HAUNTS USA

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Find Your Haunt

History and legends of haunted America

The history is real. The stories are part of it.

Discover historic places, haunted towns, and local legends through source-aware editorial guides that keep documented history separate from reported experience and folklore.

Historical haunted places

Where the record and the legend meet

Deep guides to real American properties, their documented pasts, the stories associated with them, and what visitors can responsibly experience today.

Explore all places
AI-created editorial interpretation of Maryland State House in Annapolis
Historic place

Annapolis, MD

Maryland State House: Revolution, Government, and Capitol Lore

Begun in 1772 and completed during the Revolution, the Maryland State House is the nation's oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use and briefly served as the United States capitol in 1783-1784.
Legend
AI-created editorial interpretation of William Paca House in Annapolis
Historic place

Annapolis, MD

William Paca House: Georgian Design, Enslaved Labor, and Lore

Built in the 1760s for William and Mary Paca, the five-part Georgian mansion and reconstructed garden interpret elite Revolutionary-era life alongside the labor of enslaved people including Affey, Poll, Sarah, Bett, Sall, and Denby.
Venue marketing
AI-created editorial interpretation of Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis
Historic place

Annapolis, MD

Hammond-Harwood House: Palladian Architecture and House Lore

Architect William Buckland designed the house in 1774 for planter Matthias Hammond; later Pinkney, Loockerman, and Harwood households, enslaved domestic workers, collections, and museum preservation shaped its history.
Legend
AI-created editorial interpretation of Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum in Annapolis
Historic place

Annapolis, MD

Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum: Black History and Preservation

Maryland's official museum of African American heritage occupies the former Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church, a nineteenth-century landmark adapted to preserve community, civil rights, religious, and cultural history.
No paranormal claim
AI-created editorial interpretation of Biltmore House in Asheville
Historic place

Asheville, NC

Biltmore House: Gilded Age Design, Labor, and Estate Lore

George Vanderbilt, architect Richard Morris Hunt, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, craftspeople, laborers, and estate staff created Biltmore House and its working landscape between 1888 and the house's opening in 1895.
Legend
AI-created editorial interpretation of Thomas Wolfe Memorial in Asheville
Historic place

Asheville, NC

Thomas Wolfe Memorial: Boardinghouse History and Literary Lore

The rambling late-nineteenth-century boardinghouse known as Old Kentucky Home was purchased by Julia Wolfe in 1906 and became the childhood setting transformed by Thomas Wolfe into the fictional Dixieland of Look Homeward, Angel.
Legend

How to read HauntsUSA

History first. Stories clearly labeled.

Documented

Supported by primary, government, archival, or institutional records.

Reported

Attributed visitor, staff, or resident accounts presented as reports.

Legend

A long-circulating local story whose historical basis is uncertain.

Venue marketing

A claim appearing in a property’s own promotional material.

Town and city guides

Stories live in landscapes and communities

Understand the geography, industry, preservation work, and local memory behind America’s best-known haunted towns.

Explore haunted towns
AI-created editorial interpretation of Vicksburg in Vicksburg
Haunted town

Vicksburg, MS

Haunted Vicksburg: River Bluffs, Siege History, and Legends

Vicksburg developed within Indigenous river landscapes and colonial networks into a port shaped by slavery, cotton, steamboats, the Civil War siege, emancipation, Reconstruction, flood-control change, commerce, and preservation.
No paranormal claim
AI-created editorial interpretation of Montgomery in Montgomery
Haunted town

Montgomery, AL

Haunted Montgomery: Capital History, Civil Rights, and Legends

Montgomery developed at an Indigenous trade crossroads and on Muscogee homelands through forced cession, cotton and slavery, river and rail commerce, Confederate government, Reconstruction, Black institution building, civil rights activism, and preservation.
No paranormal claim
AI-created editorial interpretation of Key West in Key West
Haunted town

Key West, FL

Haunted Key West: Island History, Forts, Wreckers, and Legends

Key West occupies a maritime Indigenous landscape later shaped by Spanish claims, United States naval power, wrecking, Bahamian settlement, Cuban migration and independence movements, cigar making, war, tourism, and preservation.
No paranormal claim

From the archive

How American ghost stories are made and remembered

Field note

Lincoln’s Ghost Funeral Train: History and Folklore

Field note

Surrency Haunting History: A 1931 Retelling

Field note

The Telltale Lilac Bush: West Virginia Ghost Tales

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