Kittens

Kittens is a creepy story about a little girl who wondered what happened to all her pet cat’s babies.

When a little girl’s cat had kittens they disappeared, after a couple of days, she asked her mother what happened to them and her mother said “God took them.”
Months later the cat again had a litter of kittens. Her mother sent her out to run some errands, but, before she left, she wanted to play with the kittens again. She heard her father coming carrying a bucket and hid from him. She watched while her father put the kittens in a sack and drowned them in the bucket. Later the girl again asked her mother what happened to the kittens. Her mother said “God took them.”
Several days later the mother asked the girl to watch her brother in the bath tub while she answered the phone. When the mother returned, she started screaming “What happened to him? What happened to him?”
The little girl told her “God took him.”

Bad Dream

Bad Dream is a short creepy tale about a little girl who had a nightmare.

A little girl opened the door to her parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night.
“Daddy, I had a bad dream”, she said.
Her father blinked his eyes and sat up in bed, leaning on his elbows. The digital alarm clock glowed red in the darkness. It was 3:23 AM.
“Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?” he asked.
“No, Daddy.” came the reply.
The oddness of the situation made him wake up more fully. He could barely make out his daughter’s pale form, outlined in the light from the doorway.
“Why not, sweetie?” he asked.
The little girl began to cry. “Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy’s skin sat up.” she whined.
For a moment, he felt paralyzed, unable to take his eyes off his daughter. Then he felt the covers behind him beginning to shift…

Junk Car

Junk Car is a ghost story about a 16 year old boy named Arthur who had just completed his driving test and got his driving licence in the mail. The only problem was that he didn’t own a car.

His older brother Vince had a beat up old junk car that he bought for a few dollars from a dealer who was about to sell it for scrap metal. The car was in bad condition, but at least it was road-worthy. Vince took great care of the car. It was his prized posession, but no matter how much Arthur begged and pleaded, his older brother would never let him drive it.
A few months later, Vince joined the army and just before he went to boot camp, Arthur asked him if he could drive the car while he was away. His older brother thought it over and agreed to let the younger boy use the car, but only under two conditions.
As he handed over the keys, Vince made Arthur promise never to drink and drive, never to go over 60 miles per hour, and never ever to smoke cigarettes in the car. The younger brother was eager to get to use the car so he agreed to all three conditions even though he wondered why his brother was so obsessed with taking care of a junk car.
Six months later, Arthur’s family received a terrible letter in the mail. It informed them that their son Vince had been killed in action in Iraq. Arthur’s parents were devastated by the news, but it hit Arthur even harder. He started to go a little crazy.
Every morning, he took off from the house in the junk car, full of anger and rage. He ditched school, bought alcohol and just drove and drove, not caring where he was headed. And as he drove aimlessly around the countryside, he started drinking and chain smoking. He became reckless, driving as fast as the car could go.
One night, as he was driving drunk down a lonely country road, he dropped his cigarette in his lap. He jumped, trying to find the smouldering cigarette butt and took his eyes off the road. Big mistake. The car hit a slick spot in the road and spun full around twice before the front tire caught and flipped the car over into the ditch.
When Arthur woke up, he couldn’t remember where he was. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious but he could feel someone tapping him on the shoulder. Groggily, he looked around and saw his brother Vince staring at him and yelling over and over “Get out of my car. Get out of my car”.
Confused, Arthur reached in his shirt pocket and took out a cigarette and his lighter. He put the cigarette in his mouth, but his older brother leaned over and blew out the flame. Every time he tried to light the cigarette, his big brother blew it out, until eventually, Arthur gave up.
Then he heard sirens and voices shouting and someone was dragging him out of the car. They lifted him up, put him on a stretcher and loaded him into the back of an ambulance. A policeman beside him reached over and yanked the cigarette from his lips.
“Son, I wouldn’t do that”, said the policeman. “When you crashed, the gas tank in your car split open. You’re completely drenched in gasoline. If you lit that cigarette, you would have been burned alive.”

Milk Bottles

Milk Bottles is a ghost story about a shopkeeper who encountered a very mysterious customer late at night with a strange obsession with bottles of milk.

One evening, the shopkeeper was about to close up for the night when he realized there was still one customer left in his store. It was a pale and thin young woman in a filthy dress. She was standing silently in the corner, and seemed to be waiting for him to notice her.
The shopkeeper asked the young woman what he could do for her. She would not look him in the eye and, without a word, stepped forward to the counter. She extended her arm and pointed at the refrigerator behind the counter where the storekeeper kept his milk bottles.
The storekeeper picked up a bottle of milk and set it upon the counter. The girl pointed again to the refrigerator, so he removed a second bottle of milk and set it on the counter as well.
Suddenl;y, the shopkeeper heard something fall off a shelf behind him. When he turned back around, he was shocked to see the young woman had disappeared, along with the two bottles of milk. He checked the door of his shop and found it was still locked. Then he searched around the store, but there was no sign of the mysterious woman.
The next day, just at closing time, the young woman in the filthy dress appeared again, almost out of nowhere. One moment the store was empty and the next moment she was standing at the counter pointing at the refrigerator. This time two empty milk bottles sat on the counter.
The storekeeper looked into her hollow eyes and saw streaks and stains from many tears making paths in the dirt on her face. He was a compassionate and generous man and he knew that this young woman was in need of help. So he took two new bottles of milk and set them on the counter for her. Then he turned his back to allow the poor young woman an opportunity to leave without having to pay. He never heard the door open or close, but when he turned around again, she was gone.
On the third day the storekeeper was determined to find out who this woman was and what her circumstances might be. It was possible he could give her husband a small job sweeping out the store or stocking the shelves. H
Again, just before closing time, the young woman appeared out of nowhere and stood pointing at the refrigerator. The storekeeper put two more bottles of milk on the counter and tried to ask the woman some questions. Just as he was about to speak, the cash register drawer flew open and fell to the floor. When the storekeeper looked up again, the woman had gone.
This time he was determined to find out more about her, so he locked up the store and took off down the road leading out of town. He caught a glimpse of her up ahead as she turned off the road and walked down an old overgrown path. He followed her, creeping through the woods until the path led him to the town cemetery. The cemetery gate stood open and he heard a strange sound coming from inside. He followed the sound deeper and deeper into the cemetery until he reached the newest graves.
Now he could hear the sound clearly. It was the distinct sound of a baby crying. What terrified him was that it was coming from beneath him. Standing over a fresh grave with no headstone to mark it, he could plainly hear the cries of a baby growing louder and louder.
Grabbing a nearby shovel he began to excavate the shallow grave and soon reached a wooden coffin. Falling to his knees and scraping the dirt aside, he tore open the coffin’s lid.
There before him lay the dead body of a young woman. The same young woman in the torn and filthy dress who had visited his store three times. Her skin was grey and her eyes were just hollow sockets, and in her arms was a cold and hungry baby, still alive and crying. And in the coffin beside the baby stood two empty milk bottles.

Three Wishes

Three Wishes is a spooky little story about an old man who encounters an old hag that grants him 3 wishes.

An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path. He wasn’t sure of which direction to go, and he’d forgotten both where he was traveling to. He also couldn’t remember who he was.
He sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. Her skin was wrinkled and grey and her nose was crooked. Warts covered her hairy chin.
She grinned toothlessly and said with a cackle, “Now your third wish. What will it be?”
“Third wish?” The man was baffled. “How can it be three wishes if I haven’t had a first and second wish?”
“You’ve had two wishes already,” the old hag said, “but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That’s why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.” She cackled at the poor man. “So it is that you have one wish left.”
“All right,” he said hesitantly, “I don’t believe this, but there’s no harm in trying. I wish to know who I am.”
“Funny,” said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. “That was your first wish…”

Combat Medic

The Combat Medic is a creepy tale about weird events that occurred during the Battle of the Bulge at the end of World War II.

In the winter of 1944, with overtaxed supply lines in the Ardennes, a combat medic in the German army had completely run out of plasma, bandages and antiseptic. During one particularly bad round of mortar fire, his encampment was a bloodbath. Those who survived claimed to have heard, above the screams and barked commands of their Lieutenant, someone cackling with an almost otherworldly glee.
The combat medic had made his rounds during the fire, in almost complete darkness as he had so many times before, but never had he been this short on supplies. No matter. He would do his duty. He had always prided himself on his resourcefulness.
The bombardment moved to other ends of the line, and most men dropped off to sleep in the dark, still hours of the morning – New Year’s Day, 1945. The men awoke at first light with screams. They discovered that their bandages were not typical bandages at all, but strips of human flesh. Several men had been given fresh blood transfusions, yet there had been no blood supplies available. Each treated man was almost completely covered, head-to-toe, with the maroon stain of blood.
The combat medic was found, sitting on an ammunition tin, staring off into space. When one man approached him, and tapped him on the shoulder, his tunic fell off to reveal that large patches of his skin, muscle, and sinew had been stripped from his torso and his body was almost completely dried of blood. In one hand was a scalpel, and in the other, a blood transfusion vial. None of the men treated for wounds that night, in that camp, saw the end of January, 1945.

Prisoner Of War

During the Vietnam war a soldier faithfully wrote letters home to his mother every week so she would know he was all right. But one week she didn’t get a letter and immediately began to worry. Within a couple of weeks she got a letter from the Army saying that her son’s plane had been shot down over North Vietnam.

Her son had been captured and was being held in a Vietnamese Prisoner-of-War camp. They assured her that her son was in good health and that they had no reason to believe the American POWs were being mistreated in any way.
A few weeks later the woman finally received a letter from her son. It read: “Dear Mom, Try not to worry about me, they are treating us well and I’ll be released as soon as the war is over. Make sure that little Teddy gets the stamp for his stamp collection. Your loving son, John”
The woman was overjoyed to hear the news, but was confused because she had no idea who “little Teddy” was. She decided to steam the stamp off the envelope and have a look. When she peeled back the stamp, she saw there was a small message scrawled on it in tiny misshapen writing. It read: “They’ve cut off my hands!”

Butcher Shop

The Butcher Shop is a scary tale about a young woman who does a favor for a blind man and almost gets more than she bargained for in return.

A young woman was walking down the street, when she saw an old blind man coming towards her. He was stooped over and wore dark glasses and a cane. He seemed to be having trouble walking and when he was passing by her, he almost fell over.
She grabbed his arm and steadied him and he thanked her for her kindness. Then he asked the young woman if she could do a favor for him.
“Could you please deliver this letter for me” the blind man said. “I’m old and disabled and I have a terrible time finding my way around the city.”
Being a nice person, the girl agreed to help him and he handed her a letter with an address scrawled on the front. As the young woman turned to walk away, she happened to glance back and saw the blind man walking down the street quite quickly, with his cane tucked under his arm. Then, to her surprise, the blind man took off his dark glasses and casually tossed them into a garbage can.
Suspicious, the woman took the envelope to a nearby police station. The police went to the address on the letter, which turned out to be a butcher shop owned by an old couple. All seemed perfectly ordinary until the police asked the old couple to open the large refrigerator in the back of the shop. The old couple refused so the police had to break it open themselves.
Inside, they were confronted by a horrible scene. There were dead bodies strung up on meat hooks and shelves stacked high with chunks of human flesh.
Until now, the police had overlooked the letter which the mysterious blind man had given the woman. When they opened the envelope, a piece of paper inside contained one chilling line:
“This is the last one I’m sending you today”.

Keyhole

Keyhole is a creepy story about a man who stayed in a strange hotel and encountered something very odd indeed.

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed.
The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to.
He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the keyhole. This time, all he saw was red. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.
At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, “Did you look through the keyhole?” The man told her that he had and she said, “Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red.”

Gecko

Gecko is a scary story about a young man who buys a new pet and gets more than he bargained for.

There was a young man in his twenties, who moved into a new apartment in New York City. The night he moved in, he was lying awake in bed when he heard strange noises coming from his kitchen. When he turned on the lights, he was horrified to see hundreds of tiny cockroaches scurrying under the refrigerator and kitchen cupboards. He realized that his apartment was completely infested with cockroaches.
The next day, he asked one of his co-workers for advice about his cockroach problem. The co-worker said she had a similar problem and bought a pet gecko. She let the gecko loose at night and it took care of all the cockroaches.
That evening, after work, the young man visited a pet store and bought a pet gecko. When he got home, he let the gecko go out of its cage. It immediately scurried into the kitchen and disappeared under the refrigerator. Then he heard a “Gecko-Gecko” sound followed by a loud “Snap” as the gecko’s tongue caught hold of a cockroach and pulled it back into its mouth.
Days went by, and Howard saw fewer and fewer cockroaches. The gecko was doing its job well. Occasionally he would hear the tell-tale “Snap” of the gecko’s tongue and he knew it was catching the cockroaches and gobbling them up.
One day after work, he was making dinner for himself when he saw the gecko chase one of the last cockroaches on the house under the refrigerator. He saw the cockroach scurry under it with the gecko far behind struggling to go under. That’s when the young man realized that the gecko was getting bigger.
He didn’t see the gecko for days after that. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. Each time, it appeared to be bigger and bigger. One night, as he was lying in bed, he heard some strange noises in his room. Then he heard “Gecko, Gecko” and a loud “Snap!”
The next day, the young man was absent from work, but nobody thought anything of it. They just assumed he wasn’t feeling well and decided to take a sick day. When he didn’t show up the next day, or the next, his co-workers became very concerned and called the police. When the police knocked on the young man’s door, they got no answer. They broke down the door and entered the apartment.
In the bedroom, they found no traces of the young man, but were horrified to see an enormous gecko sitting on the bed. Its belly was huge and stretched and it just lay there lazily, regarding them with its big reptilian eyes. When they looked closer, they noticed something horrible. Sticking out of the corner of its mouth, there appeared to be a human foot.

Mudhouse Mansion

Mudhouse Mansion is a haunted house located outside Lancaster, Ohio. According to locals in Lancaster, the house was built in the early 1800s by a government official who lived there after the Civil War. The man still kept slaves in Mudhouse Mansion, even though it was illegal. It seems this man didn’t abide by the law and kept his slaves locked up in an outbuilding at night.

He treated his slaves very poorly and conditions were so bad that one slave started building a tunnel underneath the wall of the outbuilding. He dug a little every night after the lights in the mansion had gone out and the slaveowner and his family had gone to sleep. Eventually his tunnel was completed and he squeezed himself down the small opening and came up on the other side of the wall.
In the dead of night, he crept towards the mansion, slipped the lock on the back door, tip-toed up the staircase and killed everyone inside. In the morning, locals discovered what had happened, but all the slaves had escaped and no-one was ever charged with the crime.
The house lay vacant for years afterwards and neighbors heard strange groans and shrieks coming from within the empty mansion. Everyone believed it was haunted by the ghosts of the slaveowner and his family. Nobody dared to enter the menacing looking building.
According to local legend, a man actually did buy the house in 1892 and moved in with his wife and their 3 children. Neighbors saw the family moving in, unloading their belongings from trucks and carrying them into the house.
And then… nothing. Neighbors never saw them again. The family never left the house. Neighbors thought it was very odd for a family of 5 to spend all their time indoors.
When one neighbor looked out her bedroom window, all she could make out was the figure of a woman, dressed all in white, standing at the second floor window. The figure wasn’t doing anything, just standing there, staring at her.
When the neighbor looked again, the following day, she saw the figure again, standing in the same position. Every day, whenever the neighbor looked at Mudhouse Mansion, the figure was always there. Standing in exactly the same position.

On the 10th day, she called the police and asked them to investigate. When policemen broke into the mansion and climbed the stairs to the second floor, they were greeted by a terrible sight.
All 5 family members were hanging lifeless from the ceiling. They were all dressed in white nightgowns. It appeared that they had taken their own lives. The figure the neighbor had seen was the mother of the family. And she hadn’t been standing at the window, she had been hanging there… for 10 whole days.

After that, nobody would live in the house and it has remained vacant to this day. People still come to visit the old mansion but the current owner will not allow anyone to enter the property. She is afraid that if anyone goes in, they will never come out alive.
Local children call it “Mary’s House” and tell each other that the famous Bloody Mary of legend grew up there. People who live in the area say that on cold dark nights, you can sometimes still see the figure of a woman, all in white, standing motionless at the second floor window.

Knock Knock

Knock Knock is a scary Urban Legend about a young boy and his sister who are left home alone when their parents go out for the night.

As their mother was leaving, she they told her children not to open the door under any circumstances. If anyone knocks, don’t answer it, she told them.
But the boy and his sister didn’t pay attention to their mother’s warning. They thought she was being too careful. They figured they could take care of themselves in any situation.
About an hour after the parents left, the kids heard a “knock, knock, knock” on the front door. They decided to ignore it, but again, they heard “knock, knock, knock”. It happened again and again and it grew louder each time.
Eventually, the girl couldn’t stand it anymore and she told her brother she was going to answer the door. When the boy reminded her of their mother’s warning, the girl just wouldn’t listen.
Again, they heard the “knock, knock, knock” on the door. Finally the sister went downstairs. Her brother lay on the sofa watcing TV. He heard his sister’s footsteps walking down the stairs. He heard her asking loudly “Who is it?”. He heard her open the lock on the front door.
Then he heard only silence. He lay there for a while, listening for any noise, but heard nothing. Eventually, he started getting scared. His sister still hadn’t returned. He was afraid to call out to his sister, so he sneaked out the back door and made his way to their neighbor’s house.
When he went into their house, his neighbor was watching the local news channel on TV. The news anchor on TV was talking about a murder. Then they showed a reporter live at the scene of the murder.
The neighbor said to the boy, “Hey that looks like your house”.
The boy was shaking with fear. “That is my house”, he said. “And that’s my front door”.

Crazy Lady

The Crazy Lady is a scary tale about a hunter who lives in a cabin, deep in the woods. One day, he comes across a beautiful young woman who may not be what she seems.

Bob had been out in the woods all day, hunting for deer. When he got back to his little cabin, it was almost dark and he was shocked to find the front door was standing open. Cautiously, he crept into the cabin and was surprised to see a young lady standing in front of the fireplace.
She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had a really pretty face and long brown hair that came down to her shoulders. She was wearing a white vest that was tied up over her stomach and a pair of blue jeans that accented her curves.
The young lady said her name was Jessica and she was lost. She had come out to the woods to stay at her father’s lodge, but had wandered off and couldn’t find her way back. She said she had spent all day, wandering in the forest, trying to find help.
Bob said that he would help her, but it was too late to go walking through the woods. She would have to stay the night in his cabin and in the morning, he would lead her back to her father’s lodge. Jessica thanked him and offered to cook him dinner in return for his kindness.
Over dinner, they talked for a while and bob was glad to have company. He didn’t meet many women, living alone as he did, in his little cabin in the woods.

Eventually, Jessica started to get sleepy. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. Bob told her she could take his bed and he would sleep in a chair. She climbed into bed, fully dressed, and before long, was sleeping soundly. She looked like she needed the rest.
Bob watched her as she slept. He thought she was one of the most gorgeous girls he had ever seen. He wondered if she could fall in love with a man like him. She was the kind of woman he had longed for all his life. Young, blond and beautiful.
As Jessica slept on the bed, he sat in a chair, listening to music on the radio. He kept the volume low so that he wouldn’t wake Jessica. Then, just as he was dozing off, the music on the radio was interrupted by a local news broadcast. The reporter said that the police were combing the area in search of a prisoner who had escaped from the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Bob’s ears pricked up.
The reporter said that the woman who had escaped was armed and dangerous. She had been convicted of the grisly murders of her husband and four other men and was sent to prison. Psychologists who examined her declared her mentally ill, and she was transferred to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
However, as she was being transported, she managed to overpower her guards, using a knife she had stolen from the prison cafeteria. She stabbed them to death and escaped into the woods. The police had been searching for her all day.
On the radio, they gave a description of the crazy lady. She was five foot four, 26 years old, blonde and very attractive. She had been wearing a prison uniform when she escaped, but they said she would probably try to steal some clothes to disguise herself. The police warned people to be on the lookout for the crazy lady and advised anyone who came across her to keep their distance.
Bob’s blood froze as he looked at Jessica, lying there peacefully on his bed. She fit the description perfectly. Young, blond, beautiful and completely insane. She was the escaped maniac the police were looking for. He was sure of it. And he was sure of something else too. She was planning to kill him while he slept. He wasn’t going to let that happen. He knew what he had to do.
Suddenly, Bob jumped out of his chair and threw open the front door of the cabin. Jessica awoke with a fright and looked at him, a confused expression on her face. He grabbed her, pulling her out of bed and began dragging her towards the door. She started screaming and her arms flailed wildly, trying to catch hold of him.
He managed to wrestle her to the front door, then with a mighty heave, he threw her out into the darkness. She landed on the grass outside and immediately jumped up and came running back towards the door. Bob slammed the wooden door shut and had just enough time to lock and bolt it before she slammed into it.
He braced himself against the door, expecting her to break it down at any moment. He could hear her outside, pounding on the cabin door with her fists, kicking it with her boots and shouting at him to let her in.
And then he heard a scream – an ear-splitting shriek that made him shiver. It sounded like the howls of a crazed animal. The kind of sound that could only be made by a person who was completely insane.
Then there was a horrible silence. He could hear something shifting and moving about outside the wooden door. He was shaking with fear, ready for anything. After a while, he noticed a thin trickle of blood coming under the door. Soon, it turned into a pool of blood, flowing across the floor at his feet.
Gathering his wits about him, Bob slowly opened the front door and was horrified by what he found. Jessica was lying there in a pool of blood and a large knife was sticking out of her head. She was completely naked and her eyes were glazed over. His mind raced as he tried to understand the strange scene that lay before him. But, stranger still, was the neat pile of blue clothing which was sitting on the grass beside Jessica’s dead body.
Reaching over her naked corpse, he picked up the blue clothes and, turning them over in his hands, he realized it was a blue uniform. There was some black lettering printed on the back. It read “State Hospital for the Criminally Insane”.
He fell to his knees beside the dead girl’s body as he finally understood what had happened. The Crazy Lady had murdered Jessica for her clothes.

Basement Room

The Basement Room is a scary tale about a family who experience a weird and disturbing supernatural presence in their cellar.

Years ago, my family went on a vacation in Cape Cod and we rented a small old house to stay in for two weeks. On the main floor was the kitchen, the living room and a bathroom. The bedrooms were on the second floor. There was a basement room downstairs, with a washer and dryer, a sofa and a television.
On the fist night, we were all awakened by a terrible scream from my sister’s bedroom. When my dad burst into her room and turned on the light, he found her sitting up in bed, screaming and crying. My parents sat with her and comforted her until she finally calmed down enough to tell them what had scared her.
She said that she had been awakened in the middle of the night by a horrible stench. When she opened her eyes, she had seen the entire bedroom soaked in blood from top to bottom. There was blood all over the floor, bloody handprints on the walls and blood spatter all over the ceiling.
We all thought that she had just been having a nightmare, but she refused to go back into her bedroom and stayed in our parents’ room for the remainder of the holiday.
One evening, my mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen upstairs and my father had gone out on an errand in a nearby town. My sister and I were in the basement room, watching TV, when all of a sudden, the lightbulb popped and the TV went off, leaving us in complete darkness. The basement was unfinished and had old stone walls, making it a bit of a creepy place. For a few seconds, we just froze, not knowing what to do. Then we started to smell something horrible.
It was a terrible stench and when it hit our noses, we felt nauseous. It smelled like rotting flesh. The smell quickly grew worse and worse and then we just heard a scratching in the darkness. Something seemed to be scratching at the floor or the walls. We screamed and began scrambling around in the pitch black, trying to find the door. Eventually, we managed to open the door and ran upstairs screaming to our mother.
We kept telling her about the disgusting smell and we heard something scratching and scraping around down there. My mother eventually agreed to go down to the basement, replace the bulb and check out the source of the horrible smell. She took a flashlight and a new bulb and disappeared into the darkened basement, as we waited for her at the top of the stairs. We expected her to return quickly but she seemed to be down there for an eternity.
Suddenly, we saw her emerge out of the darkness and come running up the stairs. She slammed the basement door behind her and bolted it as fast as she could. She turned to us and we could see her face had completely drained of color. Her eyes were wide with fear and she just said “I don’t want you going down there again.” Then she went into the kitchen and called the police.
We overheard her conversation on the phone and managed to figure out that she’d seen someone down in the basement room. As we waited for the police to come, we huddled together in the living room, staring at the basement door. At any moment, we expected to hear someone banging on it or trying to break it down. My mother refused to tell us what she had seen.
When the police arrived, my mother greeted them at the front door and ushered them inside. She unbolted the basement door and they went down into the darkness with their flashlights out and their guns drawn. They searched the entire basement room, but found nothing. There was no other way out of the basement, no windows, no doors. Whatever was down there would have had to come up through the basement door.
After the police left, my mother finally revealed what she had seen down there in the pitch black basement room. As she spoke, she became very still and quiet. She said that she had been changing the lightbulb downstairs, when she began to smell the horrible stench we had described to her. Then she started to hear a faint scratching noise. She shone her flashlight around the room and suddenly caught sight of something crouched between the washer and dryer.
It was a man, crouched on all fours. His clothes were tattered, his hair was wild and tangled, and his face didn’t look human. It was twisted in an expression of pure hatred. In that split second, he looked up at my mother, his eyes reflecting the beam from her flashlight. Then he suddenly crawled forward and disappeared through a wall. When my mother saw him simply vanish into thin air, she dropped the flashlight and ran.
After that, none of us would go down in the basement. We kept the door locked and bolted. Every night, we slept in our parents’ room and locked that door too. We cut our holiday short a few days later and just drove home.

Ball Pit

The Ball Pit is a scary urban legend about the hidden dangers lurking beneath the hundreds of brightly colored balls in a children’s play area.

A mother took her eager 3 year old son to a fast food restaurant for lunch. The boy finished his lunch quickly and asked his mom if he could go play in the play area. The restaurant had a special little play area at the side with some tunnels, a slide and a ball pit for kids, filled with plastic balls.
She watched as the boy crawled through the tunnels, went down the slide and jumped into the ball pit. He jumped up and down on the brightly colored balls, dove into them and burrowed down under them. The boy had been playing for about 10 minutes when, all of a sudden, he stopped and began to cry loudly.
The mother rushed to her son, picked him up and asked him what was wrong. The little boy just wailed and pointed to his butt. His mother pulled down his pants and saw two little red marks on one of his butt cheeks. She thought he must have just sat on something sharp, but just to be sure, she took him to the hospital.
A doctor examined the little boy in the emergency room and told the mother that the marks on her son’s butt were a snake bite. The doctor gave the boy an antidote for the snake poison and kept him in hospital overnight for observation.
The next day, the boy’s mother returned to the fast food restaurant to complain. She approached the counter and shouted at one of the teenagers who worked there.
“My son was bitten by a snake in your ball pit”, the woman screamed.
“You should count yourself lucky, lady”, said the teenager. “A kid got eaten by a shark in there last week”.

Mothman

The Mothman is an unexplained creature with large red eyes and large wings like a moth. It was made famous by the 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies and has appeared before major world disasters.
The creature often appears to have no head, with red eyes set into its chest. It has been photographed and been seen by eyewitnesses and has chased and harrassed a number of people.
The first sighting of Mothman was in November 1966 in Point Pleasant, Virginia. Two newlywed couples were driving through Route 62 when they saw red eyes and something fly away. Dozens of sightings were reported in the area soon afterwards.
A year later a major disaster hit the town of Point Pleasant when the Silver Bridge collapsed and 46 people died in the accident. The Mothman was seen on the bridge before the collapse.
The Mothman has also been sighted just before other world tragedies, such as the Tsunami in India, Chernobyl, Afghanistan and Iraq, and September the 11th.
In 2002 the story was made into a movie, The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Debra Messing and Will Patton.
The paranormal reality TV show Paranormal State investigated the Mothman mystery in 2008.

Dead Man’s Hand

The Dead man’s hand is an urban legend about the most dangerous cards that can be dealt in a poker game. Two black Aces and two black Eights. The story goes that anyone who is dealt a dead man’s hand in a game of poker, dies immediately.

Unlike most hands in poker, the Dead man’s hand only contains 4 cards instead of 5, because you die before you receive the 5th card.
In 1876, the legendary Old West lawman, Wild Bill Hickok, was playing poker in a saloon in the town of Deadwood. He was dealt four cards in the game and when he turned them over, he realised he had been dealt the dead man’s hand.
He was dead before he got the 5th card. He had been shot in the back of the head and killed instantly. His body slumped forward over the poker table, still gripping the fateful cards in his left hand.

In order for it to work, you must be dealt the cards in this order. Eight, Ace, Eight, Ace. You see, “H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so when you get 8A8A, what the cards are really spelling out is “HA HA”. It’s like the universe is laughing at you.
So if you’re ever playing poker and someone deals you an 8 and then an Ace and then another 8 and then another Ace… Look behind you! Because chances are, you’re never going to be dealt another card.

Final Cut

Final Cut is an urban legend about a woman who wears a black ribbon around her neck and refuses to take it off, no matter what.
Jane wore a black ribbon around her neck everyday, rain or shine, whether it matched her outfit or not. It annoyed her best friend Johnny after awhile. He was her next door neighbor and had known Jane since she was three. When he was young, he had barely noticed the black ribbon, but now they were in high school together, it bothered him.
“Why do you wear that black ribbon around your neck, Jane?” he’d ask her every day. But she wouldn’t tell him.
Still, in spite of this aggravation, Johnny thought she was cute. He asked her to the soda shoppe for an ice cream sundae. Then he asked her to watch him play in the football game. Then he started seeing her home. And come the spring, he asked her to the dance. Jane always said yes when he asked her out. And she always wore a black dress to match the ribbon around her neck.
It finally occurred to Johnny that he and Jane were going steady, and he still didn’t know why she wore the black ribbon around her neck. So he asked her about it yet again, and yet again she did not tell him. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you about it,” she’d reply. Someday! That answer annoyed Johnny, but he shrugged it off, because Jane was so cute and fun to be with.
Well, time flew past, as it has a habit of doing, and one day Johnny proposed to Jane and was accepted. They planned a big wedding, and Jane hinted that she might tell him about the black ribbon around her neck on their wedding day. But somehow, what with the preparations and his beautiful bride, and the lovely reception, Johnny never got around to asking Jane about it. And when he did remember, she got a bit teary-eyed, and said: “We are so happy together, what difference does it make?” And Johnny decided she was right.
Johnny and Jane raised a family of four, with the usual ups and downs, laughter and tears. When their golden anniversary rolled around, Johnny once again asked Jane about the black ribbon around her neck. It was the first time he’d brought it up since the week after their wedding. Whenever their children asked him about it, he’d always hushed them, and somehow none of the kids had dared ask their mother. Jane gave Johnny as sad look and said: “Johnny, you’ve waited this long. You can wait awhile longer.”
Finally, while his wife lay asleep in bed one night, Johnny was overcome by curiosity. He had to find out why she wore the ribbon. Carefully, without waking her, he decided to go ahead and untie it. With shaking hands, Johnny fumbled for the knot and began to untie the ribbon around his wife’s neck.
The bow became smaller and smaller. The loops of the bow pulled through and only a half-knot was left. Johnny slid his finger under the half-knot and tugged.
The ribbon came free and Jane’s head fell off, leaving just a bloody stump on her shoulders. And as her severed head rolled across the floor, the woman screamed, “You Idiot! I warned you never to untie my black ribbon”.

Gettysburg College

Gettysburg College was known as Pennsylvania College back at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. The campus was involved in the fighting and even provided shelter for the wounded and dying as a field hospital.

Not surprisingly, Gettysburg College is said to haunted by the ghosts of dead soldiers. One of the most haunted buildings on campus is Pennsylvania Hall, which was taken over by the Confederate soldiers during the battle.
Students and staff members of Gettysburg College have reported seeing the ghostly figures of soldiers pacing back and forth in the cupola of the building.
One student reported that he and his roommate, who lived in a dorm about 50 yards away from Pennsylvania Hall kept seeing a shadowy figure in the tower over a period of several nights. On another occasion, a figure was seen to be gesturing wildly, apparently to a student below. When the student called out to him, believing that perhaps someone was trapped in the tower, the figure vanished. An investigation by campus security found the building to be empty.
When Gettyburg College served as a field hospital during the battle, conditions for the wounded soldiers were terrible. Blood sprayed the walls and floors of the rooms as doctors operated without anesthetic, dealing with bullet wounds by amputating arms and legs. Those who were beyong help were left to die outside. Even today, people have heard horrible wails, groans and cries echoing in this area.
Two men were working on the fourth floor of Pennsylvania Hall one night. As they were leaving, they stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the first floor. Instead of taking them to their destination, the elevator mysteriously passed it and came to a stop on the basement level. The elevator doors then opened to a terrifying scene….
The basement storage room had vanished and in its place was a blood-splattered operating room. Wounded men were lying prone on the floor and doctors walked around in bloody clothing. The entire scene was completely silent, although it was obvious that it was one of chaos.
Stunned and horrified, the men repeatedly pushed at the elevator button, desperately trying to close the doors and escape the scene which lay before them. Just before the doors closed though, one of the spectral orderlies was said to have looked up, directly at the two administrators.
Whatever happened that night, the two men were shaken and frightened by it and never forgot their strange experience. After that, whenever they had to work late at night, they always left the building by way of the stairs.

The Leg

The Leg is a scary Halloween story about a woman who attacks children who trick or treat on All Hallows Eve.

The Leg

According to legend, every Halloween, a strange and grotesque old lady roams the streets, preying on children who are trick-or-treating alone. Some call her “The Leg Woman” and others refer to her as “The Legmonger”.
One boy was on his own when he heard a rustling in the bushes next to him. An old woman with stringy, black hair and a hideous, wrinkled face emerged from the undergrowth. The boy was startled to see she was holding a severed leg in her hands and waving it in his face.
“Do you want a leg?”, she cried. “Do you want a LEEEEG?”
The boy assumed it was just a halloween prop, but the woman was so disturbing that he began backing away from her. She persisted, asking him over and over if he wanted a leg.
Finally, the boy said “No! I don’t want a leg!”
A group of adults and children who were nearby, heard a horrible scream ringing out in the darkened street. They rushed around the corner and got the shock of their lives when they discovered a young boy lying on the ground in a pool of blood. His right leg had been completely ripped off at the hip.
If you meet the Leg Woman on Halloween night, be careful. She will come up to you and ask “Do you want a leg?”
If you answer “No”, she will tear off your leg and disappear. If you answer “Yes”, she will grab you and try to attach the severed leg she is carrying to your body.
The correct answer is “I want both my legs!”

Bloody Mary

You’re wondering whether Bloody Mary is real or just an urban legend. Well she’s real. Or at least she was. The myth is based on a true story.
According to the legend, you have to stand in a bathroom, with one candle lit and say the name “Bloody Mary” into the mirror three times in a row. It is only the bravest of children who would attempt to do this, because the story says this will summon her ghost.
If you see her ghostly face in the mirror, it could have one of the following terrible consequences:
1. Your eyes being ripped out and your face horribly scarred.
2. Being found dead with claw marks all over your face and body
3. Disappearing mysteriously from the bathroom and ending up trapped in the mirror with the ghost for eternity.
You could also be driven insane or drop dead on the spot.

These Bloody Mary pictures show you what to expect.
The history of the chanting game is based on mixed up legends and history that over the years have become the main basis for the story surrounding the urban legend.
The most common story told is that Mary Worth was a witch that lived over 100 years ago who dabbled in the black arts. She was found out and executed.
The other story is more modern – a local woman was involved in a fatal car accident, and her face was horribly scarred before she died. She reappears in the mirror when summoned with that same horrific face.
It is largely believed that the origins of the names “Mary Worth” and “Bloody Mary” came from a slight mix up of characters from history. Mary I, Queen of England, or Mary Tudor, who reigned during the Tudor period was also commonly known as “Bloody Mary”.

Her nickname of “Bloody Mary” became attached to her when she violently executed and burnt people at the stake for heresy throughout her 5-year reign as Queen of England.
She also was unable to have children and suffered two phantom pregnancies, this is why it is speculated that the variation involving chanting “I stole your baby” became tangled up with the legend.
There is another suggestion that the name “Mary Worth” was derived from a victim of the Salem Witch trials.
Another possible origin is the legend of Elizabeth Bathory, or Countess Dracula as she has been called. She was a Hungarian royal who was rumored to have killed young girls and bathed in their blood to preserve her youthful beauty. Of course her name was not Mary but somehow the stories of this cruel woman have been inserted into the legend.
The Japanese have their own version, called Kuchisake Onna or The Slit Mouth Woman.
How do you play Bloody Mary? What you need is one candle, a strong heart and a big bathroom with a large mirror.
Turn out the lights, place your candle down and light it, stand and look into the mirror, chant slowly “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary”. And see what happens…
If nothing happens try spinning around three times and then look into the mirror. You may just catch a glimpse of her terrifying face.
Try it out if you dare, but don’t blame me if you find yourself trapped in a ghostly netherworld with the ghost of Bloody Mary forever!

Movies based on the legend of Bloody Mary:

Urban Legends 3: Bloody Mary
Candyman
Dead Mary
Bloody Mary
Supernatural (TV Show)

Vanishing Hitchhiker

The Vanishing Hitchhiker is a scary urban legend about a young girl on her way to a dance and a boy who gives her a ride in his car.

A boy and his friend were in on their way to a dance, driving down a lonely country road. They saw a young girl standing at the side of the road, with her thumb out. The boys stopped to ask her if she’d like a ride. She asked them if they’d take her home but they told her they were on their way to a dance.
They asked the girl if she’d like to come too and she accepted their invitation. So they all got in the car and she sat in the back seat. It was a very cold night and she borrowed one of their overcoats.
They danced all night and when it got late, she asked them to take her home. So they drove to her house and stopped and let her out. Suddenly one of the boys remembered he had forgotted to ask her for his overcoat. His friend said “Wait until tomorrow. We’ll come back”.
The next morning the boys returned to look for the girl. They found her mother, a very old woman, at home. She said that the girl was her daughter, but she’d been dead for 12 years. She had been killed in an car accident at the same corner. The old woman pointed to a cemetery down the road.
The boys didn’t believe her and they went into the cemetery and looked around. Then they saw the overcoat draped over a headstone. Engraved in the tombstone was the girl’s name and the date of her death was exactly 12 years ago to the day.
This type of phantom hitchhiker also features in the urban legend about the San Antonio Ghost Tracks.

Boyfriend

The Boyfriend is a scary urban legend about a young couple who go driving at night and wind up running out of gas in a remote area.

A girl and her boyfriend were driving at night down an isolated country road. As they drove, the night seemed to get darker and darker. Eventually, they lost their way and found themselves driving through a densely wooded area that neither of them recognized.
Suddenly, the car started spluttering and stalled. The boyfriend looked at the guage and realized they had run out of gas. No matter how many times he turned the key, the engine just wouldn’t start.
The girlfriend began to panic because it was after midnight and they were stuck in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t get home.
The boyfriend got out of the car and took a look around. They were in a secluded and wooded area. All he could see were trees. There seemed to be no houses for miles around. They were completely alone.
The girlfriend was spooked and kept asking the boy to do something. He told her he would have to walk back to the main highway and get help.
The boyfriend could see that his fiance was scared so he told her not to worry, he would return as fast as he could. But the girl could see the concern in his face.
Kissing her goodbye, he told her to roll up the windows and lock the doors. Then he set out walking down the road. The girl watched as her boyfriend Got further and further away and finally disappeared into the darkness.
Hours passed and the girl sat shivering in the car, fearful of every shadow she saw and every noise she heard. She began to feel like her boyfriend was never coming back.
Suddenly, she heard a loud tapping noise on the roof of the car.
Tap, tap, tap.
She began to panic but was too terrified to get out and investigate. She kept trying to peer out the windows, but it was too dark to see anything.
Tap, tap, tap.
The tapping noise seemed to go on and on. The girl was scared to death but there was nothing she could do.
Tap, tap, tap.
She was forced to remain huddled in the car, all night long, listening to the weird tapping sound. Eventually, she managed to fall asleep.
When she woke up and looked at her watch, it was 9AM but when she tried to look out of the car windows, everything was completely black. She couldn’t understand what was going on.
Suddenly, she heard a car pull up nearby and it honked it’s horn three times. Then she heard a voice shouting “This is the police. Is there anyone in the car?”
The girlfriend sighed with relief. “Just me”, she cried. “My boyfriend left me here alone and never came back.”
“OK. Stay calm”, said the policeman. “Listen to me very carefully. Open the door, get out of the car and walk towards me. Whatever you do, don’t look behind you.”
The girl obeyed the policeman’s orders. Even though her hands were shaking and her mind was racing, she opened the car door and stepped out.
“Now walk towards me”, said the policeman, “and don’t look behind you.”
The girl began walking slowly towards the policeman but suddenly she stopped in her tracks.
“Don’t look behind you!” shouted the policeman.
But it was too late. The girl couldn’t help herself. She turned around and began screaming in horror.
Her boyfriend’s dead body was hanging upside-down from a tree branch over the car. His head had been chopped off and blood was dripping down from his neck, completely covering the car windows.

Whaley House

The Whaley House in San Diego, California is a haunted house with a dark and scary history. Now operating as a museum, it has the reputation of being the most haunted house in the USA. Ghost Hunters investigated Whaley House a few years ago.

The Whaley House was built in 1857 by Thomas Whaley on the site of San Diego’s old public gallows and cemetery. It was the scene of numerous deaths and is now home to many ghosts and haunting apparitions.
Countless hangings occurred on the property before the Whaley House was constructed. The stairs are located on the very spot where Yankee Jim Robinson was hung in 1852. Yankee Jim was a tall man and his feet scraped the ground as he hung from the noose. They say he took nearly an hour to die.
In order to build the house, Mr Whaley had to knock down the old gallows. Soon after the Whaley family moved into the house, they began hearing heavy footsteps moving up and down the stairs. Mr Whaley said they sounded like the boots of a large man. Many people have experienced the feeling of a noose tightening around their necks when they stand on the 9th step. Others have even seen the ghostly figure of Yankee Jim walking up the stairs.
The Whaleys’ young son was the first person to die in the house. He was found dead of scarlet fever in his upstairs bedroom, in 1858, at the age of only 17 months. Ever since, the haunting cries of a baby have been reported coming from this room.
In the mid-1800’s a young girl named Carrie Washburn, who was friends with the Whaley children, was playing in the backyard. She wasn’t looking where she was going and accidentally ran into a clothes line. The rope wrapped around her neck and crushed her throat. It was as if she had been hanged. Her corpse was brought into the house and left lying on the kitchen table. Since then, a young blond girl has been seen standing in the kitchen and running in the yard. A meat cleaver hanging on the kitchen wall has also been seen moving.
At one time, Mr Whaley rented out the upstairs portion of the house to a theater group. One night, a member of the theater group got drunk and accused his girlfriend of being unfaithful. When she denied it, he took a knife and stabbed her to death at the back door.
Thomas Whaley’s eldest daughter, Violet, inexplicably attempted to commit suicide in 1885. She threw herself off the roof of the Whaley house and fell into a deep well outside. Her father heard her scream as she fell into the water and he managed to rush out and save her.
Three weeks later, Violet died mysteriously. They say she went into the toilet of the Whaley House, took out a gun and shot herself in the chest. However, when they found her dead body in the toilet, the gun was nowhere to be found. Many years later, the weapon was discovered hidden under a slab of concrete in the barn behind the house. Nobody knows how it could have gotten there.
The ghost of Thomas Whaley has been seen on the second floor landing, dressed in a black frock coat and wide-brimmed hat. People have also seen his ghostly figure staring out at them from the upstairs windows.
Years ago, TV presenter Regis Philbin tried to spend a night in the house. Sometime after midnight, he said, he saw something move from the study into the music room, but when he turned a flashlight on, it disappeared.
The house has been a museum since 1960. The 150-year-old home has certainly seen its share of sorrow and death. Visitors regularly report seeing the ghosts of the man who was hanged, the master of the house, and the lady of the house wandering the halls. People travel from far and wide to see this historic building and the mysteries it holds inside.
According to the Travel Channel’s America’s Most Haunted, the house is the number one most haunted house in the United States. The ghosts of the Whaley House have been investigated on the TV shows Ghost Hunters, Haunted History and Most Haunted.

Myrtles

Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana is haunted by ghosts of the restless dead. Ghost photos have been taken there and Ghost Hunters claim to have captured footage of a haunting spirit.
Built on Indian burial ground, The Myrtles has seen more than its share of tragedy. Chloe, a young house slave, had the unfortunate habit of eavesdropping on the plantation owner’s plans. One time, she was caught, and her loss of status was shown emphatically by the loss of her ear.
In order to prove how capable she could be, Chloe poisoned the birthday cake of one of her master’s girls with a poison derived from the leaves of the Oleander plant, intending to sicken the family, so she, knowing exactly what was wrong with them, could nurse them back to health.
Unfortunately, she used too much of the poison, and her charges die. Chloe was then hung, the victim of mob justice. Now, the Myrtles is a bed and breakfast, and guests report seeing various apparitions, including the two girls, their mother, and Chloe herself. In fact, several photographs have been taken that appear to picture the spirits.
An episode of the TV show Ghost Hunters was shot at Myrtles Plantation and found evidence of paranormal activity.

Winchester Mystery House

The mystery of Winchester House in San Jose, California involves a haunted mansion inhabited by ghosts and a frightened woman, inspired by madness. The Winchester Mystery House has been featured on Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted.

Winchester House is one of the most famous haunted houses in America. It was built by a woman named Sarah Winchester back in 1884 and the strangest thing about it is that the number of rooms it contains is a mystery.
Sarah Winchester’s husband invented the Winchester rifle and made his family very rich. But Sarah believed that a curse had been placed on her family. Her only daughter, Annie, died from marasmus and her husband died from pulmonary tuberculosis. Mrs Winchester was so stunned by the tragedy, that she fell into a coma.
“Finally, she recovered and decided to visit a medium and contacted the spirit of her dead husband. According to Sarah Winchester, the medium held a seance and her husband’s ghost revealed that there was only one way to lift the curse that had been placed on her.
Sarah believed that the deaths of her husband and daughter were caused by ghosts. The ghosts of people who had been killed with the destructive rifles created by her husband. The only way to appease these evil spirits and stop the curse from killing her, was to keep building the house. If she stopped building, she was convinced that she would die.
Sarah Winchester’s husband had left her a huge fortune and she used this vast wealth to continuously build the house for 38 years.

Winchester Mystery House began to take on a strange and twisted shape. There were no blueprints and no master plan for how the house was supposed to look. Sarah didn’t care what it looked like, she just knew that she needed to keep building. The result was both bizarre and beautiful. Most people thought that Sarah had lost her mind.
As the years went by, Winchester House continued to grow. Rooms were added to rooms, doors were joined to windows, levels turned into towers and peaks and the place eventually grew to a height of seven stories. There were stairs that led nowhere, rooms built inside other rooms, open holes in the middle of floors, chimneys that served no purpose and closets that opened onto walls.

Sarah Winchester was also obsessed with the number 13. The windows contained 13 panes of glass, the walls had 13 panels, the floors contained 13 wooden planks, the rooms had 13 windows and every staircase had 13 steps.
The design of Winchester House was supposed to confuse the evil spirits and ghosts that were haunting Sarah. She designed a house that was really a giant maze where she felt she could hide from the spirits.
Sarah lived a lonely life in the solitude of Winchester House. Her only friends were the servants who worked for her and the builders who constructed her home. At night, she would wander the darkened hallways of the old mansion, trying to avoid running into the ghosts.
Sarah died in her sleep in 1922 at the age of 83. Many people believe that her ghost now haunts Winchester House, trapped there for all eternity with the evil spirits that terrified her in life.
In the years since the house was opened to the public, employees and visitors claim to have encountered paranormal activity. People hear mysterious footsteps, doors banging open and closed on their own, the whispering of strange disembodied voices, windows that suddenly shatter and doorknobs that turn by themselves.

Leap Castle

Leap Castle in Offaly, Ireland is said to be one of the most haunted castles in the world. When Ghost Hunters visited the castle, they investigated the famous haunted oubliette and encountered an elemental demon.

Leap Castle is still haunted by its troubled history of murder and torture. Over 400 years ago, it was the stronghold of the powerful and vicious O’Carroll family. They hired many mercenary soldiers to kill for them and when the soldiers when came back looking for payment, the O’Carrolls murdered them in the castle.

The O’Carrolls had a room in Leap Castle called an Oubliette. This was a small room with no floor that dropped down into a dungeon below. If the O’Carrolls decided to murder you, they would invite you upstairs and, when you were least expecting it, they would push you through the door of the Oubliette. To your horror, you would fall straight down into the dungeon, which was filled with large wooden spikes. There you would lie, impaled on a wooden spike, bleeding to death as the O’Carrolls listened to your tortured screams echoing through the castle.
When workmen were cleaning out Leap Castle in the 1900s, they discovered the hidden Oubliette. Looking down, they were shocked to see hundreds of human skeletons piled on top of each other in the dungeon underneath. It took three full cart loads to remove all of the victims’ bones.
At one time, in Leap Castle, there was a bitter fight between two brothers in the O’Carroll family. One brother, was a warrior and the other was a priest. Tensions between the brothers grew and, one terrible night, the situation erupted in violence. The priest was saying mass in the chapel when his brother suddenly burst in and attacked him.
The priest was stuck through the heart with a sword and died on the altar as his shocked family looked on. The heinous act of brother killing brother was bad enough, but the fact that it happened during a sacred religious ceremony made it a terrible blasphemy against God. Ever since, the room in which the priest died has been known as “The Bloody Chapel” and the castle is believed to be cursed.

A few years ago, a man was standing on the stairs, just outside the Bloody Chapel, when he saw a ghostly apparition, dressed in the robes of a priest. The figure came straight towards him and then suddenly vanished right in front of him.
In 1659, according to local legend, the daughter of the O’Carroll Chieftain fell in love with an Englishman named Darby who was held prisoner in the castle dungeon. She smuggled food to him, and eventually arranged his escape. As she fled with her lover, they were caught by her brother on the staircase. He raised the alarm and Darby promptly plunged his sword through her brother’s body. The lovers then jumped to freedom from the castle battlements. Through the murder of her brother, she became heiress of Leap Castle.
The Ghost of a young girl has also been seen on numerous occasions. She is thought to be the spirit of a daughter of a one-time owner of the
Years later, another young girl was livng in Leap Castle. Her father wanted her to marry the son of a wealthy gentleman but she was in love with a poor boy from a local farm. When her father discovered them together, he killed the boy she loved. One night, while her father was sleeping, she came into his room and killed him. The following day as the girl was standing on the castle battlements, an unseen force pushed her and she fell to her death. It is believed that her ghost roams the castle every night, mourning her lost love.
Recently, a young girl who was visiting the castle saw a girl dressed in old clothes, standing on the staircase. When she asked her parents who the girl was, the ghostly apparition vanished. On another occasion, a woman was taking a walk around the castle’s grounds when she spotted a young girl falling from the castle battlements. The woman screamed when the girl vanished just before she hit the ground.
By the late 19th century, Johanthan and Mildred Darby were living in Leap Castle. Mildred Darby became very interested in the history of the castle and its reputation for being haunted. She began dabbling in the occult, holding black magic rituals in the castle dungeon.
It is said that, during these occult rituals, Mildred Darby accidentally awakened a ferocious elemental demon. One night, she was standing in the Gallery, when she suddenly felt a cold hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw something terrifying standing right behind her. It was a small, hunched figure that looked like it was half human, half beast. It’s face was thin, gaunt and shadowy and it’s eyes seemed to be just hollow black cavities. The horrible smell of the thing reminded her of a rotting corpse.
After Mrs Darby’s experiments in the black arts, Leap Castle has never been the same. It burned down under mysterious circumstances and was kept locked up for almost 70 years. Nowadays, the locals in Offaly avoid Leap Castle after the sun goes down, afraid of the evil that lurks within.
Many visitors to Leap have heard eerie moaning and weeping at night, and lights are seen at the top of the Castle. From across the fields, people would watch the window of the “Bloody Chapel” suddenly light up, as though hundreds of flickering candles were blazing within. Some, who dared walk amongst the ruins, experienced alarming encounters with a lady wearing a billowing red gown.
When Ghost Hunters visited Leap Castle, they saw a ghostly disembodied face wearing a hood like a monk. In the Oubliette, they heard ghostly sounds of voices pleading for help and one of the team claimed he was attacked and knocked to the ground by the elemental demon.

Baker Hotel

The Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas is a huge haunted abandoned building that has numerous ghost stories and other fascinating tales to tell. It was abandoned in 1970, and has stood vacant and deteriorating since then.

Back in the heyday of the hotel, there were a number of odd deaths that occurred on the property. A bellboy was crushed by a service elevator and died from his injuries several days later. On another occasion, a drunken woman tried to jump into one of the swimming pools from the 12th floor balcony and died in the fall. The woman was found dead outside the hotel, and no one had a clue as to who she was. After she was embalmed, the hotel displayed her body in one of the front windows, hoping someone would recognize her and provide a clue to her identity.
A red-haired woman named Virginia was living on the seventh floor. She was dumped by her boyfriend and became distraught and depressed. In a fit of madness, she jumped to her death from the top of the building.
Since then, the ghost of Virginia has been spotted prowling the halls of the old hotel. Some people passing by the hotel, looked up and saw a woman staring at them from a window on the seventh floor. When security guards checked it out, they found that it was the window of Virginia’s old room.
Recently a woman, who worked as a maid in the hotel, reported that on several occasions she found glasses in the room with red lipstick stains on the rims. This took place at times when no one was staying in the room.
One night, the manager heard the distinct sound of a woman in high heals walking across the lobby. He searched for the person he had heard, but found himself all alone in the old hotel. Later he discovered that nobody had been in the building that day.
On another occasion, he was inspecting the fuse box on the seventh floor when he heard footsteps walking towards him and stopping directly behind him. He turned to see who it was and discovered that there was nobody there.
Nowadays, the hotel is used to take people on ghost tours. One group of people were in the middle of a tour when they heard the sounds of a man and woman arguing coming from the floor below them. Then they heard some loud bangs and the sound of a heavy iron door being closed. When they went downstairs to investigate, they found nothing at all, just a disused kitchen.
The guide who was with them, told them that there had been a murder on that floor many years before. The hotel’s cook was cheating on his wife. His girlfriend was a maid who worked at the hotel. He had an argument with his girlfriend and, in a rage, murdered her in the kitchen and stored her body in the old iron refrigerator.

Summerwind

Summerwind is a haunted house in Wisconsin that has a terrifying history. It is often called the most haunted mansion in the world. Read on to discover the details of the haunting of Summerwind.

Back in the 1900s, Summerwind was called Lamont Mansion and a man called Robert Lamont lived there with his wife. When Mr Lamont moved into the house, the maids he employed told him that it was haunted. But he was a stubborn man and refused to believe in ghosts and the supernatural. However, something was about to convince him.
One evening, as he and his wife were eating dessert in the kitchen, the door to the basement began to rattle and nearly shook off its hinges. Suddenly, the door burst open and the ghostly form of a man was standing there.
Mr Lamont took one look at the ghost, and pulled out a pistol. The ghost swung the door shut and Lamont fired two shots in its direction, before fleeing the residence with his wife. The Lamonts abandoned the property that night and never returned.
After remaining vacant for some time, the haunted house became the residence of Arnold and Ginger Hinshaw and their six children, who moved into Summerwind during the early 1970s.

From the moment they set foot in Summerwind, the Hinshaws and their children started to see vague shapes and shadows flickering down the hallways. They also claimed to hear the haunting sounds of muffled voices in the darkened, empty rooms. When they would walk inside, the noise would suddenly stop.
Summerwind’s windows and doors would often open and close on their own. Eventually, Arnold had to resort to nailing all the windows shut. On one occasion, Arnold was just about to get into his car to drive to work when the vehicle suddenly burst into flames.
Most alarming of all was the ghostly shape of a black-haired woman that was often seen floating back and forth behind the French doors that led off from the dining room.
During renovations on the house, Arnold Hinshaw removed a drawer from a fitted closet and discovered a hidden recess behind it. Shining a flashlight into the recess, he could see what appeared to be the skeletal remains of an animal.
The hole was too small for him to fit through, so when his children came home from school, he convinced his daughter Mary to crawl into the recess to see what was lurking inside. Poor Mary squeezed through the narrow opening and then, all of a sudden, started to scream in horror. She discovered that the remains were not those of an animal. It was actually a human skull with strands of dirty black hair still attached to it. The grisly remains also contained an arm and a portion of a leg.
Shortly after the horrifying discovery in the hidden compartment, things started to take a turn for the worse at Summerwind. Arnold slowly began to lose his mind, staying up all night long, playing haunting organ music. His wife, Ginger, pleaded with him to stop but Arnold claimed the demons in his head demanded that he play. He often crashed the keys on the organ until dawn, frightening his wife and children so badly that they often huddled together in one bedroom, crying and cowering in fear.
Within six months of moving into Summerwind, Arnold suffered a complete breakdown and Ginger attempted suicide. Arnold was sent to a mental hospital and his wife took the children and went to live with her parents in Wisconsin. The mansion, once again, was left unoccupied.
But not for long. Ginger’s parents, Henry and Marie Bober, decided to buy Summerwind house and planned to turn it into a restaurant. Ginger begged them not to buy the disturbing old place, but they refused to listen.
When Henry Bober attempted to renovate the house, he suffered countless problems. Every time they tried to measure the rooms, the dimensions changed drastically. It seemed as if Summerwind was gradually changing shape. After hearing strange voices and seeing ghostly apparitions, builders refused to work on the property.
One day Mr Bober was in the house on his own when he heard gunshots coming from the kitchen. He rushed downstairs and threw open the kitchen door but it was empty. He smelled gunpowder in the air but the only bullet holes he could find were the ones in the basement door, lodged there years before.
Mr Bober was forced to abandon his plans to convert Summerwind into a restaurant and instead sold the building. In 1988 Summerwind was struck by lightning several times, resulting in a fire that destroyed much of the old mansion. Today, only the house’s chimney stacks, foundations, and stone steps remain. The evil lurking in Summerwind Mansion had finally succeeded in destroying itself.

Haunted Painting

This is the true story of the Haunted Painting, the most bizarre and frightening tale I’ve heard in quite a while.

In February, 2000, the haunted painting was put up for sale on eBay and an auction begun. Today, many wonder if it was a true story, or a marketing ploy. Item 251789217 was it’s name on eBay, but it quickly became known on the Internet as “The Haunted eBay Painting.”
The item description in itself was bizarre:
WHEN WE RECEIVED THIS PAINTING, WE THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY GOOD ART. A ” PICKER ” HAD FOUND IT ABANDONNED BEHIND AN OLD BREWERY. AT HTE TIME WE WONDERED A LITLLE WHY A SEEMINGLY PERFECTLY FINE PAINTING WOULD BE DISCARDED LIKE THAT. ( TODAY WE DON’T !!! ) ONE MORNING OUR 4 AND 1/2 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER CLAIMED, THAT THE CHILDREN IN THE PICTURE WERE FIGHTING, AND COMING INTO THE ROOM DURING THE NIGHT. NOW, I DON’T BELIEVE IN UFOS OR ELVIS BEING ALIVE, BUT MY HUSBAND WAS ALARMED. TO MY AMUSEMENT HE SET UP A MOTION TRIGGERED CAMREA FOR THE NIGHTS. AFTER THREE NIGHTS THERE WERE PICTURES.THE LAST TWO PICTURES SHOWN ARE FROM THAT ‘STAKEOUT’. AFTER SEEING THE BOY SEEMINGLY EXITING THE PAINTING UNDER THREAT, WE DECIDED, THE PAINTING HAS TO GO.PLEASE JUDGE FOR YOURSELF. — BEFORE YOU DO, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWIND WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. —-WARNING: DO NOT BID ON THIS PAINTING IF YOU ARE SUCCEPTIBLE TO STRESS RELATED DISEASE, FAINT OF HEART OR ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH SUPERNATURAL EVENTS. BY BIDDING ON THIS PAINTING, YOU AGREE TO RELEASE THE OWNERS OF ALL LIABILITY IN RELATION TO THE SALE OR ANY EVENTS HAPPENING AFTER THE SALE, THAT MIGHT BE CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PAINTING. THIS PAINTING MAY OR MAY NOT POSESS SUPERNATURAL POWERS, THAT COULD IMPACT OR CHANGE YOUR LIFE. HOWEVER, BY BIDDING YOU AGREE TO EXCLUSIVELY BID ON THE VALUE OF THE ARTWORK, WITH DISREGARD TO THE LAST TWO PHOTOS FEATURED IN THIS AUCTION, AND HOLD THE OWNERS HARMLESS IN REGARD TO THEM AND THEIR IMPACT, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.———— NOW THAT WE GOT THIS OUT OF THE WAY, ONE QUESTION TO YOU EBAYERS. WE WANT OUR HOUSE TO BE BLESSED AFTER THE PAINTING IS GONE, DOES ANYBODY KNOW, WHO IS QUALIFIED TO DO THAT?
Shortly thereafter, in response to questions about the piece, the sellers posted the following addition:
THE SIZE OF THE PAINTING IS 24 BY 36 INCHES, SO IT IS RATHER LARGE. AS I HAVE HAD SEVERAL QUESTIONS, HERE THE FOLLOWING ANSWERS. THERE WAS NO ODOR LEFT BEHIND IN THE ROOM. THERE WERE NO VOICES, OR THE SMELL OF GUNPOWDER, NO FOODPRINTS OR STRANGE FLUIDS ON THE WALL. TO DETER QUESTIONS IN THIS DIRECTION, THERE ARE NO GHOSTS IN THIS WORLD , NO SUPERNATURAL POWERS, THIS IS JUST A PAINTING, AND MOST THESE THINGS HAVE AN EXPLANATION, IN THIS CASE PROBABLY A FLUKE LIGHT EFFECT. I ENCOURAGE YOU TO BID ON THE ARTWORK, AND CONSIDER THE LAST TWO PHOTOGRAPHS AS PURE ENTERTAINMENT, AND PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THEM INTO CONSIDERATION, WHEN BIDDING. AS WE THINK IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO BLESS ANY HOUSE, WE STILL WELCOME INPUT INTO THAT PROCEDURE.
After this description, there were eight shots of the item. Two were overview shots. Slightly left of center on the canvas, we see a boy of perhaps five or six, with sloping shoulders and a heavy brow, scowling at us. He is dressed as we would expect any early- or mid-twentieth century middle- or lower-class young boy to be dressed: a blue tee-shirt, greenish shorts, short socks and shoes. His dirty-blonde (or dirty blonde) hair is cropped into a very short crew-cut on his blocky head. His expression – his small, deep-set eyes, and his slightly downturned frown – are the look of an alien: disdainful curiosity. “You are not supposed to be here.”

To his right, propped against a window moulding (or perhaps free-standing, it’s difficult to tell), is a life-sized wooden doll girl. She’s wearing a faded blue dress. She only has empty holes for eyes, but her mouth is articulatable (and closed). In her hands she’s clutching what at first looks like some sort of tall bottle or canister tied with a string, but on closer inspection appears to be a tall battery (complete with little lightning bolt) with mad, dangling clips.
The two are standing on a street curb, in front of a full-length window. The building behind them is completely dark inside, but reaching forth from the darkness we can distinguish at least a dozen tiny hands. Some of the hands are lower, some higher, but none are higher than the two central figures; if these are, indeed, children’s hands, some of the children are on the floor. It is not clear whether the hands are reaching for the window pane, the light, or the boy and the doll.
Four more shots were details of the boy, the boy’s face, the doll’s face, and the doll’s battery (or whatever it is). But the last two shots were the ones that were supposedly made by the motion-activated still camera. They are clearly different from the daytime shots. Because the flash was centered on the boy (being the central figure on the canvas), and because it’s a rather large painting, the doll (who was, as I said, towards the left edge of the painting) is obscured by shadow, but the photographs clearly show that now, her mouth is open.
After the auction began, viewers started to report strange happenings whenever they tried to view the page. All of them – spectral voices, hot flashes, black-outs and “mind-control experiences” – are typical of mass hysteria. One man, a Native American spiritualist in Mississippi, claimed that the painting had evil in it, and after having viewed it on his web browser he had to cleanse his house by burning white sage.
More than thirteen thousand people bid on the work. The buyer, who remains anonymous (his E-Bay login was ionia7) but bought the work for $1025 US, claims that although the story of the arguing spirits is compelling as a curiosity, he was more interested in the composition of the work and was “buying to sell.” He says that it seems to have been produced some time between 1965 and 1975, and is entitled “The Hands Resist Him.” It is signed, but the current owner has not released the artist’s name. He has never experienced any unusual effects, and calls the work “a good example of surrealism from that period.
I think it’s pretty clear that everything which happened to people who viewed the painting through the web was the result of the power of suggestion. On the other hand, I remain skeptical but agnostic as to whether the painting itself is animate. If it were a hoax, the trickster employed the most cunningly inconsistent assertions, destroying the reader’s ability to restore any suspended disbelief. Even if it isn’t legit, there would have to be something seriously wrong with someone to have painted the thing in the first place. I mean, they would have to be fucked in the head quite badly. If you saw the work, you’d understand. It’s just spooky. It is not at all surprising that it provokes such extreme reactions.
The new owner of the painting claims he found an inscription on the back saying the title of the picture was “The Hands Resist Him”. He also found a signiature, but refuses to say who the painter was. He says he received thousands of e-mails from people claiming they were “repulsed”, made “physically ill” and “suffered from blackout/mind control experiences” just by viewing the pictures of the painting online.
An exorcist type of voice, along with a blast of hot air, like standing in front of an oven door. Two friends crying after this experience and praying until a minute had passed and everything went back to normal.
A new Epson printer that ate and mutilated page after page when the user tried to download images of this oil.
The Native American who became so ill he had to cleanse his house by burning white sage. He warned me not to put this item around small children, and that there is great evil contained here.
As I recall, both the owner of the gallery where ‘The Hands Resist Him’ was displayed and the art critic who reviewed it were dead within a year of the show.
Seller: MrNoReserve. Winner: Ionia7. Price: $1,025.00
Sources (some with pics):
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/haunted_painting.html
http://www.castleofspirits.com/hauntedpainting.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/unexplained/2002/haunted_painting/ebay_haunted_painting_01.shtml
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=103102&ID=s1244540

Haunted Island

The mystery of the haunted island off the Italian coast is a disturbing one indeed. Poveglia is located near Venice in Italy and its darkened shores are strewn with polished human bones. It is supposed to be so scary that no tourists are ever allowed to set foot on it.

When the plague hit Italy in 1576, thousands of dead bodies were piling up in Venice and the stench was terrible. They needed somewhere to store the rotting corpses and something drastic had to be done.
The dead were hauled to the island and dumped in large pits or burned on huge bonfires. But as the plague became worse, people began to panic, and those who showed symptoms of the Black Death were dragged screaming from their homes.
These living victims, including children and babies, were taken to the island of Poveglia and thrown into the pits of rotting corpses, where they were left to die in agony. As many as 160,000 tormented bodies were dumped there over the years.
The whole island is still covered in a layer of ash, the remains of all the burned bodies. Before long, local people began seeing strange things and hearing strange sounds coming from the haunted island.
Despite the ghostly goings-on, in 1922, a mental hospital was built on the haunted island. The patients immediately reported seeing the ghosts of rotting plague victims and hearing strange whispers echoing off the walls. But nobody believed them because they were already regarded as demented and insane.
The hospital was run by a weird doctor who was interested in experimenting on his live patients, trying to discover what caused insanity. His methods were crude, to say the least. Lobotomies were performed using a basic hand drill or just a hammer and chisel. The crazed patients were taken to the hospital’s tower, where they were subjected to terrible tortures.

After years of performing these horrible acts, the doctor himself began seeing the ghosts of harrowed plague victims. It is said that the ghosts rose from their graves, overpowered the doctor and dragged him up to the top of the bell tower. There, they tormented him and forced him to throw himself off the top of the tower, falling to his death.
As he lay on the ground, writhing in agony, drawing his last breaths, a fine mist swirled up around him, entered his body, and choked him to death. It is rumored that the mental patients then bricked up his body in the bell tower. There his ghost remains, haunting the empty tower for all eternity, and on a quiet night the tower’s bell can still be heard tolling eerily across the bay.

Green Lady

In Burlington, Connecticut, the Green Lady Cemetery is haunted by the ghost of a woman who drowned in the nearby swamp.

According to local legend, a woman named Elizabeth lived with her husband in the house next to the cemetery.
During a particularly bad winter the husband left their house to get food and supplies. Unfortunately the storm was so bad that he was delayed for a few hours.
Meanwhile Elizabeth had grown concerned and had taken it upon herself to venture out into the storm and find her husband.
She got lost in the marshy woods and accidentally wandered into the swamp. She became trapped in the quicksand-like mud and slowly sank down, crying out for help.
Her husband was making his way back to the house, carrying a lantern to guide him, when he came upon his wife, sinking up to her neck in the marshy swamp.
For whatever reason, the husband refused to help her, no matter how much she pleaded with him. He simply watched as his wife sank deeper and deeper, ignoring her screams for help.
Eventually, the water rose above her head and Elizabeth drowned in the murky waters of the swamp.
Since then, witnesses have reported seeing the ghostly figure of a woman walking on the dirt road surrounded in green mist.

They say the haunted cemetery is home to Elizabeth’s ghost and that she has returned to haunt her husband until his death. Her ghost drove him insane as revenge for watching her die.
But she did not leave after the death of her husband. Many residents in the area have sighted her in the past thirty years.
A young couple taking pictures in the graveyard, saw a green mist over one of the graves. When they checked later, they found that this was the grave where Elizabeth was buried.
A group of teens driving through the haunted cemetery were surprised by a green mist that suddenly appeared in front of the car, and caused them to swerve and crash into a tree.
A mysterious light is often seen near the swamp. Those who have seen it describe it as a lamp or lantern that doesn’t move at all. It just remains motionless by the side of the swamp. Locals believe that this is a lantern held by the ghost of Elizabeth’s husband, coldly watching his wife drown.
A group of friends walking through the cemetery said they were chased out by a mysterious man holding a lantern.
If you drive by the cemetery, you can see the house next door and the Green Lady’s portrait can be seen through the window. Locals say that even though the old house is abandoned, the portrait is still lit, bathed in a weird green light.