29 of the Freakiest, Real-Life Haunted House Stories Ever

The full story of Victoria's Black Swan Inn is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

Victoria's Black Swan Inn is a lush, 35-acre home and wedding venue cloaked by 100-year-old oak trees in San Antonio, Texas. While it's a romantic scene ideal for nuptials, it's also allegedly infested by the spirits of those who've lived and died on the property. Built in the mid to late 1800s on a plot of land where, 50 years earlier, 60 Mexican soldiers were killed in the Battle of Salado, the Greek Revival manor has had a plethora of owners, many of whom were prominent San Antonio socialites and are also said to still be lingering there in the afterlife.

Once operated as a dairy farm, the barn behind the primary residence is the most haunted building on the property. Many of the earlier occupants, including members of the Rippstein and Mahler families, spent their lives there. Later occupants included sisters Katherine Holbrook and Blanche Woods, Katherine's husband (who died at the home), and Blanche's children and grandchildren. Almost all of them are said to haunt the estate.

The current owner, Jo Ann Rivera, lives in the stunning home with her family, and while it isn't actually a functional inn, she does partner with local ghost tour companies and has invited paranormal investigators in over the years. Some theorize that perhaps the paranormal activity is being caused by a particularly menacing anchor item: a porcelain doll (Rivera is an avid collector). Tune into Dark House to hear the full details and countless tales of unsettling specters.

The full story of the Sowden House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

This Mayan Revival home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., the son of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright towers over Franklin Avenue at the bottom of the Los Feliz foothills. While its unique architectural character is certainly noteworthy, arguably the most interesting thing about the home isn't necessarily the block-style facade, which was inspired by the menacing yet beguiling opening of a cave or an ancient tomb.

After it was built in 1926 for photographer John Sowden and his young family, the house enjoyed years of hosting bohemian parties for Hollywood's in-crowd. But when Dr. George Hodel moved into the house in 1945, its fate as the potential crime scene of America's most notorious cold case, The Black Dahlia, was sealed. Though the murder of Elizabeth Short remains unsolved to this day, by 1950, Dr. George Hodel became one of the prime suspects in her tragic case, and many true crime buffs are convinced that he carried out the crime right inside this iconic Los Feliz mansion.

The home also went through a few stages of abandonment in the late 20th century, making it even more mysterious and spooky to passersby. According to Steve Hodel, former occupant, retired LAPD investigator, and son of Dr. Hodel, several onlookers have noted its haunting trappings. According to Steve, "in the 1970s, [the Hodel housekeeper] returned to the [Sowden] House and informed the then current owner 'this is a house of evil,’” and on another occasion, Edmund Teske pointed to the house saying, "It's an evil place. Artists, philosophers, accountants, and politicians all played and paid there. Murders happened there. It's an evil place." During the same era, Dr. Hodel's daughter Tamar went inside the home and claimed to see the spirit of a young woman in the basement. Years later, in 2016, Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans investigated the Sowden house with Tamar's daughter Fauna, who claimed to see the exact same spirit her mother did.

The full story of the Villisca Axe Murder House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

On June 10, 1912, Josiah and Sarah Moore were horrifyingly killed inside their home in Villisca, Iowa. Their four children—and two friends who were spending the night—were also murdered, and to this day, the crime remains unsolved. Their home is considered one of the most haunted houses in the country, and guests have been drawn to visit it for years. (People pay $400+ to stay for one night).

"Tours have been cut short by children's voices, falling lamps, moving ladders, and flying objects," says the Villisca Axe Murder House website. And, in 2014, a paranormal investigator stabbed himself after spending the night. "Skeptics have left believers," adds the website. As of October 2023, US Ghost Adventures—known for its entertaining and historic overnight stays in allegedly haunted locations across the country—is under contract to buy the infamous Historic Villisca Axe Murder House in Villisca, Iowa.

The full story of the Ammons House will be featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s podcast, Dark House, in October 2023. Subscribe here.

In 2011, Latoya Ammons moved into a small single-story home in Gary, Indiana, with her mother and her three young children. Only a few short months later, after reportedly experiencing the worst residential "demon infestation" since The Amityville Horror, Ammons brought her family to the emergency room in an attempt to help free them of demonic possession. After extensive evaluations by police, members of the local church, hospital staff, and the Department of Child Protective Services, the witnesses were torn: half of them believed the house was infested by spirits and demons, and that the family was genuinely possessed by something paranormal, while the other half blamed psychological issues.

Just like the best-selling book about the Amityville house turned into a national sensation, this modern instance of demonic possession went viral. The good news is that the Ammons family was able to find peace when they moved to Indianapolis, but the story, and the house itself, were still getting tons of attention.

Ghost Adventure host and paranormal investigator Zak Bagans bought the property from Ammons's landlord in 2014 to shoot pseudo-documentary footage inside. Even though Bagans proceeded to tear it down, the Ammons House is about to get even more press. Oscar-nominee Lee Daniels is directing a film based on the story, The Deliverance. It's set to stream on Netflix in 2024 and will feature Stranger Things star, Caleb McLaughlin.

The house at 805 W Linden Street in Boise, Idaho, is hard to miss. Covered in a layer of soot, with windows broken and boarded up and trash strewn about the yard, the 2-story, 2,728 square-foot Craftsman-style home looks like an abandoned horror movie set. The true story, however, is much scarier. Locals refer to it as the Boise Murder House, or even more eyebrow-raising, the Chop-Chop House, which is a glib reference to the gruesome homicide that took place there more than three decades ago.

According to many who've lived in the neighborhood or even rented out a room in the house itself, the basement, in particular, exudes some haunted energy. There have been reports of shadowy figures appearing and disappearing out of nowhere, strange liquid oozing down the walls, and more.

The full story of the Boise Murder House is featured, along with a guest interview with Justin Long, in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

The full story of the Winchester Mystery House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

In 1886 an eccentric widow left her home in Connecticut for California's rural Santa Clara Valley to start a new life after the tragic loss of several family members. She wasn't the average widow; she was Sarah Winchester, the millionaire heiress whose fortune was derived from "The Gun That Won the West," an increasingly controversial truth. Once in the Bay Area—during the height of Spiritualism and well before the 19th amendment— Winchester managed her own finances and acted on a passion for architecture and design by overseeing the never-ending construction project of a rambling mansion in San Jose. She named the rambling property Llanada Villa (which she interpreted as "House on Flat Land") but today, it's better known as The Winchester Mystery House.

Her reclusive lifestyle along with the restrictive gender norms of the era and the blood money she was associated with, caused neighbors and the local press to speculate, and legends quickly began to swirl about the mysterious woman and her bewildering house. Though it was a modern marvel at the time—with indoor plumbing, multiple elevators, a hot shower, and central heating—the mansion was appraised as having no value due to doors that opened to nothing but thin air, staircases that lead straight into the ceiling, and its maze of labyrinthine hallways.

Legends began swirling speculating that Winchester’s bizarre architectural choices were an attempt to rid the home of unwelcome spirits of the dead killed by the Winchester Rifle, but defenders swear she didn't have a superstitious bone in her body. Regardless, it's possible that Winchester herself still haunts the halls of the house-turned-museum today.

The full story of the Amityville Horror House will be featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s podcast, Dark House, in October 2023. Subscribe here.

This Dutch colonial sitting pretty on Ocean Avenue in Long Island, New York is perhaps the country's (and world's) most famous real haunted house, though whether or not it was all a hoax is up for debate. But haunted or not, the Amityville home has certainly witnessed plenty of horrors. On November 13, 1974, Louise and Ronald DeFeo Senior and four of their children were killed inside the home. Their eldest son, Ronald DeFeo Junior, went unharmed and he was ultimately charged with the murders.

A year after the brutal murders, the Lutz family moved into the house, which still housed much of the original furniture and decor from its previous tenants. Then, just 28 days after moving in with their three young children, the Lutzes fled the house in a panic. Not long after, they worked with author Jay Anson on the best-selling book-turned-hit movie, The Amityville Horror, which tells the dramatic (and controversial) tale of the demonic and "unseen forces" that drove them out. The Lutz's story is widely regarded as fabrication, but plenty of people still vehemently believe it's haunted, and that it was haunted even before the DeFeo family lived and died in it.

The full story of the Lemp Mansion is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

Starting strong with a very scary house: The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, which is known to be one of the most haunted places in America due to its tragic history and links to a wealthy beer baron. Adam Johann Lemp, a German immigrant, was the first person to produce and sell lager-style beer in the U.S. He stored the barrels in an underground cave system beneath the city to keep them cool pre-modern refrigeration. It was successful, but his son, William Lemp, is the one who really brought it to the next level.

In the 1860s, William Lemp wanted to live closer to the industrial plant and start a family with his wife Julia, so they built the foreboding home in the historic Benton Park neighborhood right over the cave system (we smell a haunting!). Everything seemed to take a turn for the worse in the new millennium, and William Lemp died by suicide in 1904 after his favorite of five sons, Frederick, died tragically due to complications of tuberculosis.

A few years later, his wife also died of cancer in the house. In 1920, the youngest daughter, Elsa Lemp, mysteriously died in her home (not the Lemp Mansion) Then, in 1922, after running the company for years and seeing it flounder during the Prohibition era, William Lemp Jr., shot himself in the same room William Sr. died in.

One of William Jr.'s brothers, Charles Lemp, lived in the home from the 1930s until 1949 when he shot his own dog in the basement of the home before dying by suicide in his room. That same year, the youngest surviving Lemp child, Edwin, sold the house and transformed it into a boarding house, where reports of hauntings began. According to Destination America, witnesses have experienced burning sensations, slamming doors, disembodied moaning and crying, amongst other things.

Today, the Lemp Mansion is a restaurant and inn that also holds events, including weddings, Murder Mystery Dinners, and even ghost-hunting experiences.

The full story of the Kasha House of Kaimuki with exclusive stories from locals and a former resident is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

The Kasha House of Kaimuki in Honolulu, Hawaii has been shrouded in mystery for decades: its first bad press mention hit the Honolulu Star just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. According to the article, police responded to a call from a woman shouting "she's trying to kill my children! She's trying to kill my children!" When they arrived, they found a young Hawaiian boy, his three sisters, and his mother all shrieking and being tossed around by... nothing. About thirty years later, other occupants (of the same home, or one a block away from the original spooky house) reported similar attacks by an “unseen” force, which the responding officers corroborated.

The two most common theories surrounding the source of these reported attacks are a demonic shape-shifting creature of Japanese folkloric origins known as the Kasha, and the angry spirit of a corpse buried in the backyard. Though it has since been torn down and replaced by condos, the dark energy still lingers, according to locals and residents.

The full story of 1000 Lombard Street is featured in two episodes of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

Socialite, journalist, and famed party host Patricia Montandon moved into an apartment on San Francisco’s famous "crooked block," Lombard Street, in 1960. She lived happily in her Russian Hill abode for eight years, until things began to go awry following an astrology-themed party she hosted in the apartment. In her memoir The Intruders, Montandon attributes a series of hauntings that culminated in a corporal tragedy to the bizarre behavior of a disgruntled tarot card reader who may have cursed the apartment the night of that fateful party.

From eerier laughter and faint music seemingly coming from within the apartment on repeat, to constant rushes of cold winds despite locked doors and windows, and strange disembodied footsteps, the paranormal events were stacking up quickly. But Montandon was also the victim of physical crimes following the party, including a robbery, harassment, possibly arson, and more. After a tragic fire at the apartment and the premature passing of three of her close friends (all of whom had separately lived in the apartment between 1968 and 1969), Montandon set off on her own investigation to uncover the root of the apparent curse on 1000 Lombard Street.

The full story of the Ackley House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

Nicknamed “Ackley House” after its one-time occupants, the Ackley Family, this classic Queen Anne sits on the Hudson River across from Sleepy Hollow, New York. The many ghosts who roamed the halls of 1 La Veta Place were nothing but friendly, though they were active enough to inspire the matriarch, Helen Ackley, to write a national article about them in Reader's Digest. The article gained enough momentum that the house became a stop on local ghost tours, which ended up having some not-so-great ramifications when it came time to sell the home in the late 1980s.

The Ackleys found themselves entangled in a legal battle over whether or not they should have disclosed the haunted "nature" of the house to the Stambosvky family. In a landmark legal decision now referred to as “The Ghostbusters Ruling,” Ackley House was deemed haunted by the New York Supreme Court, and the buyers were able to pull out of the sale while also getting half of their down payment back. 1 La Veta Place has since been home to several celebrities, including musician Ingrid Michaelson.

The full story of Grey Gardens is featured in two episodes of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.

The grand East Hampton estate known as Grey Gardens has a fascinating history with many ups and downs. The four acres of land the home now sits on is in the Georgica Beach section of East Hampton, one of the most expensive regions in the world, and it was purchased by a wealthy couple in 1895 before the home was built in the early 1900s.

By 1913, it was sold to the president of a coal company whose wife, Anna Gilman Hill, imported ornate concrete walls from Spain to enclose the garden. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist. Later, in 1923, the home was sold to Edith Bouvier Beale—the parental aunt of Jackie Onasis Kennedy and Lee Radziwill—and her family.

After a series of misfortunes and financial losses, the home fell into disrepair and was overrun by cats and raccoons (and perhaps something else not of this realm?), partially because Big Edie Beale and her daughter, Little Edie Beale couldn't afford to maintain the mansion on their own. The women's story (and star power!) was made famous in a 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles.

Big Edie held onto the property until her death in 1977, and her spirit is said to remain at Grey Gardens, watching over the house. Among the believers is author and journalist Sally Quinn, best known for her column in the Washington Post, who purchased the home from Little Edie in 1979 and she swears that it’s haunted.

The full story of the Mercer-Williams House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Listen to it here.

Located across from one of Savannah, Georgia's, most famous and pristine squares (Monterey Square in the city's historic district), the Mercer-Williams house dates back to 1860. In the 1970s, famed preservationist and antiques dealer Jim Williams restored the home to its former glory after years of neglect.

This Italianate revival played host to three untimely deaths, including that of 11-year-old Tommy Downs when he fell off the roof in 1969, the 1981 fatal shooting of Danny Hansford by Williams, and Williams himself, when he died in the same room as Hansford less than a year after being acquitted of Hansford's death in a fourth trial. If the story sounds familiar, it's probably because you recognize it from the bestselling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Much like the rest of the city, the home was supposedly built right on top of unmarked graves. Rumors about the crime and ensuing ghost stories continue to swirl to this day.

The full story of the Harlow-Bern House is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Listen to it here.

Los Angeles is one of the best destinations for haunted-house hunting, and this Bavarian-style home in Beverly Hills has a particularly gruesome history. In 1932, it was home to the iconic actress Jean Harlow and her abusive husband, Paul Bern, who shot himself in the head while standing in front of the mirror. Their butler discovered him and called MGM instead of the police, so there were tons of rumors that it wasn't actually suicide. Many suspected Bern's ex-girlfriend, a suspicion exacerbated by her jumping off a boat to her death a couple of days later. Jean moved out after his death but died only a few years later at the age of 26.

But wait—it gets creepier. In 1963, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring bought the home and lived there with his girlfriend, Sharon Tate, until she left him for Roman Polanski. They were still friends and remained so until both of them were murdered by the Charles Manson cult. Tate was the same age as Harlow when she passed.

But back to when the couple lived in the Harlow House. Tate told several friends of creepy occurrences in the home and even mentioned it in interviews. For example, once, when she was sleeping in the master bedroom alone, she saw a "creepy little man." Her friends say she believed it to be Paul Bern's ghost. She was so freaked out when she saw the alleged ghost that she ran out of the room and then saw a hanging shadowy corpse with its throat slit in the hallway. There are also stories about two other people dying in the swimming pool over the years.

The full story of the SK Pierce Mansion is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Listen to it here.

Massachusetts has no shortage of haunted mansions, it seems, and the SK Pierce Victorian is one of the state's eeriest. The original occupant, Sylvestor Pierce, had just started making his fortune in the furniture business when he built this home for himself, his son, and his wife, Susan. As a man about town, he hosted many notable people in his 7,000-square-foot home throughout the years, including President Calvin Coolidge, Bette Davis, and Norman Rockwell.

Only a week after moving into the home, Susan fell ill and passed away from a mysterious bacterial disease. A year later, he remarried Ellen, a woman thirty years his junior, and had two more children. Years later, when both Sylvester and Ellen had passed away, his sons embarked on a fiery feud about the property as well as the furniture company, but the Great Depression swept in and made their choice easier since the company basically went bankrupt.

The youngest son, Edward, was given control of the home when he turned it into a boarding house. It became a hotspot for illicit activities (including the murders and sudden, tragic deaths of several occupants) according to local lore. As a result of these violent ends, guests have reported every kind of haunting imaginable, from visions of apparitions to flying objects, disembodied sounds, pressure, temperature drops, and more.

Located in Fairfield County, Ohio (until recently), the Mudhouse Mansion has a bad reputation. Nobody can seem to agree on when it was built, but it dates back sometime between the 1840s and 1900. Unlike the other abandoned mansions on this list, you sadly can no longer visit it, as the home was demolished in 2015 after not being occupied since the 1930s. The last resident (at least legally speaking) was Lulu Hartman-Mast, and the current owner of the property is her relative Jeanne Mast.

Because there's so little information about who lived here and when, and because abandoned places tend to ignite the dark side of the imagination, there are tons of legends around alleged atrocities occurring (and consequent hauntings). The sources don't seem to be very credible, though.

You never hear as much about haunted apartments as haunted houses, which is strange—considering that apartments have much more turnover, and therefore a higher likelihood of something (or someone) evil having lived there before you move in.

That was definitely the case with 455A Sacket Street in Brooklyn. One woman who grew up there writes about her firsthand experiences, including unexplained fires, seriously bad energy, family tragedies, personal suffering, and, here's the kicker: the body of a child discovered in the wall after several suspicious sightings of a similar-looking shadow child in the mirror.

You can read her full account here, as well as commenters who also lived there and corroborate these claims. I'll definitely not be requesting an in-person viewing for this place—private balcony or not—if this address ever pops back up in my StreetEasy feed.

The Hotel Monte Vista has numerous paranormal guests they can’t get rid of. The hotel, which opened as the Community Hotel in 1927—named after the townspeople who helped raised the funds for its construction—has a history of underground opium dens, speakeasies, and gambling. Today, the hotel is known for the paranormal activity that haunts some of the rooms and halls.

Guests who’ve stayed in room 220 have experienced the TV changing channels on its own accord, and some have said they felt cold hands touching them in their sleep. There’s also reportedly a phantom bellboy who knocks on doors and announces “room service,” but when guests get to the door, no one's there. One of the more popular—and possibly most disturbing encounters—is the sound of an infant crying in the basement. The hotel website reads, “Staff have found themselves running upstairs to escape the sound of the cries. Though the sounds are very real to those who hear them, there has been no information that has explained the phenomenon.”

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Rumored to be on top of a burial ground is the Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, which is the home to at least 12 different ghosts. Built in 1796, ghost stories center around the tale of an enslaved woman named Chloe, who had her ear chopped off after she was reportedly caught eavesdropping. Seeking revenge, Chloe killed two of the master’s daughters by poisoning a birthday cake. She was then hanged by her fellow enslaved people, and today is reportedly seen wandering the plantation with a turban on to conceal her ear.

If you want to investigate things for yourself, you can stay at the plantation for $175/night.

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More cursed than haunted, downtown L.A.'s Hotel Cecil got such a bad rap that it actually changed its name to Stay on Main. If you're a true crime and paranormal super fan, you've likely already heard of it. Where to begin? So many bad things have happened here—there's literally an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to its violent history. The first recorded death by suicide is in 1931, followed by a long string of similar deaths in 1932, 1934, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1940.

At some point in the '30s, one man was pinned to the exterior wall by a truck. A woman murdered her newborn in the building in 1944, and the pattern of suicides continued into the '60s. In 1962, a woman jumped from the ninth floor window and landed on a pedestrian, killing them both. It's worth noting that two of the women who died by suicide apparently jumped while their husbands were asleep in the room.

In 1964, tenant Goldie Osgood was brutally murdered, a crime which has remained unsolved. Next, in the '80s, the infamous serial kill Richard Ramirez (the "Night Stalker") stayed at the hotel and in the 1990s, Austrian serial killer Jack Unterwege lived there. Other weird things kept happening but the weirdest is definitely the disappearance and death of 21-year-old traveler Elisa Lam.

A few weeks after Lam went missing, her body was discovered in the rooftop water tank after visitors and tenants complained about a funky taste. They later found odd footage of her in the elevator from the night of her disappearance. It's difficult to make out what she's doing; it looks like she's either playing hide-and-seek with someone outside the elevator, or she's frightened and attempting to hide from someone but the doors won't seem to shut. Authorities ruled the death accidental drowning—but because you need a key to access the roof, many suspect foul play.