There are haunted mansions. There are haunted hotels. There are haunted abandoned asylums with grim nicknames, peeling paint, and badly edited YouTube documentaries. And then there’s Prairie Falls, Kansas’ claim to fame: a haunted post office. The Millstone Post Office looks exactly like you’d expect a building haunted by bureaucracy to look: square, beige, buzzing with fluorescent … Read more
Ghost photography — the noble art of aiming a poorly calibrated camera at thin air, misinterpreting every smudge, blur, and random dust mote as proof of life after death, and charging ten bucks a pop for the privilege. Clearly, nothing captures the triumphant mediocrity of human ambition quite like the notion that eternal souls — … Read more
Shudderton, Nevada — population 3,947 if you believe the sign, which I don’t — is one of those towns that clings to its ghost stories like they’re on the payroll. You can’t walk five feet without someone offering you a brochure for a haunted mine tour or a cursed saloon experience. So it’s no surprise … Read more
Cemetery ghost tours have a certain morbid charm, in theory. The promise of tragic love stories, unsolved mysteries, shadowy figures lurking just beyond the flicker of a lantern — it’s all very atmospheric if you squint hard enough and forget that ninety percent of cemetery ghost tours take place in cemeteries where the only spirits … Read more
If there’s anything more tedious than an alleged haunting, it’s an alleged poltergeist. Unlike your standard-issue Victorian ghost — the sad lady in white, the mournful child clutching a toy drum nobody asked for — poltergeists don’t bother with melodramatic sob stories or half-hearted spectral appearances. They just throw things, slam doors, knock over bookshelves, … Read more
Catfish Jack’s bills itself as “the most haunted watering hole on the Mississippi.” Based on the smell alone, that seems entirely plausible. When I visited, the building looked like it had been condemned twice and then lost the paperwork. Faded neon signs buzzed half-heartedly in the cracked windows, and the floor inside had the sticky … Read more
Of all the charming invitations extended to me over the years — psychic conventions, ghost hunts, aura detox seminars — few sounded more ludicrously promising than an overnight stay at Ironford Penitentiary, one of New England’s most notoriously “haunted” abandoned prisons. A place where, according to the marketing brochure, “the walls still remember the screams.” … Read more
Nothing says “serious paranormal research” quite like a group of grown adults huddled in a dark basement, holding an $28 voice recorder from Amazon, desperately hoping to hear a dead guy say “hi.” Electronic Voice Phenomena — or EVPs, for those who like their pseudoscience to sound technical — are supposed to be ghostly voices … Read more
The House of Eternal Echoes claims to be one of the oldest, most haunted mansions in the region. Which, in practical terms, means it’s a crumbling Victorian disaster filled with bad lighting, suspicious drafts, and a marketing team that believes any creaking floorboard is irrefutable proof of spectral activity. For a modest entrance fee — … Read more
St. Augustine, Florida, bills itself as America’s oldest city — a charming mix of Spanish colonial architecture, cobblestone streets, overpriced taffy, and relentless humidity. It also bills itself as one of America’s most haunted cities, which is tourist-speak for “bring your wallet and your willingness to believe anything after dark.” Naturally, I signed up for … Read more