Random Most Convincing Real-Life Ghost Stories (12 items)

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  (#9) The Winchester Mystery House

  The Winchester Mystery House, a popular tourist attraction, is a mansion in San Jose, California, located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. It once was the home of Sarah Winchester, the window of WIlliam Wirt Winchester and heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune. Work began on the house under Sarah's direct supervision in 1884 and continued until her death in 1922. Because work on the home was constantly ongoing, the result is a chaotic building with no master floor plan, and a number of eccentric touches. (This includes stairways that don't lead anywhere, and doors with no rooms behind them.)

  Sarah's life was interrupted by two tragedies from which she never really recovered. The first was the loss of her daughter, Annie Pardee Winchester, when the child was only a few weeks old, from the disease marasmus. The second was the death of her husband William 15 years later of tuberculosis. This left Sarah a broken woman, but also fantastically rich, inheriting an income of $1000 each day (Equivalent to about $22,000 per day today).

  According to the most popular retellings, following her husband's death, Sarah feared that she and the Winchester family were cursed. She consulted a psychic either in Boston or near her home in New Haven, Connecticut, who told her to move West and build a home for herself that would also house the spirits of those who had been killed with Winchester rifles. The medium is alleged to have also told Sarah that if construction on the house ever stopped, the spirits would grow restless and kill her.

  Thus, for 38 years, Sarah lived in the home and ensured that construction continued constantly, even attempting to have work done on the house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. She also integrated the number 13 into the home whenever possible – there are 13 bathrooms, each window has 13 panes, the house has a total of 13 chandeliers, and so forth. Following the 1906 earthquake, she refused to have damaged portions of the home fixed up, assuming the damage was the work of angry spirits who might be further enraged by repairs.

  Ghostly sightings are quite common in the Winchester Mystery House. In addition to the spirits of those killed by Winchesters – whom Sarah believed lived there – some have sighted spirits they believe were staff who once worked in the home. Still others report seeing a woman fitting Sarah Winchester's description, dressed in Victorian garb, wandering the stairs and hanging out in the kitchen.

  Boring Rational Explanation: Sarah Winchester made no mention of the house in her will, and it was eventually sold for $135,000 to a local investor, who opened it up to the public. Harry Houdini is said to have toured the mansion and gave it the name "Mystery House." Today, the 160-room Winchester Mystery House has become a popular tourist destination in San Jose. (It also hosts special events each year on Friday the 13th.) If there really are any spirits there, they're obviously not camera shy. (It stands to reason as well that, with all those people walking through the house all day, any lingering undead would have been discovered and caught on tape by now.)

  The official website also includes testimonials from visitors who have felt a ghostly presence, but unless you know "papa smurf ;)" and find him particularly trustworthy, there's no reason to think any of these are genuine reports.
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  (#5) French Quarter Ghosts of the Hotel Monteleone

  If you plan on visiting New Orleans, you should know that it is without question, the most haunted city in America. Ghostly sightings are virtually everywhere throughout the city, particularly in the famed, historic French Quarter. So many hotels claim to be haunted – but one, in particular, boasts a LOT of ghosts: The Hotel Monteleone. Sitting at 214 Royal Street, the hotel is the only high-rise building in the interior of the French Quarter, and has become famous for its rotating carousel bar.

  The hotel dates back to the 1880s, when Sicilian immigrant Antonio Monteleone moved to New Orleans and set up shop on the site as a cobbler. He ended up taking over the nearby hotel and expanding his business, and the enterprise has continued to grow ever since.

  Reported ghostly sightings at the Monteleone are so common it's impossible to write about them all. Several guests have claimed to see and hear ghostly children playing in the hotel's halls (especially on the 14th floor). Additionally, based on the testimony of witnesses, the lobby area is apparently very, very haunted. Like, "Poltergeist" haunted. On many nights, around 8 pm, the doors of the lobby restaurant are said to mysteriously unlock and then close themselves back up. A diverse group of individuals claim to have witnessed this ghostly phenomenon.

  Boring Rational Explanation: According to the hotel's own website, in 2003, the International Society of Paranormal Research investigated and made contact with a man named William Wildemere who had died in the hotel (of natural causes, oddly enough) years before. The team also believed it had made contact with a ghost that enjoyed returning to the hotel regularly in the form of a small boy to meet up with another friend (who of course, was also a ghost.) Their favorite hide-and-seek spot? You guessed it, the 14th floor.

  The mere fact that the hotel itself seems to advertise as "haunted" would give any even mildly skeptical person pause. If unpredictable, wily undead spirits really were roaming the halls, that seems like the sort of thing management would want to keep under wraps. More than likely, this is just another gimmick to appeal to the NOLA tourist crowd, who love a good gothic southern yarn.
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  (#11) Ghosts of Alcatraz

  Alcatraz Island was first used as a military prison in the late 1850s, and later served as a federal prison until 1963. It's probably the most famous prison in the United States. The prison claimed that, despite 36 prisoners making a total of 14 escape attempts, no prisoner had ever successfully made it off the island. (The most violent escape attempt was made in 1946, when six prisoners attempted to flee the island, resulting eventually in the deaths of three inmates and two guards.)

  Famous convicts held in Alcatraz included Al Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, Mickey Cohen, and Bumpy Johnson. [While incarcerated in Alcatraz, Capone took to playing the banjo. Years after Capone's death and long after Alcatraz officially shut down, visitors and workers report hearing banjo music in the old shower rooms and in Capone's former cell.]

  Because of the celebrity outlaws who have been held there, as well as the relative isolation of "The Rock" from the rest of society, it naturally lent itself to a number of rumors, urban legends, and modern myths about what actually happened there.

  Cell 14D, an isolation cell, is also believed to be haunted by a ghostly figure. It's been said that, in the 1940s, a prisoner locked in 14D screamed to guards that he was being attacked by a creature with glowing eyes – and that this prisoner was found dead in his cell the next morning.

  Perhaps most compelling, however, is the testimony of Alcatraz guards, many of whom claim to have experienced unexplainable things while working on The Rock. Many reports of guards investigating the sounds of sobbing or moaning, only to find no one there, were filed. Even a noted skeptic, Warden Johnston, noted that he once believed he heard sobbing from within the building's walls.

  Additionally, many have claimed to have stumbled upon inexplicable smells on the island, or certain spots that are notably colder than their surroundings. Visitors and currently employees at Alcatraz have also reported hearing strange noises or voices and feeling cold rushes of air, particularly in Cell Block C, the site of that deadly standoff between several prisoners and guards.

  Boring Rational Explanation: Over the years, a number of ghost hunters, authors, curiosity-seekers and others have come to the island, hoping to gather evidence of the spirits. No compelling evidence of a spirit has yet been produced. The majority of park rangers and other staff working the site – though many claim to have experienced something odd in their time on the island – claim not to believe that it's actually haunted.
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  (#2) The Bell Witch of Tennessee

  The story of the Bell Witch of Tennessee is one of the more famous true ghost stories in American history. The story inspired several documentaries and a major motion picture, 2005's An American Haunting. It's one of the most well-documented "true" ghost stories ever.

  The story of the Bell Witch first surfaced in the early 1800s, after farmer John Bell and his family moved from North Carolina to the community of Red River, Tennessee, which later became the town of Adams. As Bell amassed more and more land in the area – eventually up to 328 acres – the family started to report a variety of strange encounters. These included finding an animal that appeared to be a hybrid between a dog and a rabbit, a series of apparent hallucinations that included night terrors about rats gnawing away at the family's beds, and eventually a series of faint whispering voices that sounded almost like old women softly singing hymns.

  According to historians, family members later found a vial of an unknown liquid in the house. They gave a dose of the liquid to their cat, who immediately died.

  According to the stories, following the Battle of New Orleans, f*ture president Andrew Jackson came to the Bell Farm to investigate the stories of a haunting, and it was he who dubbed the entity "The Bell Witch."

  By 1820, John Bell had grown ill, and more convinced then ever that the presence in his house wished him ill. It's said that, after Bell's funeral, the ghost could be heard singing and laughing loudly in the graveyard. After Bell's death, save for a few reported encounters during which the entity bid the family "farewell" (what a polite spirit!), the presence seemed to largely disappear from the home.

  Boring Rational Explanation: It was rumored that the ghost had promised to return to Bell's direct descendent in 107 years, which would have been 1935. Though the descendent in question - Dr. Charles Bailey Bell - wrote a book about the "Bell Witch" legend, he never mentioned having an encounter of his own.

  A book called "Our Family Trouble" also exists which was reportedly written by Richard Williams Bell - the second-youngest child of John Bell - in 1846, and includes the only known "eyewitness" account of the Bell Witch. It can currently be found in M.V. Ingram's "Authenticated History of the Bell Witch," though the book provides few sources or citations for any of its information, and thus is not terribly useful as a research tool.

  200 years after the Bell family was terrorized by the sinister Bell Witch, researchers continue to study the story, each offering different theories about the entity. (In the film's fictionalized retelling, "An American Haunting," the ghost is 'explained' by arguing that Bell sexually abused his daughter, and her repressed memories of the abuse gave rise to the titular witch.
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  (#10) Asheville High School Ghost

  Asheville High in Asheville, North Carolina, is one of those schools with motion-activated surveillance cameras. On Friday, August 1, at 2:51 am, the cameras turned on in time to catch a shadowy blob appears in front of an elevator and then darts around a bit before ending up in the hallway.

  Some teachers from the school and paranormal enthusiasts from around Ashevile were quick to label the inexplicable apparition a ghost. Teacher Martha Geitner offered this theory to the local CBS affiliate: "It's a ghost. Of course it's a ghost. It's the ghost of some former student who is really angry with his teacher and has come back to get back with the teacher, and he's just making himself known at this time."

  She seems to have a lot of information about this angry dead student... Did Asheville PD ever look into this further?

  Other more skeptical local residents have done their best to debunk the ghost theory, without great success. What's clear is (1) SOMETHING must have been there to set off the motion detector, and (2) that thing appears to be able to change its shape. Most eerily, if it's a shadow being cast by something not seen on the video, how is it so rapidly changing shape, at one point morphing into what almost looks like the form of a small child.

  Boring Rational Explanation: What if it's another bug! An big enough insect (maybe a moth?) could theoretically have set off the motion sensor, and as we've seen in the Ohio gas station example, sometimes a bug on the lens of a camera can sort of look like an insane revenge-crazed demon from Hell to the untrained eye.
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  (#4) The Haunting of the Stanley Hotel

  The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, built in 1909 by Stanley Steamer founder Freelan O. Stanley, is arguably the most famous haunted building in America. While staff and guests at the hotel have reported strange happenings and ghost sightings for decades, the hotel didn't become truly famous until author Stephen King lived at the hotel for a time and reportedly had his own scary ghostly experience (seeing a mysterious figure on the hotel's stairs). This encounter is believed to have inspired King's "The Shining." (Even today, the hotel runs the film version of "The Shining" on a continuous loop to guest televisions.)

  Among the reported ghost sightings:

  - Staff have reported hearing the sounds of parties going on in the main ballroom. When they investigate, the rooms are empty.
  - Some people claim to have seen ghosts standing at the end of their beds in the middle of the night.
  - Patrons claim to have seen the ghost of Freelan Stanley's wife, a piano player in life, performing on the piano in the lobby.

  The claims have been investigated by a variety of paranormal experts and investigators, including the teams from the Syfy television show "Ghost Hunters" and the Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures."

  Boring Rational Explanation: There isn't one solid, reliable rational explanation for all the reported phenomenon at the Stanley (unless you just think everyone - Stephen King included - is simply lying for attention.) During the "Ghost Hunters" taping, the bed was apparently moved and the closet doors unlocked, but no other supernatural phenomenon was witnessed. As well, the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society and the Skeptical Inquirer's "Naked Skeptic" - Karen Stollznow - have looked into the goings-on and claim that some of the experiences seen on "Ghost Hunters" could be explained by raccoons that move about the property and could be making otherworldly noises. There was no way to rationally explain away all of the observed phenomenon, however. So keep this on in the "maybe" pile.

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