10 Most Haunted Places

Everyone seems to know of at least one haunted house; as kids there was almost certainly one in our own neighbourhood. This list contains the most famous and most haunted places in the world. If you have had any experiences of a similar nature, feel free to tell us about it in the comments. I should add, before starting, that I am a skeptic; I have written this list for entertainment value.

1. Borley Rectory, Essex, England [Wikipedia]

The haunting of the Borley Rectory during the 1920s and 1930s, is undoubtedly one of the most famous in Britain, as well as being one of the most controversial. The wealth of sightings and experiences by independent witnesses, suggests that although much of the phenomena can be explained in rational terms, a percentage remains which can still be seen as inexplicable at the present time.

2. The Whaley House, California [Wikipedia]

Author deTraci Regula relates her experiences with the house: “Over the years, while dining across the street at the Old Town Mexican Cafe, I became accustomed to noticing that the shutters of the second-story windows [of the Whaley House] would sometimes open while we ate dinner, long after the house was closed for the day. On a recent visit, I could feel the energy in several spots in the house, particularly in the courtroom, where I also smelled the faint scent of a cigar, supposedly Whaley’s calling-card. In the hallway, I smelled perfume, initially attributing that to the young woman acting as docent, but some later surreptitious sniffing in her direction as I talked to her about the house revealed her to be scent-free.”

3. Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England [Wikipedia]

aynham Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. For 300 years it has been the seat of the Townshend family. The hall gave its name to the area, known as East Raynham, and is reported to be haunted, providing the scene for possibly the most famous ghost photo of all time, the famous Brown Lady descending the staircase. However, the ghost has not been reported since the photo was taken. Its most famous resident was Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend (1674-1738), leader in the House of Lords.

4. The Myrtles Plantation, Louisiana [Wikipedia]

The Myrtles Plantation was built in 1796 by General David Bradford and called Laurel Grove. Touted as “one of America’s most haunted homes”, the plantation is supposedly home of at least 12 ghosts.[9] It is often reported that 10 murders occurred in the house, but historical records only indicate the murder of William Winter. Possibly the most well known of the Myrtles supposed ghosts, Chloe (sometimes Cleo) was reportedly a slave owned by Clark and Sara Woodruff. According to one story, Clark Woodruff had pressured or forced Chloe into being his mistress. Chloe and Clark were caught by Sara Woodruff, and Chloe began to listen at keyholes, trying to learn what would happen to her.

5. Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia [Wikipedia]

Designed by John Haviland and opened in 1829, Eastern State is considered to be the world’s first true penitentiary. Its revolutionary system of incarceration, dubbed the Pennsylvania System, originated and encouraged solitary confinement as a form of rehabilitation. On June 1st, 2007 a television show called “Most Haunted” went live to the penitentiary. Part of the group went to Al Capones cell. Two people passed out while “investigating” the prison. One member of the team, Yvette, stated that “this is the most evil place I have ever been.” They claimed to have had contact with spirits but there was no hard evidence that their claims were legitimate.

6. The Tower of London, London [Wikipedia]

Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress The Tower of London, more commonly known as the Tower of London (and historically simply as The Tower), is an historic monument in central London, England on the north bank of the River Thames. Perhaps the most well-known ghostly resident of the Tower is the spirit of Ann Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry VIII, who was also beheaded in the Tower in 1536. Her ghost has been spotted on many occasions, sometimes carrying her head, on Tower Green and in the Tower Chapel Royal.

7. Waverly Hills Sanatorium, Kentucky [Wikipedia]

Waverly Hills Sanatorium, located in Louisville, Kentucky, opened in 1910 as a two-story hospital to accommodate 40 to 50 tuberculosis patients. It has been popularized on television as being one of the “most haunted” hospitals in the eastern United States, and was seen on ABC/FOX Family Channel’s Scariest Places On Earth as well as VH1′s Celebrity Paranormal Project. It was also seen on the Sci Fi Channel’s Ghost Hunters. Ghost investigators who have ventured into Waverly have reported a host of strange paranormal phenomena, including voices of unknown origin, isolated cold spots and unexplained shadows. Screams have been heard echoing in its now abandoned hallways, and fleeting apparitions have been encountered.

8. The Queen Mary, California [Wikipedia]

RMS Queen Mary is an ocean liner that sailed the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for Cunard Line (then Cunard White Star Line). The Queen Mary was purchased by the city of Long Beach, California in 1967 and transformed into a hotel. The most haunted area of the ship is the engine room where a 17-year-old sailor was crushed to death trying to escape a fire. Knocking and banging on the pipes around the door has been heard and recorded by numerous people. In what is now the front desk area of the hotel, visitors have seen the ghost of a “lady in white.” Ghosts of children are said to haunt the ship’s pool.

9. The White House, Washington DC [Wikipedia]

The home of the presidents of the United States. President Harrison is said to be heard rummaging around in the attic of the White House, looking for who knows what. President Andrew Jackson is thought to haunt his White House bedroom. And the ghost of First Lady Abigail Adams was seen floating through one of the White House hallways, as if carrying something. The most frequently sighted presidential ghost has been that of Abraham Lincoln. Eleanor Roosevelt once stated she believed she felt the presence of Lincoln watching her as she worked in the Lincoln bedroom. Also during the Roosevelt administration, a young clerk claimed to have actually seen the ghost of Lincoln sitting on a bed pulling off his boots.

10. Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland [Wikipedia]

Edinburgh Castle is reputed to be one of the most haunted spots in Scotland. And Edinburgh itself has been called the most haunted city in all of Europe. On various occasions, visitors to the castle have reported a phantom piper, a headless drummer, the spirits of French prisoners from the Seven Years War and colonial prisoners from the American Revolutionary War – even the ghost of a dog wandering in the grounds’ dog cemetery.

(via listverse)

Murder caught on Google Earth

Redditors love to try to solve crimes. As many of them gathered to pool clues to the Boston bombing case on Wednesday, there was another group on the site still working to debunk a rumored “murder” caught on Google Earth.

The story goes like this: On April 12th, a Redditor named ncav posted the photo below from Google Earth with the caption “A murder near my house on Google Maps, link in comments.” Ncav then provided the link, which shows that the image is from Almere, Netherlands, and said that he and his friend had notified the police. A few sites,including Gizmodo picked up the story.

Redditors then took it upon themselves to debunk the murder hypothesis.

The first step was to zoom into the Google Earth image as far as possible. Redditorxythrowawayy zoomed in further than anyone had previously and shared a secret way to zoom in Google Earth with the thread. He wrote:

Start by going to somewhere on Google Maps, say, http://goo.gl/maps/t4sph

Zoom in as far as it will let you by clicking on the “+” sign at the top of the magnification slider at the top left of the map.

When you’re in as far as you can go (heh/sorry) but not all the way to street view (if the location you’re looking at even has street view), look over at the white space just to the top left of the map….where the little printer and chain link buttons are.

Click on the chain “link” button. That will show you a box with a long URL to the map you are looking at and another box with some HTML code to embed. Ignore the HTML code.

Copy the long URL and paste it into your browser’s address bar, but don’t hit enter to go to that URL yet. Instead, click to edit it and scroll all the way to the right. It should end with something like “&z=22”. Change the 22 to 23 (“&z=23”) and hit enter. If Google Maps has imagery at that higher zoom level, it will show it to you.

We gave this a try, and it does, indeed, work. The next step was to figure out exactly what the picture showed, if not a bloody murder scene. Redditor Bennyboy1337 was the first to decide that what people were seeing was actually a dog and a wet deck, not a body and blood. Bennyboy1337 wrote:

Looks like a dog got out of the water and shook itself dry, then walked off the dock while dripping water, the wet wood looks much darker in color. You can clearly see where the dog shook, walked off the deck, then walked back to his owner on a separate lighter colored path on the bottom.

When you look at the picture closely, you can see that Bennyboy1337 seems to be right. Other Redditors edited the zoomed-in photo to show more details. User lkdfmlksdm made the following photo:

Another user, shitty_hdr, made an even more detailed photo-based explanation:

A third Redditor, nemo96, noticed that if you zoom out a bit, you can see people walking and biking right by the dock. These people would definitely have seen the supposed crime scene. And there you have it! What was first thought a homicide ended up just being a couple of people playing fetch with a dog on a dock. Another mystery solved!

(via huffingtonpost)

Those who want to see yourself on Google Earth click this link.

These 10 Creepy Urban Legends. Well, not really

Few urban legends defy explanation, and are just a bit too real for comfort. Here are 10 urban legends that are too real to laugh off.

1.) The Incident At Dyatlov Pass.

Wikipedia

In 1959, a group of Soviet ski hikers made their way through the Ural mountains during a particularly cold February. The group of nine mysteriously died during their journey. Investigators determined that the hikers ripped open their tent from the inside and walked out into the snow barefoot shortly before their deaths.

All nine of them died. The interesting thing is that none of the bodies showed any signs of a struggle. To this day, no one knows what caused them to walk out into the snow.

2.) The Corpse Bride.

Urban Legends Online

A bridal shop in Chihuahua, Mexico has a disturbingly lifelike mannequin. Her name is “La Pascualita,” and for the last 75 years, there was speculation that she is the preserved body of the former owner’s daughter. Legend has it that the daughter died of a deadly spider bite, just hours before her own wedding.

As the shop staff are the only ones who get to see La Pascualita up close, no one knows for certain what she is. This hasn’t stopped a cult following from growing around her.

3.) Tesla’s Death Ray.

Wikipedia

Nikola Tesla was one of the great inventors of the last century. He became famous for his public battles with Thomas Edison during the early 1900s. One area of Tesla’s research that has almost lost to the ages is his research into directed-energy weapons. It’s rumored that Tesla built a working “death ray,” and that it was the cause of the Tunguska Event in Siberia, Russia in 1908.

4.) Lillian Gray.

List Verse

This creepy urban legend centers around a tombstone in Salt Lake City, Utah. At first, nothing looks out of place about the tombstone, but upon closer inspection, there is a cryptic and creepy inscription: “Victim of the Beast 666.” This is one of the creepiest things you could possibly come across in the graveyard.

There are plenty of rumors trying to explain the inscription, but the truth is weirder. It was Gray’s husband who had the inscription put on his late wife’s tombstone. According to people who knew him, he was paranoid and anti-government. That might actually make it more creepy.

5.) The Portal To Hell.

List Verse

I’m not sure anyone would think to look for a portal to hell in the backroom of a Kentucky honky-tonk bar. Apparently that’s where it is, according to this urban legend.

Bobby Mackey’s Music World is located in Wilder, Kentucky. After a few brutal murders occurred on the property over the years, people began to speculate that a portal to hell exists there. Not ones to sit idly by, the owners of the bar started using this urban legend as part of their marketing.

6.) Snallygaster.

List Verse

This is a weird one. In the 1730s, immigrants to Fredrick County, Maryland began to report encountering a terrifying beast. This beast was half-bird, half-reptile, and had tentacles used to grab people. They called it the “Snallygaster.”

If that wasn’t creepy enough, people reported seeing the Snallygaster is towns and cities all up and down the east coast. A bird with tentacles is a pretty freaky concept.

7.) The Flatwoods Monster.

UFO Evidence

The Flatwoods Monster was allegedly an encounter with some sort of extraterrestrial being near the town of Flatwoods, West Virginia. In 1952, several residents reported seeing a U.F.O. crash in the mountains near the town. They went out to investigate, and found a seven-foot-tall glowing creature.

Upon seeing the humans, this creature hissed shrilly and charged at them before veering off towards the wreckage. Those who came in contact with the creature and breathed in the fumes from the crash site became ill over the following days. There is still no official explanation of the incident.

8.) Black-Eyed Children.

The Mirror

These are demonic children between the ages of 6 and 16. They are identified by their completely black eyes and pale skin. In recent years, there were numerous sightings of these black eyed children panhandling or hitchhiking. There aren’t many stories of what happens if you stop and talk to them. They’re still pretty freaky, though.

9.) Shadow People.

Imgur

As the name suggests, these are shadowy people believed to be evil, supernatural beings. No one knows exactly what their purpose is, or what they want from the people they allegedly follow. But shadow people do have a historical basis in historical legends and folklore.

10.) UVB-76.

Wikipedia

UVB-76 is probably one of the creepiest urban legends on this list. It’s a shortwave radio station that constantly broadcasts short buzzing tones (about 25 tones a minute), 24 hours a day since the 1970s. Every so often, the buzzing is replaced by a voice in Russian. Aside from that, nothing else is known about the station except that it broadcasts from somewhere within Russia.

(Via: Buzzfeed)

These are pretty creepy. I think I’ll probably have some nightmares about that Flatwoods Monster tonight. What a freaky story.