Do clowns put a chill down your spine? Dolls make your heart skip a beat? Or historic cemeteries give you the willies? If so, check out these spine-tingling and blood-curdling destinations.
When it comes to creepy, haunted locations, Stephen King nailed it with his classic horror novel, The Shining , inspired by the Stanley Hotel’s history and hauntings. Employees of the site have long reported ghostly happenings.
One of the most famous remains the maid from Room 217. According to guests to the room, the apparition has been known to stash their clothes when no one’s looking. Other people have reported a cleaner room after waking from sleep. One couple even woke up to realize the bed was made around them.
Other paranormal reports include guests being touched, hearing disembodied voices, and having their hair stroked. Children’s laughter can also sometimes be heard in the hallway without any visible sources.
Nevada may be known for its wide-open spaces and desert oases like Las Vegas and Reno. But it’s also home to some of the most haunted places in the world. They include ghost towns and semi-ghost towns like Virginia City, Rhyolite, and Goldfield.
Besides settlements strewn across the Great Basin, there are also specific buildings that get plenty of ghost hunting attention. They include the Clown Motel in Tonopah , known for its horrific collection of more than 3,000 clown dolls, posters, ceramics, and other memorabilia.
The hotel sits next to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, which is as creepy as it sounds. Visitors to the cemetery report hearing disembodied voices and seeing shadowy apparitions and unexplained lights. If all of this wasn’t enough, the current owners of the Clown Motel have decorated some of the rooms to pay homage to movies like Halloween , The Exorcist , and Friday the 13t h. Do you dare spend the night?
If you thought it couldn’t get any creepier than clowns and a historic cemetery, think again. In Mexico, there’s an island covered in soulless, lifeless dolls. Many are naked and missing limbs, heads, eyelids, hair, or other body parts.
The Island of Dolls is hidden among the canals of Xochimilco, an area recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site thanks to its Aztec origins and history. The dolls hang ominously from trees and lay scattered among the grass.
How did they get there in the first place? According to legend, the deceased owner of the island, Julian Santa Barrera, found the dead body of a little girl in one of the canals. Fearful evil spirits haunted the place, he started hanging the dolls to keep these bad spirits at bay.
How did a scenic island near Venice’s most picturesque canals get such a bad rap? A perfect storm of spooky happenings. In the Middle Ages, Poveglia Island served as a quarantine zone for those dying from the bubonic plague.
During the plague, Venice saw a death toll of between 30 and 70 percent , which means mortality weighed down the island and the city. Some have even declared Venice “one big plague graveyard.” But the grim heritage of Poveglia doesn’t end there.
In the 19th century, it acted as a storage area and staging ground for Napoleon Bonaparte’s weapons. Not to be outdone, in the 20th century, the island housed an insane asylum where gruesome medical experiments occurred. Today, the place is off-limits to the public but can be seen from the neighboring island of Lido.
Nothing says Southern Gothic like Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana. From its sprawling, massive oak trees draped in somber Spanish moss to its severe clapboard exterior built in the Creole cottage style.
Constructed in 1794 by David Bradford, many people rank Myrtles Plantation as one of the most haunted places in the world. Its history lives up to these claims, with at least ten murders attributed to the site, more than a century of brutal slavery, and a whopping twelve different spirits!
They include Chloe, an enslaved girl who supposedly had her ear cut off as a punishment for eavesdropping. In retaliation, she poisoned the house food, leaving two of the owner’s children dead. Her phantom is distinguished by the turban she wears to conceal her severed ear.
Disembodied voices. Shadow people. Turban-wearing ghosts. It doesn’t get more sinister than the locations above.
Have you been to any of these haunted hotspots, or would you like to add another to the list? Let us know in the comments below. And if you’d like to read more about paranormal activity, check out our articles on Real-Life Haunted Objects .
