With a name like Sleepy Hollow Road, is it any real surprise this Kentucky road is said the be haunted?
Sleepy Hollow Road is a little ominous without the ghost stories thanks to the dense forest that surrounds it and casts it in shadow. The road has many supernatural tales associated with it, but there’s one you won’t have to seek out. It’ll find you.
A black hearse is said to often appear seemingly out of nowhere and follow other cars driving on the winding curves of the isolated road. The hearse will continue to follow, increasing its speed along the way. Many drivers have claimed to see the hearse and been run off the road by it, only for it to disappear without a trace after.
There’s a lot of bridges in the South with a ghost tale attached to them, and Stuckey’s Bridge is no exception.
The 157-year-old bridge runs over the Chunky River and is rumored to be haunted by a gang member named Stuckey who murdered and robbed travelers during the early nineteenth century in the area of where the bridge would eventually be built, reports The Meridian Star.
Stuckey was eventually caught, put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging at the bridge he is now said to haunt.
Since then, folks have claimed to see the apparition of a man hanging from the bridge as well as heard unexplained splashing they claim is the sound of his body hitting the water.
At the popular Poogan’s Porch restaurant in Charleston, you might not just experience a delicious meal; you may experience the supernatural as well.
The Victorian house that now serves as the home of Poogan’s Porch was built in 1888 and two sisters, Elizabeth and Zoe St. Amand, once resided there. The women were said to be incredibly close, so much so that when Elizabeth passed away, it sent the elderly Zoe into a mental breakdown.
After neighbors found her roaming the street calling out for her dead sister, she was taken to a local hospital where she lived out the rest of her life. It appears Zoe felt her afterlife, on the other hand, should be lived out at her former home.
Stories of folks spotting the ghost of Zoe on the street and inside the house, calling out and looking for Elizabeth, started shortly after her death, but became much more frequent once it was converted into a restaurant in 1976.
Oh, and did I mention a dog named Poogan, the restaurant’s namesake, also happens to haunt its rooms? Yep.
While Moon River Brewing Co. in Savannah, Ga., is a good place to relax and have a beer, it’s also rumored to be a good place to spot the supernatural.
The Brewing Co. opened in 1999 in the building that once housed The City Hotel, which was built in 1821 and closed in 1864. During its short time in operation, several deaths took place inside the hotel, and many believe the spirits of the deceased are still there today.
Staff and guests at the bar and restaurant have reported seeing bottles thrown on their own as well as felt an invisible force push them. Others say they have seen a glowing white apparition on the building’s upper floors.
Considering how many workers lost their lives at Sloss Furnaces’ in Birmingham, Ala. when it was in operation, is it any surprise that the former industrial site is said to be haunted?
Working at the furnace, which was in use for nearly 100 years, was considered to be very dangerous, and employees met grisly deaths — either by being incinerated, poisoned by carbon monoxide or falling victim to steam pipes that often burst unexpectedly — on a regular basis.
While the furnace, which was named a National Historic Landmark in 1981, may have closed up shop in 1971, it seems not all of its former employees left, according to The Travel Channel. At night, visitors have claimed to hear the screams of those who died, seen shadowy figures and heard the calls of a foreman deriding his crew.
Like a lot of ghost stories, the tale of Henry Vignes, who is said to haunt New Orleans’ St. Louis Cemetery, is a sad one.
Vignes, a sailor during the nineteenth century, trusted the wrong person with keeping his important documents, including the deeds to his family tomb, according to Ghost City Tours’ website.
The swindler sold the deeds and Vignes died before he could reclaim ownership. Instead of being placed in his family tomb, the sailor was buried in an unmarked grave in the St. Louis Cemetery.
Since his death, visitors of the cemetery have claimed to see Vignes looking for his grave. Some even say his ghost will approach the living and ask if they know where the Vignes tomb is. Others said his apparition can be heard saying “I need to rest!” as he wanders through the tombs.
The Candy Lady is a legendary figure who is said to make children in Austin, Texas, disappear. “Children in the area told stories of how they would wake in the morning to find candy sitting on their windowsills … and would start to find notes on the wrappers, many times asking the children to come and play,” according to UrbanLegendsOnline.com. “The notes were signed ‘The Candy Lady.'”
According to legend, numerous children apparently took the Candy Lady up on her offer. “To this day, any time a kid goes missing, all the locals say The Candy Lady got them. Children believe that she takes them somewhere and pulls out their teeth or stabs them with a fork,” the website says.
When you approach a railway tunnel on Colchester Road in Fairfax County, be careful: This is where the Bunny Man is said to roam. According to local lore, the Bunny Man is a man dressed in a rabbit costume who carries and ax. A story by WAMU.org says, “In 1904, there was an asylum not far from this bridge. Clifton residents didn’t like the idea of mental patients near their new homes, so they got it shut down, and all the patients were taken by bus to Lorton prison.” The bus crashed and one inmate escaped. That story claims the name came from bunny carcasses left in the woods that the escapee had eaten.
The WAMU article reports that people began going to the tunnel on Halloween. Legend says if they see a bright light or orb, the people “are strung up like bunnies.”
The legend of the Bell Witch of Tennessee is arguably the most famous haunting in the country, or at least the best documented. It has been the subject of books and movies across 200 years. The Bell Witch remains popular with tourists today – people can visit the Bell Witch Cave, located on the land where John Bell and his daughter, Betsy, reportedly experienced horrific manifestations between 1817 and 1821 in Adams, Tenn.
It began when John Bell spotted a mysterious creature in the cornfield with “the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit.” Soon after the sighting, the Bell children began hearing scratching noises and experiencing various disturbances, thought to be the result of a curse by a local woman with whom John had a property dispute, Kate Batts.
Pat Fitzhugh wrote: “The encounters escalated, and the Bells’ youngest daughter, Betsy, began experiencing brutal encounters with the invisible entity. It would pull her hair and slap her relentlessly, often leaving welts and hand prints on her face and body.” In 1820, John Bell died, becoming, Fitzhugh said, “the only person in history whose death was attributed to the doings of a Spirit.”
He continued: “In 1817, Bell contracted a mysterious affliction that worsened over the next three years, ultimately leading to his death. Kate took pleasure in tormenting him during his affliction, finally poisoning him one December morning as he lay unconscious after suffering a number of violent seizures.”
Before turning their thoughts to the intriguing legends associated with these ruins, any person who strays off the marked footpaths and loses his or her footing on the edge of the precipices that drop away on every side of this aptly nicknamed “citadel in the sky.” And let us not forget that early in 1244 it was a feat of rock climbing that sealed the fate of the Cathars when they were besieged here by the army of King Louis IX. After seven months, during which traditional military strategies had brought nothing but failure, Hugues des Arcis, the commander of the forces encamped at the foot of this eagle’s nest, finally decided to send a small group of particularly agile soldiers up the cliff face. Under cover of darkness, this detachment reached the summit, captured a watchtower, and installed a trebuchet, with which it proceeded to bombard the interior of the castle without respite, making life impossible for the besieged, who were forced to surrender after a few weeks.
The fate of this community, the last bastion of the Cathar faith in France, is well known. One Sunday in March 1244, the day of the equinox, the believers—more than two hundred men and women—were led down to a pyre that had been set up at the foot of the hill, steadfastly refusing to renounce their faith. What else could they do, these pacifists who had taken a vow to show courage in the face of suffering and death? The name Cathar—from the Greek katharos, meaning “pure”—was given them by their contemporaries on account of their asceticism and refusal to compromise in any way. For the same reason, those who had undergone the rite of ordination called the consolamentum were known as perfecti, although among one another they preferred the terms “good man” and “good woman.” The band of sympathizers protecting the pacifist Cathars were allowed to go free provided they pledged to stop supporting heresy and swore allegiance to the king of France.
The Château de Montségur that stands today is not the same fortress that existed at the time of these dreadful events. Historians, archeologists, and local storytellers cannot agree on all the details. For example, was the Cathars’ place of martyrdom the prats dels cremats (“field of the burned”), as indicated today by a stele, or was it a neighboring hill? At this magnificent site, so many questions remain unanswered. There’s the legendary Cathar treasure, said to have been held in safekeeping at Montségur before being smuggled out to an unknown destination. And then there are the four men deputed by the community to slip away under the utmost secrecy prior to the ultimate surrender, carrying with them who knows what. Items of treasure? Precious documents? Mysterious keys enabling the Cathar tradition to be revived elsewhere? At Montségur nothing seems impossible. In the last century a team of German researchers came, with the blessing of the Nazi regime, to investigate, convinced that the castle housed the Holy Grail, the famous cup believed to have been used to catch Christ’s blood.
What should we make of the site’s architecture, of the spectacular alignment of the sun’s rays at solstice time, as if its architects had wanted the castle to function as a kind of astronomical calendar? And doesn’t its floor plan reflect the constellation of Boötes, with the donjon representing the star Arcturus? Is it also mere chance that “Cant del Boièr” (Song of the Herdsman) remains one of the most popular folk songs in the Occitanian canon, with some people reading into its words a coded message addressed to future generations?
“After seven hundred years the bay tree will flower again”—and with it, no doubt, the Cathar faith. Thus were the words of the troubadour in the Occitania of old. Or was it the last of the perfecti to be burned at the stake? Or even a poet born generations later? Basically, nobody knows. It is even possible that the bay tree could be an olive tree, and that the date is regularly adjusted so that it never loses its relevance. No matter. The legend remains perplexing enough for visitors to be drawn in by its verses while contemplating the ruins of what the inquisitors called “Satan’s synagogue” – but never quite managed to utterly destroy.
Mark Bere Peterson’s Hauntings, Urban Legends the Northern Tradition and Southern Witchcraft 