25 reportedly haunted places across America

Built in 1908 as the American Seamen's Friend Society Institute building, The Jane Hotel on Manhattan's far west side has one huge claim to fame that contributes to its haunted reputation: It's where surviving crew members from the Titanic shipwreck stayed in 1912 after the RMS Carpathia dropped them off at Cunard's nearby Pier 54.

Haunted Rooms America considers it one of the six most haunted hotels in New York City, while the New York Post called it "the city's spookiest destination for Halloween" based on legends of the ghosts that roam its halls. Hotelier Jeff Klein bought the property in 2022 with plans for a private club, but guests can still book an overnight stay in one of the hotel's ship-like "cabin" rooms and look for ghostly figures loitering in the long hallways or in one of the communal bathrooms.

You don't have to look very hard to find hauntings (or ghost tours) in Virginia City's nationally recognized historic district along C Street. But one of the most famous haunted destinations in the former silver mining town is the Washoe Club Museum & Saloon, a historic saloon formerly known as the Old Washoe Club.

Today, a tour guide can take you through the spirited stories of the 1862 historic building and its "haunted hotspots," where you might see the apparition of a woman in a Victorian blue dress in a window or a former "lady of the night" named Lena (who reportedly worked at an upstairs brothel) near one particular stairwell. Guests, including paranormal investigators, have reported feeling like they were grabbed or even scratched and witnessing a door seemingly slamming shut on its own.

It's possible that the two-story, eight-room farmhouse that Sarah Winchester purchased in San Jose in 1886 was already occupied by ghosts when she moved in. Some speculate that Sarah herself was haunted by the ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles (manufactured by Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the company founded by her father-in-law, Oliver Winchester) and that she kept adding onto the home because of instructions she received from spirits.

Legend has it her design plans included a séance room, but whether spirits were actually summoned is a mystery today. However, celebrity medium James Van Praagh claims to have communed with Sarah's spirit within its walls. And according to the estate, even the magician Harry Houdini, a famed skeptic, couldn't completely debunk her home's possible ties to the supernatural, nicknaming it the "Mystery House" when he visited in 1924.

Visitors can decide for themselves by taking a tour of the estate, which has been open as an attraction since the 1930s.

The RMS Queen Mary took its maiden voyage in 1936 and was decommissioned in 1967. When it was commandeered for military service during World War II, it was painted a regulation gray and nicknamed the "Grey Ghost." It's now a floating hotel that's permanently moored in Long Beach, California, and much of its streamlined, Art Deco-style interiors have been preserved for modern-day guests to enjoy.

Some ghosts might be left over from its heyday too, as visitors have reported spotting mysterious figures in The Mauretania Room (a former first-class lounge), the first-class swimming pool (apparently occupied by a small child's spirit), the boiler room, and the engine room. The most famous hotspot is hatch door #13, where a crew member was crushed to death and now reportedly haunts the scene of the accident.

Visitors can view all of these sites on the ship's daytime Haunted Encounters tour. Additional evening paranormal tours are also available, and the "Dark Harbor" haunted attraction, which the ship first hosted for Halloween in 2009, returns for the 2026 season.

For a "spirited" stay during the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival (or any time of year visiting the Kentucky Bourbon Trail), The Old Talbott Tavern in Bardstown, Kentucky, offers the setting of an 18th-century inn, guest rooms named after the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Jesse James, and plenty of ghost encounters.

From flickering chandeliers to pianos playing on their own and the "lady in white," travelers have reported unexplained events and sightings, even when they haven't bellied up to the bar before retiring to their quarters.

You might expect Sin City to be littered with the ghosts of bygone mobsters, big winners (and losers), or even since-passed performers. But one particular hotbed of activity in Vegas isn't a storied casino or hotel. It's not even on the Strip. It's Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum, located in a reportedly active mansion from 1938 in Downtown Las Vegas.

Bagans is the paranormal investigator host of "Ghost Adventures" and a collector of supposedly haunted items like the Dybbuk Box, a wooden wine cabinet said to hold a dybbuk (a restless spirit of the dead, according to Jewish folklore), though the man who first sold it later admitted he invented its backstory. The TV host also brought Peggy the Doll into the museum, and as featured on his TV series "The Haunted Museum," those who look her in the eyes reportedly risk migraines, nausea, or even heart attacks. No wonder Bagans has all his visitors sign a waiver upon entry.

Considered one of Condé Nast Traveler's "Most Haunted Places in America," Eastern State Penitentiary is a foreboding fortress just north of Philadelphia's Center City neighborhood. It opened in 1829 as a model for solitary confinement, but overcrowding eventually packed prisoners into the cells along its long hallways, and it remained in use until its closure in 1971.

On a guided tour of the prison during the day, you can walk along the former Death Row and even see where Al Capone was once an inmate. It's a macabre setting, where many of the imprisoned suffered through torture, leading to later criminal justice reform. It's also given rise to plenty of ghost stories.

Although it's a historic site by day, Eastern State capitalizes on this horrific history by hosting a nighttime Halloween festival, which includes "haunted" mazes and the opportunity to upgrade to a flashlight tour of the property.

Waverly Hills was a tuberculosis sanatorium built in 1910 in the Tudor Gothic architectural style. Its creepy exterior offers just a hint at the horrors that occurred inside, where thousands of patients succumbed to the disease until an antibiotic treatment emerged in the 1940s.

As unforgiving as the "White Plague" was in Louisville, Kentucky, the pre-drug therapies were reportedly no picnic either. Even worse, evidence of patient abuse while it was operating as Woodhaven Geriatric Center contributed to its closure in 1982. Not surprisingly, ghost stories and paranormal sightings abound, including those of former residents and staff who still seemingly roam the hallways.

Owners Charlie and Tina Mattingly purchased the property in 2001 and opened it up for daytime historical tours as well as paranormal tours. Those tours promote the orbs and spirits that visitors often spot, particularly in the body chute, where the dead were disposed of. An annual haunted house event takes place around Halloween as well.

The city of Tombstone, Arizona, may be best known to historians as the site of the O.K. Corral gunfight between Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clanton-McLaury Gang in the days of the Old West (famously depicted by Hollywood in the films "Tombstone" and "Wyatt Earp"). But it's the nearby Bird Cage Theatre that has the most ghostly reputation in town.

Legend has it that 26 people died inside, and the spirits of gamblers and gunslingers supposedly linger around the site, including the victim of one particularly gruesome stabbing. While the former saloon and gambling hall is open to visitors during the day, ghost tours are also conducted nightly, starting with family-friendly ones early in the evening and becoming more intense for older audiences later on.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, has been the subject of numerous televised paranormal investigations, including on such shows as "Ghost Adventures," "Paranormal Lockdown," "Destination Fear," and "Portals to Hell."

This former psychiatric hospital, which admitted its first patients in 1864 during the Civil War, suffered overcrowding, violence among patients, and even staff deaths. Treatments now considered inhumane included lobotomies and solitary confinement, and paranormal investigators have claimed that some unhappy souls have remained trapped in the facility.

The hospital had been renamed Weston State Hospital in 1913, and it closed in 1994. When it reopened for heritage tours in 2008, it returned to its historical "lunatic asylum" name. Some of these tours take visitors through Ward F, for the most "deviant" of patients, and the Forensics Building. Paranormal tours include ghost hunts, flashlight tours, and even overnights.

Ranked by Upgraded Points in 2023 as the #4 best city in the U.S. to be a ghost, the central New York city of Syracuse has a population with an above-average interest in ghosts. Is that because its citizens simply love looking for ghosts, or because there are actually more ghosts to be found there?

One of the most popular "haunted" hotspots near Salt City is located in the town of Onondaga's Onondaga Hill area: a mile-long stretch of the winding Cedarvale Road, known as "13 Curves." Legend has it that a newlywed couple faced tragedy there, and in one version of the story, the bride survived and is forever in search of her lost husband. A Legends & Lore marker from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation and the New York Folklore Society marks the spot of the sightings.

The Victorian-era family home of the Tredwells has been preserved in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan as the Merchant's House Museum, the only such remaining residence of its kind on the island borough.

The last surviving member of the Tredwell family, the youngest daughter, Gertrude, died in the house at the age of 93 in 1933. Three years later, the rowhouse was opened for tours, despite the fact that Gertrude may have never fully vacated the property. Merchant's House, now more than 190 years old, attracts history buffs and ghost hunters alike, and some visitors report particularly strong reactions to the energy in the principal bedroom. Candlelit ghost tours offer the chance to commune with a spirit or two—occasionally with the help of paranormal investigator Dan Sturges.

The San Diego Victorian mansion known as Villa Montezuma (or "Spook House" to locals) was a building project for composer and musician Jesse Shepard. An active member of a Spiritualist society, Shepard had eclectic and somewhat macabre tastes that are reflected in the mansion's architectural design.

Stained glass and gargoyles intermingle with a turret and tiled fireplaces, a fitting setting for the séances that have been conducted within Villa Montezuma's walls by both Shepard and the home's subsequent owners.

Although Shepard died in Los Angeles and not in the home, visitors say that they sometimes feel his ghostly presence. The mansion has been open as a museum since 1972, with daytime tours offered by Friends of the Villa Montezuma and evening lantern tours by Haunted Orange County, despite it being located in San Diego County.

Named one of USA Today 10Best's "Best Haunted Hotels" in 2021, the Mizpah Hotel was once a symbol of prosperity during the boomtown times of Tonopah, Nevada, a town with the title of "Queen of the Silver Camps." Built between 1907 and 1908, the hotel was directly adjacent to the most successful of all silver mines in the area: the Mizpah Mine.

Many prominent local figures who have passed have rooms named after them, perhaps in honor of their residual energy. But the hotel's most famous ghost, and one of the most famous in the state, is the "Lady in Red." She was reportedly killed by a jilted ex-lover, and now her presence can be felt in rooms 502, 503, and 504 (the "Lady in Red Suite") and even the elevator.

Today, the hotel embraces its haunted history, beckoning guests to "come for the scares, stay for the stories" on its social media channels.

Outside the city of Buffalo, New York, is the community of East Aurora, and at the center of it is the Roycroft Campus, built around the turn of the last century as part of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

The historic Roycroft Inn, now a national landmark, is a showcase for those artisans and their work, including woodworking, stained glass, furniture, and more. It's also part of the Haunted History Trail of New York State, which promotes a supernatural walk of the inn and promises "occult architecture, sacred symbolism, and a Campus full of ghosts!"

One of those spirits might be that of Roycroft founder Elbert Hubbard, who died on the RMS Lusitania when a German U-boat sank the ocean liner in 1915.

Although Baltimore's former Hotel Belvedere was converted into condos in 1991, it retains much of its Old World charm circa 1903, the year of its construction.

In over a century since then, this Mount Vernon landmark has survived Prohibition, mob robberies, murders, and suicides, including one 2006 cold case that made it onto a 2020 episode of "Unsolved Mysteries." One ghost in particular reportedly only bothers female guests in the 12th-floor ballrooms he haunts.

The Mt. Vernon Ghost Walk tour takes curious visitors to The Owl Bar, a former speakeasy in The Belvedere where some of the famous hotel guests of yore (like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, Franklin Roosevelt, and the pair of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard) might have bellied up to the bar during its heyday. But the booze behind the bar might not be the only spirits in the joint.

In Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, a North Side/South Side gangster rivalry over illegal booze distribution in the thick of Prohibition came to a head on Feb. 14, 1929, in what became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Associates of Al Capone lined up seven men against the north wall of the headquarters for George "Bugs" Moran's mob operation and executed them with machine guns. None of these associates ever stood trial for the murders.

The garage was demolished in 1967, and a reassembled portion of the wall is now on display at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas. But the lot that remains is said to be haunted by apparitions of men (perhaps the victims) and a barking dog. The Lincoln Park Hauntings Chicago Ghost Tour & Ghost Hunt, offered by American Ghost Walks, visits the site and looks for ghosts along the way as it passes the old City Cemetery, where some bodies lie in unrest.

Southern Living called the ghosts of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, "legendary." And not the least of those is the spirit of its creator, Thomas Ryman, who opened it as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892.

This famed performance venue has also been called "cursed" because of the tragic deaths of some of the musicians who've graced its stage, including Patsy Cline, who died at age 30 in a 1963 plane crash near Camden, Tennessee, and Hank Williams Sr., who died at age 29 amid some controversy over the exact cause of death. And since the Ryman was home to the Grand Ole Opry for decades, numerous performers who've passed through the venue might've left a little something behind.

Visitors get the chance to look for them on occasional haunted history tours hosted by the Ryman.

Seattle has a place in horror history as the setting for the American version of the movie "The Ring," but the city also has real reported hauntings and a creepy underbelly to match.

The Seattle known today was built on top of another lower city to shore up against flooding, and that history is preserved in Seattle's "underground," particularly in the Pioneer Square area. Some of these tunnels are open for historical and spooky tours, during which you descend into the "basements" of retail and residential buildings to reach their former ground floors/street levels, long rendered subterranean from a rebuilding effort in the wake of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.

The team behind "Ghost Hunters" seems to think they found evidence of ghosts down there, perhaps from the time that many thought the bubonic plague was infecting the depths of the city, causing the city to condemn the underground tunnels.

In a lawless town like Deadwood, South Dakota, there was plenty of unrest among the living: gold prospectors, bordello girls, and gunslingers like Wild Bill Hickok (who is buried in Deadwood's Mount Moriah Cemetery), for starters.

Nearly the entire town burned down in 1879. But one of the most haunted places in this historic town is The Bullock Hotel, founded in 1894 by former Deadwood sheriff Seth Bullock (portrayed by Timothy Olyphant in the HBO series "Deadwood"). Bullock died of colon cancer in 1919, but his spirit isn't the only ghost that supposedly haunts Deadwood's "first and finest hotel," which was transformed into a makeshift hospital during a cholera outbreak.

To meet some others, you can take a Haunted History Walking Ghost Tour of the town.

Howard Hughes once owned the Hollywood Pantages Theatre building and occupied one of its offices. Legend has it that Hughes would step away from his desk and sit in the back of the balcony during whichever movie was playing at the time to clear his mind. Sometimes he still does, even though the former movie palace is now a live performance venue for Broadway touring shows and concerts.

Other reported ghosts in the theatre include that of its namesake, Alexander Pantages, and a female former patron with a penchant for singing along to musicals.

New Orleans is one of CNN's spookiest cities in the U.S., thanks to its unending supply of vampires, voodoo practitioners, and ghosts. It's also full of cemeteries, and it's likely that some of those souls might get a bit restless from time to time.

At St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans' oldest graveyard, Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau is said to rise from the dead and roam the grounds—where some of the earliest of those interred included yellow fever victims. Access to the cemetery is by guided tour only, offered on a daily basis.

Marketed as "America's Most Haunted House," the Lizzie Borden House was the site of the 1892 double murder of Andrew and Abby Borden, who were both killed with a hatchet. Although their daughter Lizzie stood trial for the crime, she was acquitted, and the case remains unsolved. Those who haunt the home today could be Lizzie herself, her father, and her stepmother. There's no better way to find out for sure than by booking a tour or a room for the night.

A 1974 stay at the Stanley Hotel inspired Stephen King to pen his horror novel "The Shining." The exterior shots for the film version starring Jack Nicholson were filmed at the Timberline Lodge on Oregon's Mount Hood. But the Stanley Hotel is considered the real Overlook Hotel, a legacy its management embraces, even hosting "The Shining Ball" and encouraging guests to dress up in costumes inspired by the movie.

Visitors can also take a Spirited Night Tour to learn about the souls from beyond who reside there, including a former housekeeper who apparently hasn't stopped tidying things up.

A mysterious murder-suicide occurred within the walls of Greystone Mansion in 1929 when oil heir Ned Doheny was shot to death by his secretary Hugh Plunkett, who then took his own life. The story is reenacted by Theatre 40 in its murder mystery play "The Manor."

When security guards hear footsteps during their nightly patrols, they wonder if they are Ned's. How about the other unexplained phenomena, like voices, doors opening and shutting, lights flickering, and objects moving? No one really knows, but there are enough stories to fill an entire book: "Ghosts of Greystone – Beverly Hills" by Clete Keith. Curious visitors can investigate for themselves by taking a self-guided tour or attending an event inside the mansion.

Story editing by Chris Compendio. Copy editing by Robert Wickwire.