Across the pond, Haunted Places
 

The Tombstone of William Henry "Harry" Thornton.

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The Tombstone of William Henry “Harry” Thornton.

William Henry “Harry” Thornton, was a classical pianist who played for the troops in World War I but sadly succumbed to the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918 at age 35. His family had a grand piano, lid open, carved in stone and engraved with his name just over the keys. A lyric on the side of the piano reads: “Sweet thou art sleeping; Cradled on my heart; Safe in god’s keeping; While I must weep apart.” The words are an English translation from the Puccini opera, “Madama Butterfly.” In place of sheet music on the music stand was a “broadsheet” with an engraving of Thornton playing the piano. The monument has fallen into some disrepair over the years, and the “sheet music” have gone missing along with the piano lid. It is a haunting image that reminds us that nothing lasts forever. This remarkable Tombstone can be found in Highgate Eastern cemetery, London, England.





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Civil War Ghosts, Maryland, New York, Southern Ghost Stories, Virginia, Washington
 

The Dead of Antietam

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The Dead of Antietam, Civil War Historic Site

The Battle of antietam also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the Southern United States, was a battle of the American Civil War, fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek. Part of the Maryland Campaign, it was the first field army–level engagement in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest day in United States history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing.

After pursuing the Confederate general Robert E. Lee into Maryland, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan of the Union Army launched attacks against Lee’s army, in defensive positions behind Antietam Creek. At dawn on September 17, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee’s left flank. Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller’s Cornfield, and fighting swirled around the Dunker Church. Union assaults against the Sunken Road eventually pierced the Confederate center, but the Federal advantage was not followed up. In the afternoon, Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s corps entered the action, capturing a stone bridge over Antietam Creek and advancing against the Confederate right. At a crucial moment, Confederate Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill’s division arrived from Harpers Ferry and launched a surprise counterattack, driving back Burnside and ending the battle. Although outnumbered two-to-one, Lee committed his entire force, while McClellan sent in less than three-quarters of his army, enabling Lee to fight the Federals to a standstill. During the night, both armies consolidated their lines. In spite of crippling casualties, Lee continued to skirmish with McClellan throughout September 18, while removing his battered army south of the Potomac River.

Despite having superiority of numbers, McClellan’s attacks failed to achieve force concentration, which allowed Lee to counter by shifting forces and moving along interior lines to meet each challenge. Therefore, despite ample reserve forces that could have been deployed to exploit localized successes, McClellan failed to destroy Lee’s army. McClellan’s persistent but erroneous belief that he was outnumbered contributed to his cautiousness throughout the campaign.

McClellan had halted Lee’s invasion of Maryland, but Lee was able to withdraw his army back to Virginia without interference from the cautious McClellan. McClellan’s refusal to pursue Lee’s army led to his removal from command by President Abraham Lincoln in November. Although the battle was tactically inconclusive, the Confederate troops had withdrawn first from the battlefield, and abandoned their invasion, making it a Union strategic victory. It was a sufficiently significant victory to give Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, which discouraged the British and French governments from pursuing any potential plans to recognize the Confederacy.( THE DEAD OF ANTIETAM ),, It was at Antietam, the blood-churning battle in Sharpsburg, Md., where more Americans died in a single day than ever had before, that one Union soldier recalled how “the piles of dead … were frightful.” The Scottish-born photographer Alexander Gardner arrived there two days after the September 17, 1862, slaughter. He set up his stereo wet-plate camera and started taking dozens of images of the body-strewn country­side, documenting fallen soldiers, burial crews and trench graves. Gardner worked for Mathew Brady, and when he returned to New York City his employer arranged an exhibition of the work. Visitors were greeted with a plain sign reading “The Dead of Antietam.” But what they saw was anything but simple. Genteel society came upon what are believed to be the first recorded images of war casualties. Gardner’s photographs are so sharp that people could make out ­faces. The death was unfiltered, and a war that had seemed remote suddenly became harrowingly immediate. Gardner helped make Americans realize the significance of the fratricide that by 1865 would take many lives . For in the hallowed fields fell not faceless strangers but sons, brothers, fathers, cousins and friends. And Gardner’s images of Antietam created a lasting legacy by establishing a painfully potent visual precedent for the way all wars have since been covered.(Location= Washington County,
near Sharpsburg, Maryland)






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California, Haunted Places, Pacific Coast Ghost Stories
 

The Ominous Fog

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The Ominous Fog

The Ominous Fog is a scary campfire story told in the movie The Fog about the legend of the ghosts of Antonio Bay and a shipwreck at Spivey Point.

11:55… Almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before 12:00, just to keep us warm. In five minutes, it will be the 21st of April.

One hundred years ago on the 21st of April, out in the waters around Spivey Point, a small clipper ship drew toward land. Suddenly, out of the night, the fog rolled in. A thick penetrating fog. For a moment, they could see nothing, not a foot in front of them. Then, they saw a light. By God, it was a fire burning on the shore, strong enough to penetrate the swirling mist.

They steered a course toward the light. But it was a campfire, like this one. The ship crashed against the rocks, the hull sheared in two, it snapped like a twig. The wreckage sank, with all the men aboard.

At the bottom of the sea, lay the “Elizabeth Dane”, with her crew, their lungs filled with salt water, their eyes open, staring into the darkness. And above, as suddenly as it come, the thick mysterious fog lifted, receded back across the ocean and never came again.

But it is told by the fishermen, and their fathers and grandfathers, that when the fog returns to Antonio Bay, the men at the bottom of the sea, out in the water by Spivey Point will rise up and search for the campfire that led them to their dark, icy death…


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Missouri
 

The Gravestones of John B and Julia Olivia Sarpy Morrison

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The Gravestones of John B and Julia Olivia Sarpy Morrison.

Two of the most poignant grave markers in the Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri mark the graves of two young children, John B, who died in Aug. 13, 1876 at the age of 6, and that of his sister Julia Olivia, who died in 1870 at the age of 3. The children’s mother Julia Ann Adele Morrison (nee Sarpy) was a descendant of Madame Chouteau, the wife of August Chouteau, founder of St. Louis.
Each child’s grave has a white marble monument which is carved into likenesses of Julia and J.B. The little girl is shown sitting in her crib, her head tilted slightly upward with her hand clutching a rattle.
Young J.B. is propped up in a wheelchair, partially covered by a blanket with a hand dangling over one side.

Until her death in 1925, the children’s mother Julia kept the grave-sites covered during the winter months. She was also known to have been a frequent visitor to the cemetery and she would often bring the children’s toys and personal items with her, arranging them carefully around the graves. It is a scene that stirs a visitor’s feelings of sympathy for all parents who have lost young children.




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massachusetts
 

Jesse Pomeroy……14 Year old Serial Killer

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Jesse Pomeroy……14 Year old Serial Killer.

Jesse Harding Pomeroy was the youngest person ever convicted of ‘Murder in the First Degree’ in the history of Massachusetts, having been found guilty by a jury trial held in the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County in December 1874.

At the age of 12 he was arrested for brutally mutilating seven boys – all of whom survived, but less than two years later he was arrested for two counts of murder.

Jesse Harding Pomeroy was born on 29 November,1859, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas J. Pomeroy and Ruth Ann Snowman. He was the youngest of two children, his brother Charles Jefferson Pomeroy was two years older. His mother was a dressmaker.

Due to having a bad hair lip and one eye which was completely white, he suffered some degree of bullying whilst at school.
When Jesse turned 11 however, he started bullying others, and taking it onto a completely new level. He would take small children into the woods and would demand they take their clothes of. He would tie them up and beat them, poking them with sharp objects, cutting them etc. After hurting seven kids, he was arrested and sent to the WestBorough Reform School. The Boston Globe covered this story… the last line of the article stating “It is generally concluded that the boy is mentally deficient.”

A year and a half later he was released, due to good behaviour. It seems that he formulated a better plan while he was in Reform School, which was basically that he couldn’t get into trouble with the police if the kids he hurt were dead.

Ten year old Mary Curren disappeared in March 1874. She disappeared without a trace, and the police had no leads.
One month later, four year old Horace Mullen also disappeared. His body was found though, in the marshlands on the outskirts of the city. His body had been slashed with a knife and he was nearly decapitated.

When his body was found, Jesse’s name, as having a record as a child torturer, was at the top of the list. Jesse was 14 at that time. The police found a bloodstained knife in his trousers. While Jesse was locked up in preparation for trial, his mother moved house, to escape the press and censoring of her neighbours. Once she had vacated, the landlord decided to renovate. The basement was dug up, and the body of the missing Mary Curren was found. Her remains were hastily and carelessly concealed in an ash heap.
When police asked Jesse about her body, he admitted to killing her, as well as 27 others, 12 of which he claimed he buried around his mother’s house.

At the trial, Jesse was found guilty of the two original murders, and despite the fact that he was a 14 year old boy with mild mental retardation, he was sentenced to death. This sentence was eventually over an 18 month period reduced to life in prison, and he was to be kept in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.
Jesse Harding Pomeroy spent a total of 41 years in solitary confinement. He tried to kill himself many ti

mes, without success, and repeatedly tried to escape.
In 1917, Pomeroy’s sentence was commuted to the extent of allowing him the privileges afforded to other life prisoners. At first he resisted, wanting nothing less than a pardon. He eventually adjusted to his changed circumstances and appeared in a minstrel show at the prison. In 1929, by this time an elderly man of 70 in frail health, he was transferred to Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he died just 2 years later on September 29, 1932 at the age of 72.


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Haunted Places, User Submitted
 

The Mysterious Skeleton

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The Mysterious Skeleton

The Mysterious Skeleton is a creepy short story about a man who is chased by another man who wants to kill him. It is based on an old ghost story called “The Man of Science” by Jerome K Jerome.

This story begins with a small man and a tall man. The two men were attending the same university, both of them studying science. The small man had done the tall man a great wrong. Nobody knows exactly what that wrong was, but they say it had to do with a woman. The tall man was seething with anger and hate. The small man knew that his life was in danger, so he did the only thing he could do… He fled.

The small man left town immediately, without even bothering to pack his things. He just up and left on the first train he could catch. The tall man followed him. It became a game of cat and mouse. The small man had a few hours’ head start, but as the days went by, the tall man was gaining on him. The tall man chased him from town to town and city to city, always close on his heels.

The small man could never rest. He knew his pursuer was only a few hours behind him and he had to keep running. The tall man never paused for a moment either. He knew he was close and every day drew him nearer to the man he intended to kill.

One day, the small man came to a lonely church in the countryside. He went inside fell to his knees and began to pray. He closed his eyes and prayed with all his heart for his sins to be forgiven and for his life to be saved.

When he opened his eyes and looked around, he was horrified to see the tall man walking down the aisle with a mocking smile on his lips.

The small man didn’t move. He was trembling with fear. All he could do was watch in horror as the tall man reached into his pocket, pulled out a knife and slowly came towards him.

Then, just as the small man was expecting to meet his end, the church bells suddenly began to ring. The tall man clutched his chest, stumbled backwards and fell. He was dead, and the mocking smile was frozen on his face.

For a moment, the small man stared in amazement and disbelief. Then, he got to his feet, wiped the sweat from his brow and ran off into the night.

Nobody knew what to do with the body of the tall man. Nobody knew who he was or where he had come from. There was no family to notify and nobody to claim his remains. They donated his body to science.

Years passed and the small man finished his studies. He became a science teacher and found a job in a school. In the science lab, there was a lot of equipment… glass beakers, metal instruments and jars of chemicals.

In the corner of the lab, there was a human skeleton. It was very old and one day, it fell apart. The small man had to visit a supply shop to buy another one.

It was delivered a few days later and he set it up in his lab. When school was finished for the day, he was clearing up the equipment the students had been using, when he thought he heard the faint sound of laughter. The small man stood very still and strained his ears to listen.

He walked over to the corner of the room where the skeleton was standing. He stared into the hollow eye sockets of the grinning skull and it stared back at him. Something about it unnerved him. The man tried to tell himself it was just his imagination and he slowly backed away. As he continued clearing up, he kept one eye on the skeleton.

An hour later, the janitor was locking up the school. He knocked on the door of the science lab, but there was no answer. He listened at the door, but he couldn’t hear anything. He opened the door and peeked inside.

The small man lay dead on the floor. Around his throat were the red marks of bony fingers and in his eyes, there was a look of utter terror.


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Florida, Haunted Places, Michigan
 

The Inherited Mansion

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The Inherited Mansion

In this scary horror story, a young family learns that something terrifying lives within their inherited mansion.

I have always hated the cold. Too many cold winter nights spent alone while my father, an unemployed butcher, blew our welfare benefits on booze and took his frustrations out on me with his belt. I left Michigan fifteen years ago at the age of sixteen after a particularly bad beating, and never looked back. Last I had heard, about eight years ago, he had taken to living on the streets. Good riddance, I say.

I spent a few years in the military, got a college education courtesy of Uncle Sam, and started a family of my own in the sunny state of Florida. Life was great, and I had not thought about my father in years. I truly believed that the worst part of my life was behind me. I had the American Dream: beautiful wife, kids, and was on the verge of buying our very own home. That all changed last year.

Last November my wife and I were nearly ready to sign the papers on our dream home. She worked as a home decorator and I owned half of a small auto repair shop with an old Army buddy. We were so close to signing the mortgage for a small, beautiful house. We were not to be so lucky. I can still remember the heavy envelope we received in the mail the day before we were set to finalize the purchase of our new home.

Inside the envelope was a letter from a lawyer in Detroit informing me that my Grandparents on my Mother’s side had passed away. My mother had died during my birth, and I had never met my Grandparents. I remember my father once telling me, during one of his many attempts at sobriety, that my Mother’s parents had hated my father, and blamed him for her death. The lawyer’s letter stated that I was the only living heir to a sizable estate. I directly inherited $700,000, a decaying mansion, and what was estimated to be 3.5 million dollars worth of artwork and antique furniture. The only caveat was that I needed to be in the small Michigan town to claim the inheritance within thirty days, or else the estate would become property of the State of Michigan.

My wife was ecstatic. I tried to match her excitement, but failed miserably. I had done a hell of a good job building a new life to replace the broken life I had left behind in Michigan. Yea, this was a shit-ton of money, but we had what we needed here in Florida. My wife was determined. She believed that this was the jumpstart that her career needed. She convinced me that we should move the entire family into the mansion. She could blog about home improvement and interior decorating and I could use the inheritance money to start a new auto shop. It was a done deal. I wish that I had resisted more, knowing what I do now, but my wife is stubborn as a mule when she wants something.

So we moved. I sold my stake in the auto shop to my buddy, and reluctantly packed up for the cross-country move. My two kids shared my wife’s enthusiasm for the move. She showed them pictures of the place that were included in the envelope from the lawyer. I remember my oldest son, Brian, saying, “Cool! Our very own haunted house!”

He was right. The place seemed pretty damn haunted. It was huge, over 6,000 square feet, and looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years. The mansion seemed to have a perpetual fog surrounding it, likely due to its proximity to Lake Erie. The lawyer informed me that my grandparents had lived as shut-ins for the past twenty years. Their lawyer had last seen them five years ago, before they disappeared. A lengthy police investigation determined that my grandparents had likely drowned in the lake, possibly as part of a suicide pact.

White sheets covered all of the furniture and artwork, and a thick layer of dust covered everything in the mansion except for in the kitchen and master bedroom. The roof leaked in a few areas and the yard was in dire need of landscaping. The only source of heat came from huge, drafty fireplaces, which seemed to scream during windy nights. So yeah, my son Brian was right, we had our very own haunted house.

The first few weeks of living in the mansion were actually pretty great. My two sons and I would go out onto the estate grounds and collect firewood to warm the mansion. My wife started her home improvement blog and got to work on fixing up the place. I began putting out feelers for local communities in need of a good auto shop. We had one of the best Christmas’s in recent memory. My wife even found an old photo album, which had pictures of my mom as a child and teenager. I became complacent. It all seemed too good to be true.

The initial euphoria of the move began to fade by the second month. The mansion felt too big, too old, and too goddamn creepy. It sounded like a giant awakening from a slumber when fierce gusts of wind blew in from Lake Erie and forced their way through every nook and cranny. I would toss and turn in bed at night, trying to shut out the howl and scream of the wind which seemed to come from deep within the mansion.

After many sleepless nights, I decided it was time to use some of the inheritance money to add insulation to the mansion. I called every handyman and independent contractor in a fifty mile radius. Each one of them made excuses or hung up when I told them the address of the mansion. The area was still reeling from the implosion of Detroit’s economy; these guys needed the business. It should have worried me a little, that people seemed afraid of the place, but it never crossed my mind at the time. Instead I made a trip down to the local hardware store and picked up a couple caulking guns. I will never forget the looks that the locals gave me. At the time I assumed their coldness and stares were due to jealousy of the inheritance. When I look back now, I can remember that their expressions seemed to exhibit wariness, perhaps even pity from the locals that suspected the truth about the mansion.

I got back to the mansion and caulked like a madman throughout the night. I stalked throughout the mansion, caulking gun in hand, in search of gaps, cracks, and holes to fill up. My wife and kids slept peacefully throughout the night, yet I tossed and turned while the mansion tormented me with demonic sounds. Sleeping in different rooms did not help. Ear plugs, music and my head stuffed between two thick pillows finally allowed me to get a full night of sleep. My wife suspected it was all in my head and told me that it was just the stress of moving back home after so many years.

On New Year’s Day my wife woke me and told me that a blizzard was heading towards our town. There was already a foot of snow on the ground, and weatherman on the radio said to expect three to four feet of snow within the next 48 hours. I suited up to go out and chop and stack wood in case the storm lasted longer than expected. After two hours of hard work I decided to take a break and head back inside. Another half foot of snow had fallen while I had been cutting wood. I remember thinking to myself that I would get the boys to come out and help stack the wood while I chopped.

On my way back I noticed paw prints in the fresh snow. They were big. Too big for an animal. Almost human, but who the hell walks barefoot in the snow? I was about to find out.

My thoughts trailed off as I noticed that the front door of the mansion was wide open. I had definitely closed it when I left. I quickened my pace, and began to call out to scold one of the boys for leaving the door open in the middle of a blizzard. I paused mid sentence when I saw a round object lying on the doorstep.

My heart dropped into my stomach and my hands clenched around the axe. Lying on the doorstep was the frozen head of an old man. Head severed cleanly at the neck. Blank, cold eyes stared lifelessly over Lake Erie while his tongue protruded from the side of mouth, twisted in a permanent scream.

Instinct took over. It was fight or flight. I stormed into the mansion, feeling the surge of adrenaline as I called out for my wife and sons. A faint scream arose from the direction of the kitchen. I took off running and came upon an open trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen. Cold air burst through the trapdoor as I lowered myself onto the ladder. I found myself in a dark passage illuminated by smoky oil lanterns hung on the walls. I ran through the tunnel with both hands wrapped around the wooden handle of the axe. Sobs floated up the passage towards me. I broke into a sprint and soon emerged into a large, chilly room.

My wife and oldest son sat in the middle of the room shivering with their hands tied behind their backs. A dozen frozen bodies, hung from the walls on meat hooks, looked down upon us. Against the far wall I spied my youngest son tied down to what looked like a homemade guillotine.

I took a step towards the contraption, but an old man emerged from the shadowed wall and grunted, “I wouldn’t touch that”.

The grizzled old man held a gun in his right hand and a rope in his left. The rope led up to the ceiling, where it held a sharp guillotine blade in place, about ten feet over the neck of my youngest son.

I took another step towards my son, and the man loosened his grip on the rope, letting the blade drop an inch before catching the rope again. I froze.

“What do you want with us” I sputtered through clenched teeth.

“Dinner” he said with a phlegm filled laugh. “A man gotta eat” For a moment I thought the laugh sounded familiar, but the man resembled no one I had ever known. Yellowed skin covered with oozing lesions, rotted teeth, black and broken fingernails. He looked like something out of a Zombie movie.

A strong gust of wind blew open a large trap door leading outside. The cannibalistic man looked away for a moment, and that was when I raised the axe, and let it fly across the room. The blunt portion of the axe head smashed into the man’s face and he toppled backwards into an oil lantern hanging on the wall. His grip on the rope loosened and then gave way.

I took two quick steps and dived forward. Arm stretched upwards as the blade began to fall. I caught the blade in the palm of my hand, and it sank downwards, finally coming to rest halfway through my forearm. I fought the pain and terror surging through my body and forced myself to grab onto the rope to pull the guillotine blade back up. My son was unharmed, except for being drenched in my blood. Smoke wafted up behind me. The broken lamp had started a growing fire in the corner of the room.

I pulled my wife and two sons to their feet and rushed them outside. I freed their hands from the bonds and my wife immediately began to bandage my arm and hand with whatever clothing we could spare.

I began to lead them back up the hill, towards the mansion, when I heard an inhuman scream from behind us. We turned around and saw the man, engulfed in flame, burst from the hidden chamber. He ran haphazardly towards the lake, but slipped on the bank and fell face forward into the mud. He writhed for a moment longer, as the flames continued to burn, and then lay still.

The police did not arrive for hours, due to the snow. By that time it had snowed over five feet. I do not want to imagine what sort of horror we would have had to endure, if we had been snowbound with that lunatic.

The police chief of Detroit told me it was the most gruesome case they had seen in his entire career. The Detroit Cannibal, as the press called him, passed away shortly after the police arrived at the mansion from full body, third degree burns. Police have been unable to identify the cannibal, but I have my suspicions. They were also unable to identify most of the victims, except for my grandparents. Police believe most of them to be vagrants, alcoholics and drifters.

My family and I are back in sunny Florida. My arm is healing, and I hope to be back at work in the auto shop soon. We sold all of the furniture and artwork from the mansion, but were unable to sell the mansion. I relinquished ownership of it to the town. Last I heard they were planning to demolish it. We’re still dealing with emotional trauma of this ordeal. The kids are young enough that they should be fine with the help of some therapy. I still have trouble sleeping at night, and even now, I am plagued with the thought that it might not have been the wind that was keeping me up at night.


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Haunted Places, Montana
 

Urban Legend from Montana -The Bleeding Sink

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Urban Legend from Montana : The Bleeding Sink

I found it extremely annoying that one of the bathrooms on my dorm was permanently closed. Especially since the cause was an urban legend. An urban legend, I tell you! According to the story, years and years ago some guy got himself massively drunk at a bar in downtown Helena and had passed out in the bathroom on the fourth floor.

Apparently, he hit his head on the sink as he fell, and his blood had spattered the sink as he slid senseless to the floor and silently hemorrhaged to death. His death was considered a “sad accident” by faculty, staff and townspeople. But that was no reason to shut up the bathroom for decades! I completely discounted the story of the bleeding sink. That was just an urban legend the students circulated to explain the locked door.

“I’m sick of sharing a bathroom with you disgusting bunch,” I grumbled to my roommate. “I’m going to break into the fourth-floor bathroom.”

My roommate’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know that bathroom is haunted?” he exclaimed. “The bloodstains on the sink are as fresh today as they were when the accident happened back in the 1960s, and sometimes you can hear the boy moaning as his life fades away on the bathroom floor!”

“Romantic tale,” I snapped. “My granny lives in a haunted castle in Scotland with ghost stories that would make your hair stand on end. She’d laugh at me if she found out I ignored a perfectly good bathroom because of a few bloodstains. Besides, the maintenance staff told me the bathroom was shut up pending renovations. No big deal!”

“You’ll be sorry,” my roommate said darkly. I ignored him. He was just mad because I’d lumped him in with the disgusting bunch of guys who dirtied up the bathroom on my floor. You’d think someone would teach them to pick up their dirty clothes and clean the sink once in awhile.

When the dorm quieted down for the night – which wasn’t until late – I hurried up to the fourth floor with a piece of wire I’d purchased at a local hardware store. My little brother and I had become expert lock-pickers over the years, since our mother had a bad habit of locking her keys into the house or the car at least once a week. With all that experience, the lock on the bathroom door gave me no problems.

The bathroom was rather old-fashioned in appearance and had a disused air. There was dust in the corners, and a spider web drooped from the ceiling. But I heard no unearthly groaning, no mysterious footsteps. I carefully inspected the sink, the walls and the floor. Other than a smallish orange discoloration on the sink, there was no blood anywhere. Ha! So much for urban legends. There was probably something in the water that caused discoloration over time. I turned a tap experimentally, sure that the maintenance staff had shut off the water long ago. To my surprise, water gushed forth instantly. I smiled. Well, well. It looked like I had a bathroom to myself after all! I carefully locked the door behind me when I left.

I got up late the next morning, and had the downstairs bathroom all to myself. So it wasn’t until evening, when everyone was back in the dorm, crowding in and out of the bathrooms, that I slipped away to use the locked up facilities. It was still early in the evening, and I made sure no one was around before I headed to the abandoned bathroom. With a few twists of the wire, I opened the lock. As I stepped inside, the air temperature plummeted twenty degrees or more and my nose was hit by the pungent, strong smell of fresh blood. A second later, I saw the blood-spattered sink.

Bright-red gore was everywhere – on the porcelain, on the walls, in the sink , oozing down the sides of the sink. And hovering before it, his feet a good six-inches off the ground, was the luminous form of a college-aged boy wearing old-fashioned clothes in the style of the 1960s. His forehead had a disfiguring dent smashed into it, and blood was dripping down his face. As I stared at him, horrified and frozen in terror, he turned and looked at me. Then he held out a blood-stained hand.

His eyes were desperate, pleading for help, and I heard a low moaning sound coming from between his blood-stained lips. The sound raised every hair on my body and made the skin prickle in sheer, cold horror. I backpedaled fiercely, my legs scrambling to get away while my eyes and head remained fixed on the ghost, on the bloody sink. A drop of red blood fell from his outstretched hand as I stared at him. Then the momentum of my legs carried me through the door, which slammed shut behind me, and the hot, pungent smell of fresh blood followed me through the halls and down the staircases until I was outside into the chilly air of autumn, breathing deeply. My knees shook so bad that I fell onto the nearest patch of grass, stomach heaving. Oh lord! The ghost was real! No wonder they kept the place locked up.

I lay on the grass for a long time, ignoring the chill in the air. This was a natural chill which comforted, not that unnatural chill that had frightened me upstairs. I breathed in and out, in and out, watching the stars above me, bright even through the campus lights. I took comfort from the huge, clear expanse of sky. But I still felt reluctant to go back inside that haunted building. I shuddered once, from head to toe. Oh how my granny would laugh if she knew her big brave grandson was too scared to go back inside a haunted dormitory. It was the thought of granny that got me back onto my feet and upstairs to my room. But I didn’t care what granny or anyone else thought of me. I was never going back to the fourth floor bathroom. Once was enough.


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Haunted Places
 

Basement Freezer: Basement Freezer is a scary story about a man who murders his

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Basement Freezer:

Basement Freezer is a scary story about a man who murders his wife and hides her body parts in the freezer. It is based on part of an old 1970s horror movie.

William Kemp hated his wife. They had been married for 20 years and he was tired of hearing her nagging voice. He was sick of listening to her criticize and belittle him every day. He was fed up with the way she ordered him around as if he was a slave. William intended to get rid of his wife once and for all.

He had planned everything perfectly. When his wife came home that evening, she put the groceries in the refrigerator and told her husband to start cooking dinner. Instead, William told her he had a surprise for her. He knew she loved surprises.

“It’s in the basement,” he said with a smile.

As his wife made her way down the stairs, into the darkened basement, William took a meat cleaver from the kitchen drawer and followed her.

Minutes later, he was wiping the sweat from his brow. He never thought chopping up a woman’s body would be such hard work. There were six pieces in all – head, arms, legs and torso. He carefully wrapped up each piece in newspaper and tied it neatly with a piece of rope.

When he had finished, there were six tidy bundles sitting at his feet. William picked them up and tossed them into the deep freeze. Then, he shut the door and secured it with a padlock. After mopping the basement floor, he went back upstairs to wash the meat cleaver in the kitchen sink.

Leaning back in his armchair, William let out a sigh of relief. He was free. If anyone asked, he would tell them that his wife had run off with another man. Nobody would suspect that she was really in the basement freezer.

He started drifting off to sleep. The house was peaceful and quiet… very quiet… except for the bumping sound.

William sat up straight and listened. Something was flopping and thudding up the basement stairs. The noise was getting closer and closer.

Suddenly, William woke up. He knew it was just a dream, but it had seemed all too real. His heart was pounding and sweat was dripping down his face. He opened the kitchen drawer and took out the meat cleaver. Then, he went back down to the basement to check the deep freeze.

It was still securely locked. He was about to go back upstairs when he noticed something on the floor. A chill ran down his spine. It was a sheet of bloody newspaper.

William unlocked the deep freezer and looked inside. To his horror, he realized that it was empty. All six packages were missing.

As he stood there in stunned silence, he thought he saw moving something out of the corner of his eye. A shadow scuttled across the floor behind him. He whirled around, but there was nothing there.

Just then, he heard a click and the lights in the basement went out. He was plunged into darkness. Then, he heard a rustling sound. It came closer and closer until it seemed to be coming from all sides. He was surrounded.

William backed up against the wall and began swinging the meat cleaver wildly. In the darkness, he couldn’t see a thing. All he could hear was the horrible rustling of newspaper.

Then, all of a sudden, something slithered between his legs. He felt icy fingers wrap around his neck. He tried to scream but nothing would come out. Something grabbed the meat cleaver from his hand and he felt the fingers around his neck tighten, choking him until he was unconscious.

It wasn’t until weeks later that the police searched the basement after recieving tips from the mail man and neighbors that the old couple hadnt been seen in a while. They opened the deep freezer in the basement and inside, they found the lifeless frozen body of William Kemp. He was surrounded by the dismembered body parts of his wife.


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Haunted Places, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia
 

The East End Ghouls Historic Parkersburg, West Virginia

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The East End Ghouls

Historic Parkersburg, West Virginia, is best remembered today for the Blennerhassett Island plot, in which Aaron Burr and wealthy Parkersburg patrician Harman Blennerhassett were accused by President Thomas Jefferson of conspiring to create a private empire west of the Ohio River. Many claim that Blennerhassett Island is now haunted because of all this intrigue and many deaths. One of the strangest stories about Parkersburg involves the ghouls that supposedly haunt Holliday Cemetery in the city’s East End.

According to legend, strange occurrences began because 19th-century Parkersburg was a terminus for the all-important Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). This made Parkersburg a bustling hub for businessmen and owners, who came and went with train loads of the state’s coal. Many stayed the night at the Rowland Boarding House, which was also in the city’s East End. Not long after midnight one day in June 1888, railroad workers were heading toward the Rowland Boarding House when they were approached by what they claimed was a 6 ft tall apparition covered in a white funeral shroud. Emitting a deep, nonhuman groan, the creature glided toward the men over the B&O tracks until it reached the Rowland house and disappeared.

When this story was published in the local papers, a man named Mr. Crolley, who worked for the Camden Consolidated Oil Company, decided to see if the story was true. For two nights, Mr. Crolley stalked the ghoul. The story is that on the first night, the ghoul chased Mr. Crolley all the way to the Rowland Boarding House, where it paused before turning back toward Holliday Cemetery. On the second night, Mr. Crolley watched in horror as the ghoul was joined by another apparition dressed in black. Again, the ghouls made for the boarding house before disappearing at the cemetery. The East End ghouls haven’t been seen since 1888. But these two apparitions, which supposedly stank of death and decay, remain fixtures of Parkersburg folk lore.


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Haunted Places
 

The Glowing Maggot

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The Glowing Maggot

The Glowing Maggot is a scary story about a man who sees a huge glowing worm emerge from a grave in a cemetery. It is supposedly a true story that happened years ago in England and a version of the story appeared as “The Glowing Maggot Of Doom” in Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors by Bernhardt J. Hurwood. More like a good legend then a true tale but its one of my favorites.

One bright, moonlit night, in a small Yorkshire village, a postman named Mr Mullins was on his way home. As he was walking past the graveyard, something caught his attention. He noticed a luminous, glowing light coming from of one of the graves. It was the fresh grave of a villager by the name of Peters, who had recently died.

When he looked closer, he realized that it was a large slimy blob that was crawling out of the grave and it was wriggling back and forth as it emerged. It looked like a huge, luminous Maggot. The ghastly thing seemed to exude pure evil.

With a mixture of horror and fascination, Mr Mullins watched as the maggot slithered along the ground, leaving a gleaming trail of disgusting slime behind it. Snaking in and out around the tombstones, the monstrous thing crawled out of the graveyard and when it came to the vicar’s house nearby, it disappeared from sight.

The following day Mullins told his wife and his best friend about his chilling experience. That night, the three of them decided to go down to the graveyard. They wanted to see if they could figure out what the hideous apparition might be.

They waited and waited and, just as it had the night before, the dreadful worm oozed out of Peters’ grave and made its way out of the cemetery. As they watched, the thing crawled to the door of the vicar’s house again and disappeared.

The next day, the Mullins and their friend got a severe shock when they heard the vicar and his entire family had suddenly become seriously ill. As the hours ticked by, their condition grew worse and worse and, by sunset, the vicar and his entire family were dead.

The doctor who examined them said they had died of ptomaine poisoning. (This is a type of poisoning that is caused by exposure to a putrefying corpse).

Mullins, his wife, and their friend were more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the horrible apparition’s origin. After dark, that night, they ventured once again to the village graveyard to keep watch. Again the hideous glowing maggot wriggled out of the grave and slithered between the tombstones, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.

This time as they followed it, they saw it go to the house of the village blacksmith. When it got to the front door, it suddenly vanished. The next morning, the blacksmith and his whole family became ill and, just like the vicar and his family, they died before sunset of ptomaine poisoning.

Frightened and more baffled than ever, Mullins and his companions decided to keep watch again that night, but nothing happened. Although they were relieved, they decided to continue their nightly vigil at the graveyard for at least another week, just in case.

Ten nights after it had first appeared, the glowing maggot emerged from the grave again and crawled out of the graveyard. Mr and Mrs Mullins realized, to their horror, that was going in the direction of their house!

They followed it and when the maggot got to the front door of their house, it disappeared. The couple were horrified and they ran into their house. Looking around, they found no trace of the maggot and when they went upstairs, they found their 5-year old son, sleeping peacefully in his bed. The couple breathed a sigh of relief and went back downstairs.

The next morning, however, when Mullins and his wife went to wake their son, they found he was extremely sick. The little boy was seized by a fit of vomiting and, within an hour, he was dead. Stricken with grief and filled with anger, Mullins and his wife wanted revenge.

The grave the maggot had crawled out of was the grave of a man named Peters. After asking around, they found out that, in life, he had been a mean, vicious and detestable man. He had made life miserable for his neighbors and he had a particular dislike of both the vicar and the blacksmith.

That night, they paid another visit to the graveyard and, this time, they were armed with shovels and gasoline. They dug up the grave of Peters, pulled out the coffin and cracked open the lid. Holding up a lantern, they peered inside and saw the face of the corpse.

Mr Peters grinned back at them. His body had not decayed at all and there was a look of malevolence and intense evil frozen on his twisted face. They took one look at him and slammed the lid down in horror. After regaining their nerves, they dragged the coffin to a nearby field, threw back the lid and poured gasoline all over the corpse. Mullins struck a match and threw it on the corpse which burst into flames.

Mullins and his wife stood there watching the blaze until the coffin and the corpse inside were reduced to ashes. After scattering his remains with a shovel and sprinkling them with holy water, they returned to the grave and filled it in again.

Although they kept a vigil for several days afterwards, the strange glowing maggot of doom was never seen again.


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