LIFE The World's Most Haunted Places: Creepy, Ghostly, and Notorious Spots
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LIFE The World's Most Haunted Places - The Editors of LIFE
PHOTOS/GETTY
Introduction
BY J.I. BAKER
DAVID MAURICE SMITH/OCULI/REDUX
DOLLS HANG FROM TREES on Isla de las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls), south of Mexico City. The island is filled with toys collected by its reclusive caretaker.
There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years, through which we may ramble . . . and encounter any number of ghosts,
Charles Dickens once wrote.
The great English writer might as well have added Polish caves, Babylonian ruins, and Mexican mummy museums to his list of ghostly places—as we here at LIFE have done, bringing you a book filled with blood-curdling photos and eerie stories about the world’s creepiest spots. Think the hotel that inspired The Shining, the Amityville Horror house, and the dilapidated farm that was home-sweet-home to the serial killer who inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho.
No, not all these spots are strictly haunted. Some—like Australia’s Uluru (a.k.a. Ayers Rock) or the ancient ruins submerged under South America’s Lake Titicaca—are deeply mysterious, maybe even spiritual. Others—like Kolmanskop, Africa’s sand-covered ghost town—are downright unnerving. But they all have one thing in common: They seem to exist partly in the known world, and partly in a shadowy realm we can’t completely comprehend.
So get ready, if you dare, to encounter any number of ghosts, ghouls, yetis, haunted dolls—and other things that go bump in the night.
GHOSTLY, GHASTLY U.S. & CANADA
Here in the New World there are plenty of old ghosts—from steamy spirits Down South to the wintry wraiths of the Great White North.
TODD GIPSTEIN/CORBIS/GETTY
NIGHT FALLS on the House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts, the rusty wooden house
that once belonged to the family of the cousin of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote about it in his novel of the same name.
THE PARANORMAL PRISON
ALCATRAZ
PHOTOQUEST/GETTY
The view along the notorious D Block. In 2014, a British tourist saw the dark specter of a woman in a picture she took of the former visitation room. A trick of the light? A hoax? Possibly.
On May 2, 1946, in what became known as the Battle of Alcatraz, six prisoners overpowered guards, stole their weapons, and tried to escape from the prison on this isolated island in San Francisco Bay. But when they realized they were missing the key they needed to flee into the recreation yard, they grew desperate, took captives, and started shooting.
Over the next 48 hours, two prison officers were killed and 18 injured. Three would-be escapees were shot to death in the utility corridor between cell blocks—the very spot that, 36 years later, San Francisco radio anchor Ted Wygant was exploring with a psychic when he was overcome by a feeling of violence and evil. I got this tremendous feeling of anger,
he told the Travel Channel. I felt this presence beneath us in the dirt where these three men had died.
This is only one of many supernatural stories involving the so-called Rock, which has been a Civil War fortress, a bird sanctuary, and the birthplace of the American Indian Red Power movement—in addition to the brutal home for thousands of hardened convicts. Rejected as unmanageable by other prisons, these men were called the Incorrigibles, according to former inmate Leon Whitey
Thompson. You step on a toe, it’s gonna wind up in a death.
Many of these long-departed inmates are now said to be unruly spirits. A spectral Al Capone has been heard practicing his banjo in the shower room. (He was a member of the prison band the Rock Islanders.) Mobster Alvin Creepy
Karpis calls the bakery and kitchen home, while George Machine Gun
Kelly has reportedly materialized in the chapel.
But the most haunted spot in the prison, according to many paranormal investigators, is D Block, the site of the infamous 1946 escape attempt—and of the island’s best spook story. Though the tale seems apocryphal, it’s too good not to mention: A prisoner locked in cell 14-D—one of the Hole
cells—supposedly screamed that someone else was in the dark, cramped space with him. When guards finally opened the door, they found him dead, strangulation marks from a spectral attacker on his neck. This little setback did not, however, prevent the late prisoner’s ghost from showing up for roll call that night.
Unlike so many haunted places, Alcatraz doesn’t commercially capitalize on its reputation. In fact, the National Park Service calls the spook stories flights of fancy,
as does the island’s official tour website: There are no authenticated cases of ghost sightings by any of Alcatraz’s residents over the years, whether they were soldiers, prisoners, correctional officers, family members or park rangers,
the site reads.
But how would you authenticate
a ghost sighting, anyway? And former prisoner Thompson, for his part, believes the hype. This island is haunted,
he said. It is the island of the damned.
MACIEJ BLEDOWSKI/ALAMY
ALCATRAZ Island in San Francisco Bay.
THE PSYCHO HOUSE
ED GEIN’S FARM
FRANK SCHERSCHEL/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION
On November 20, 1957, a deputy sheriff stands outside of the Plainfield, Wisconsin, farmhouse belonging to mass murderer Ed Gein, following the discovery of bodies and body parts inside.
FRANCIS MILLER/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION
Edward Gein had two faces,
wrote the Stevens Point Journal. One he showed to the neighbors. The other he showed only to the dead.
Somewhere in the Plainfield, Wisconsin, cemetery lies an unmarked grave belonging to the man who—thanks to