From the outside, the 18th- century villa atop a hill in New York City’s Harlem neighbor- hood looks like a charming mansion promising a trip back into American history. But learn a little about the villa’s dark past—the lonely old woman who spent her final years holed up in the mansion, slowly sinking into insanity—and then the Morris - Jumel Mansion feels less like something from the history books and more like a plot from a horror movie. And that’s before the woman’s ghost appears on the porch. In these pages, you’ll get up close and uncomfortable with this spirit and all her ghostly cohorts across the U.S. Climb the steps into houses where the specter of death lingers in every room. Unbolt the heavy doors to prisons and mental health hospitals where the inmates and patients still cry out in pain. Venture into the fog of war for tales of soldiers who keep fighting long after falling in battle, wander through haunted cemeteries and churches God couldn’t save, and explore the museum collections that send chills down the spine. And get ready to check into historic hotels where turndown service might be provided by a ghostly specter. These are America’s scariest places.
AMERICA’S SCARIEST PLACES • HAUNTED, CREEPY, ABANDONED
ENTER, IF YOU DARE • Be afraid. Be very afraid.
BLOODY MURDER AND DEATH • Home is where the haunts are in these spooky dwellings.
MORRIS-JUMEL MANSION • New York’s oldest house not only has a tie to the musical Hamilton; it has ghosts.
AX MURDER HOUSE • Somebody brutally murdered eight people in 1912 in a case that remains unsolved.
AMITYVILLE HORROR HOUSE • Many claim the strange events were all a hoax. But then how to explain why there have been more of them over the decades?
LALAURIE MANSION • A fire revealed a pre-Civil War socialite’s torture chamber for slaves.
WHALEY HOUSE • A historic mansion has a rich history of restless ghosts.
LIZZIE BORDEN HOUSE • The scene of two infamous killings now scares guests as an inn.
MYRTLES PLANTATION • Spirits of the Southern past lurk in the antebellum mansion.
LABIANCA HOUSE • For sale: A nice house with an evil history.
SALLIE HOUSE • The resident ghost hates men, and for good reason.
HAUNTED HOLLYWOOD • Celebrities make encore appearances from the great beyond.
CREEPY PRISONS AND INSTITUTIONS • Steel bars and locked doors keep the ghosts from escaping.
EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY • The tortured spirits of solitary confinement linger for all eternity.
ALCATRAZ • Does a creature with glowing eyes haunt The Rock?
OHIO STATE REFORMATORY • Hollywood’s favorite prison delivers real chills.
WEST VIRGINIA STATE PENITENTIARY • Executions, riots and murders echo through the cellblocks.
MADISON SEMINARY • A home for war widows turns into an asylum for the mentally ill.
WAVERLY HILLS SANATORIUM • Those who never left alive linger among the living.
MANTENO STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL • A dark history of lobotomies and primitive shock treatment.
WILDWOOD SANITARIUM • The ghosts cry out from their electric battery baths.
TRANS-ALLEGHENY LUNATIC ASYLUM • A mental hospital spirals into overcrowding and cruel treatment.
HAUNTED LIGHTHOUSES • Stories of death, ghosts and war will have you begging to leave the lights on.
EERIE EXHIBITIONS • Check out the most unsettling artifacts under glass.
WARRENS’ OCCULT MUSEUM • Is the Annabelle doll dying to get out of her locked glass case?
WHERE AUTHORS LINGER • Writers are keen observers of society, which might explain why these famous scribes refuse to quit the land of the living.
PHARMACY MUSEUM • A physician who couldn’t heal thyself is still an angry...