Conn. Oh, and guess what else? More underground tunnels. The mental hospital was built in 1904 and had 151 patients the very day it opened. By the 1960s, the hospital reached a record high of 3,186 patients.

Perhaps piggybacking off of the success of MTV’s Fear, VH1 sent contestants of the Celebrity Paranormal Project here but didn’t quite represent the place accurately: they fixed old, coverless couch cushions to the walls in a small room and told the celebrities that it was an old padded cell for the truly disturbed patients when in reality such a room never existed.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium

photo from ConspiracyofHappiness on Flickr

Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, has been called the most haunted place in the U.S. Some reports put the number of deaths that occurred at this tuberculosis hospital at more than 60,000. While I had some problems digging up ghost stories from some of these allegedly haunted sites, stories from the Waverly Hills Sanatorium are plentiful.

When WHS opened in 1926, it was considered the most advanced TB hospital in the world. Still, at the time, not much was known about the disease and how to treat it, so a lot of the treatments were extremely experimental – these patients were more or less guinea pigs. Lots of them exited the hospital via the “body chute”, a tunnel that led from the hospital to railroad tracks that allowed for discreet corpse disposal.

In addition to the dying tuberculosis patients, at least two nurses committed suicide at Waverly. In 1928, the 29-year-old head nurse, pregnant and unwed, hanged herself in the nurses’ station. In 1932, another nurse who worked in the same room leapt off of the balcony to her death several stories down.

Creepy stories include a chef who still walks the kitchens (you can tell he’s present when you smell freshly baked bread), apparitions of a woman with chains around her arms and legs and blood dripping from her wrists, ghostly children wandering about and eerie red glows.

Troy Taylor, a paranormal author, visited Waverly Hills with Louisville Ghost Hunter founder Keith Age and experienced plenty of paranormal activity. In Troy’s own words,

“Keith was standing in the corner, looking at the changes on the meter scale, when an empty plastic soda bottle came seemingly out of nowhere and struck him in the back. As he turned to see what had happened, an overhead fluorescent light fixture suddenly came loose from the ceiling with a loud crack. With one end of it still anchored to the ceiling, the other end swung loose and hit Keith in the side of the head. The long burned-out bulb that remained in the fixture shattered when it collided with Keith and showered him with glass. Before he even had time to react, he heard the sound of a brick scrape across the concrete floor. The noise came from the opposite corner of the room and when he looked over, he saw the brick moving across the floor towards him. With a lurch, it shot directly at him and as he scrambled to get out of the line of fire, it hit him in the small of the back. Needless to say, he quickly retreated from the room. The other investigators had not seen where the brick or the soda bottle had come from, but they had clearly heard the brick move and had seen both objects strike Keith.”

You can read more about Keith and Troy’s experiences at PrairieGhosts.com.

Athens Lunatic Asylum
Giving Waverly a run for the “Most Haunted Abandoned Hospital in the United States” title is the Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens, Ohio. After opening its doors in 1874, many of its first patients were Civil War veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.

What has proved to be one of the most enduring stories from the Asylum occurred more than 100 years after its grand opening, however: on December 1, 1978, a patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared from one of the active wards. They found her body more than a month later in the top floor of ward N. 20, which had been abandoned for years.

The official cause of death was heart failure–probably due to her exposure to the December cold in an unheated section of the hospital. Her death isn’t the weird part, though – what’s weird is that her body left a stain that you can still see today.

photo from forgottenoh.com

One of the reasons ALA makes the Most Haunted Places in the U.S. list is because of its strange location. If you draw a line from each of the five cemeteries around Athens, the shape ends up being a pentagram with Ohio University being right in the middle, which is where ALA is located. I couldn’t actually find a map that backed this theory up, though – does anyone have one?

Like I said, there are a surprisingly large number of abandoned hospitals and asylums scattered across the country. Are there any in your town? Let’s hear your stories!