Some Real Ghost Stories

Here is a collection of allegedly true ghost stories and sights of hauntings from all over the United States. Some of the more daring of you may wish to visit for these haunts for the Halloween holiday... if you dare!

 

Resurrection Mary

Have you ever heard the urban legend about a young man driving along a lonely stretch of highway at night, usually while it's raining, and he sees a young woman by the side of the road that he takes pity on, picks up and drives her home only to have her disappear? Guess what... it's based on facts. Along an eight block stretch of road just outside of Chicago this story has been playing out for at least half a century. Local historians believe that the young girl is the ghost of a woman who died in a tragic car accident while heading home from a nearby dance hall. She died quickly and was buried in the Resurrection Cemetery located along the same stretch of road that people to this day claim they see her. Sightings and experiences with the young woman have been reported over and over again to the police and newspapers of Chicago. She often appears on rainy nights. The most common end to every person's tale who make contact with the girl is when they approach the cemetery. The girl begins to urge her nighttime rescuer(s) to pull over at the cemetery. When they do, she jumps out of the car and heads for the front gates only to disappear in thin air.

 

Hotel del Coronado

This hotel located in San Diego, California was once famous for their lavishly rich clientele. But over the years it has become more renowned as a place of a mysterious haunting. The story goes that a young woman checked into the hotel one night. She was alone, had little luggage and seemed to be very sad according to the hotel staff records and local police reports. The young woman went straight to bed and wasn't seen the rest of the night. The next morning the young girl stepped out onto the beach just outside the hotel before sunrise. She had dressed herself in a long, flowing black dress. She walked the shoreline as the sun came up. She watched the ocean's waves roll in at her feet... and then she put a bullet in her head. She was found later that morning. Her identity was never truly confirmed and the name she had signed the hotel registry with was believed to be false because she had no I.D. to confirm it. Who was she? Why did she kill herself? Where did she come from? To this day, no one knows. But she is still occasionally seen wandering the halls of the hotel or along the shoreline of the beach.

 

Mission San Antonio de Padua

This mission, located in northern California, was built in 1771. It still stands and operates to this day. Of the many hauntings reported at the mission over the years the most common are those of ghostly monks sometimes seen going to midnight mass. They do nothing more than wander the halls en route to conduct their ritual prayers and never respond or interact with anyone. They usually disappear at some point within the hallways. Another apparition is that of a headless horsewoman. It is said that she was an Indian maiden who had married a prospector living in the area. Her husband would often go off to remote mining camps and leave her at home alone for extended lengths of time. As the legend goes, the prospector came home early from one of these camps to find his wife in bed with another man. Enraged, the prospector took an axe and killed not only the cheating couple but, in his fit of rage, his wife's prize horse, too. Local Indian customs said that if a body was not buried properly or in tact, the dead would be cursed to roam this world forever and would not be allowed to enter the realm of the dead. Knowing this, the prospector chopped off his wife's head and buried it in an unknown location. To this day, her body is seen riding her prize horse around the area of the mission looking for her head.

 

The Artist House of Old Town Key West

Key West is an area infused with the cultural lore of many different peoples. The Artist House was built in the 19th century and was owned by the Otto family until the 1970s. It is now a bed & breakfast. Many of the guests over the years have reported to the owners incidents of haunting activity. Some have seen the ghosts of children, while others claim only to get a "feeling" of hostility, as if someone or something doesn't want them there. One of the most popular stories is that of a large wooden doll that supposedly moves on its own. It was the toy of a child who had grown up there. It is said that whenever the child got into mischief, he would blame his activities on the doll and claim that he hadn't done anything wrong. The history of the are is steeped in the religion of voodoo and many believers fear the doll a great deal.

 

Sheldrake, Michigan

Named after the type of duck that frequents the area, the old logging village of Sheldrake, Michigan doesn't really exist anymore. The area is now privately owned by a family. The logging village sprouted up in the late 1800s and started dying out by the turn of the century as the area was cleared of trees. The final nail in the coffin for the small community was a couple of fires that swept through the area believed to have been set on purpose for insurance money (which was a common practice at the time, especially for such communities). These fires virtually destroyed every building. The family that currently owns the area has refurbished the old ruined buildings and occasionally rents them out for the summer to vacationers retreating to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Many of the hauntings reported in the area are believed to be of the former logging residents who died either while working there or during the raging fires. There is also an old captain often seen standing on the nearby dock, waving boats into shore. When the small crafts approach, the captain vanishes before the crew's eyes.

 

The Spy House of Port Monmouth, New Jersey

I just had to mention this house. It's actually one very large house made from three smaller ones, including one believed to be the oldest house yet standing in New Jersey dating from the 1600s. Many ghosts have been reported over the last several decades. It is incredibly haunted by its vast and various previous owners. It has been an inn, served as a safe haven for both British and American soldiers during the revolutionary war, been the home for many colonists, a brothel on more than one occasion and was even once a den for pirates! It is now a museum of history.

 

The Flying Dutchman

Take my love for the sea and my passion for a good ghost story and you're bound to come across a lot of tales of hauntings at sea. The Flying Dutchman is the single most famous ghost ship in history. The tale is so well known and is so often retold that it is hard to discern fact from fiction. But here are the basics: The Flying Dutchman was once a merchant ship. While sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, which is notorious for its bad weather, the captain of the ship decided to sail on into an approaching storm. At some point during the storm the ship broke up and sank, killing everyone (or so it is believed since no survivors were ever found). Ever since then, sailors rounding the Cape of Good Hope during a storm will return to their home ports with tales of how they were lead through the storm to safety by a mysterious ship that disappeared once they were safe. Or, less commonly, they tell of how a mystic ship tried to lure them close to the rocky cliffs and shallow waters of the shoreline as though to make them sink during the storm.

 

The Lobo Girl of Devil's River

Not really a ghost story, but a story you really can't place under any other category. The Lobo Girl is one of the most favorite and famous stories of the American Southwest. The story goes like this: There was a young couple, John and Mollie Dent, who had headed along the Devil's River in Del Rio, Texas to hunt and trap for the season. Like most new couples, they were soon expecting a child. John Dent worked hard that season. On one stormy night, he came home late after hunting all day to find his wife in labor. She was going to have the baby before the night was through. He settled his wife into bed and decided to take his chances against the wicked storm to get help for his wife. A doctor lived many miles away. The trip was long in normal weather, but with such a heavy downpour it would be nearly impossible. John arrived at the doctor's house wounded and died soon after he gave the doctor word that his wife needed help. By that time, the storm had grown even more fierce. The doctor knew of no way he could get to young Mollie safely. He waited all night, until the storm passed, then headed out for the Dent's settlement to help the young mother and tell her of her husband's demise. When the doctor arrived at the Dent home, he found the door open and a trail of blood covering the floor leading from the bedroom to outside. The doctor found young Mollie Dent dead. He declared her death as having been caused by difficulties during childbirth. The child was nowhere to be found. When the local law enforcement was called in, they reasoned that the door to the house had blown open in the night. Fresh wolf tracks in the mud outside the door suggested to them that a pack of wolves, seeking shelter from the storm, had entered the home and subsequently dragged the newborn off for their meal. It was a great tragedy indeed. About a decade or two later, when brush was being cleared for a railroad to pass through the area and then after the trains started running through, reports began filtering in from rail workers and train passengers who claimed to have sighted a very young girl, perhaps ten to fifteen years of age, running naked and wild with a pack of wolves. Later stories told of someone having caught the rabid and wild girl only to have her escape and run free once again.

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