Editorial standards
HauntsUSA is an editorial guide to real places and the stories attached to them. We do not present paranormal activity as established fact. Instead, every guide separates the documented history of a property or community from reported experiences, long-circulating legends, and claims made in promotional material.
Documented means a statement can be supported by primary records or credible institutional sources such as government agencies, archives, historical registers, libraries, museums, or preservation organizations. Reported identifies an attributed first-person account or a recurring experience described by visitors, residents, or staff. Legend describes a community story whose origin or historical basis remains uncertain. Venue marketing identifies language found in a property’s own promotional materials. These categories can appear together, but they are never interchangeable.
We begin with identity and location: the correct name, address, municipality, county, state, ownership or stewardship, and public-access status. We then establish a historical timeline using the strongest sources available. Only after that foundation is clear do we examine how a haunting narrative emerged, who repeated it, and whether different versions can be traced through time.
Operational facts such as hours, telephone numbers, ticket links, and access rules are checked against an official source whenever possible and dated with a last-checked field. Readers are always encouraged to confirm details before traveling because historic properties, museums, public lands, and private sites can change access without notice.
Core location and town guides are designed to be approximately 1,000 to 1,200 words when the source record supports that depth. The page structure gives search engines and answer systems clear entities, locations, dates, relationships, and claim language, while the prose remains useful to people. We do not pad thin records with invented detail. A shorter, well-sourced page is more trustworthy than a long page built from repetition.
Haunted-history writing often touches death, incarceration, war, illness, forced labor, displacement, institutionalization, and family grief. Those subjects are history, not decoration. Our pages avoid turning disability, mental illness, race, poverty, or tragedy into a shortcut for horror. Where sources permit, we name people, institutions, and events accurately and explain the historical context that a legend can obscure.
We also distinguish public destinations from private homes, unsafe ruins, closed properties, and culturally sensitive places. HauntsUSA never encourages trespassing, nighttime intrusion, vandalism, or interference with residents, staff, memorials, or active religious and burial sites.
Generated artwork is labeled as an editorial interpretation and is not represented as a documentary photograph. Licensed, official, and venue-supplied images receive separate rights information. If a rights holder, steward, historian, resident, or reader identifies a problem, the Submit an Edit and Image Rights forms create a review record for the editorial team. No public page is changed automatically from a form submission.