Documented places and attributed folklore
Historical haunted places
Research-led guides to real American places associated with ghost lore. Each page identifies what is documented, what is reported, and what remains legend.
329 historic places
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Historic place
Boston, MA
Established in 1630, King’s Chapel Burying Ground is Boston’s oldest municipal cemetery and predates the adjacent chapel building.
Legend
Historic place
Santa Fe, NM
The present hotel opened in the 1920s on a site long associated with lodging and was shaped by regional architecture, railroad tourism, art, hospitality labor, and Harvey Company management.
Venue marketing
Historic place
Cleveland, OH
Founded in 1869, Lake View Cemetery developed as a landscaped burial ground and contains major memorials, architecture, horticulture, and records of Cleveland communities.
Legend
Historic place
Burlington, VT
Lakeview developed as a landscaped municipal cemetery overlooking Lake Champlain and contains varied monuments, family plots, military burials, and the Gothic Howard Mortuary Chapel. Its records reflect many communities within Burlington's changing population.
Legend
Historic place
New Orleans, LA
The house at 1140 Royal Street is associated with Delphine LaLaurie, whose abuse of enslaved people was exposed after an 1834 fire. The event is documented, but later retellings added gruesome details that cannot all be verified. The present structure was substantially rebuilt after the fire and later expanded. It is a private residence, not a museum, and its history should be approached as a record of slavery and violence rather than as a horror attraction.
Legend
Historic place
St. Paul, MN
Completed in 1902 and expanded in 1908, the pink-granite federal building housed courts, customs, and postal functions before a major preservation campaign converted it into Landmark Center.
Reported
Historic place
Philadelphia, PA
Founded in 1836, Laurel Hill is a landmark rural cemetery whose art, landscape, and public programming shaped American memorial culture.
Legend
Historic place
Alexandria, VA
Built in 1785, the house was home to Lee and Fendall family members, enslaved and free African Americans, served as a Union hospital, and later housed labor leader John L. Lewis before becoming a museum.
Venue marketing
Historic place
Sacramento, CA
Built in the 1850s and enlarged by Leland and Jane Stanford, the mansion served political and family functions before becoming a home for children and later a restored state historic park and official reception center.
Legend
Historic place
St. Louis, MO
In St. Louis, the Lemp Mansion is inseparable from the rise and decline of one of the city's great brewing families. Its brick walls and formal rooms stand near the former Lemp brewery complex, where lager production became an industrial empire. The mansion's later reputation for tragedy and ghost stories has made it a familiar name in American haunted history, but the fuller story begins with immigration, beer, and nineteenth-century St. Louis.
Venue marketing
Historic place
Chicago, IL
Part of present-day Lincoln Park occupies former cemetery ground, and the Couch tomb remains a visible reminder of nineteenth-century burial and park development.
Legend
Historic place
Dubuque, IA
Founded in 1875, Linwood Cemetery developed as a landscaped burial ground serving Dubuque and surrounding communities. Its monuments, Civil War memorial section, veterans' commemorations, and association records document generations of local history.
Legend