Haunted America

1 1000 Lombard Street, SAN FRANCISCO In the 1960s, socialite, gossip columnist, and renowned party host Patricia Montandon moved into an apartment on San Francisco’s “crooked block,” Lombard Street. She lived contentedly in her Russian Hill home for eight years. Then she hosted an astrology-themed party, and strange occurrences began. In her memoir The Intruders, Montandon attributes a series of hauntings to the disturbing actions of a disgruntled tarot card reader, who may have placed a curse on the apartment that fateful evening. The eerie events escalated afterward: disembodied laughter, faint music playing on a loop from no apparent source, and frigid gusts of wind sweeping through the house despite all windows and doors being locked. Beyond the supernatural, Montandon also became the target of real-world dangers in the aftermath,…

I woke up at 1:11 a.m. to a woman’s voice,” Annie Wilder remembers. “It was coming from the direction of my daughter’s room, but it wasn’t Molly.” The voice Wilder heard in April 1994—a week after moving into her new home—was abnormally loud and impossible to understand, almost like the words lacked vowels. It lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough to fill her with dread. Then a loud pounding noise started coming from the wall behind Wilder. She describes it as deafening and insistent, and says she instinctively burrowed herself under her covers in fear. Eleven minutes passed before she got the courage to get up, grab her kids, and run. But as soon as she sat up, the pounding stopped. That’s when she came to a…

1 Anchorage Hotel, ANCHORAGE, AK The Anchorage Hotel in downtown Anchorage is renowned for not only its history but also its reputation as one of the most haunted hotels in the U.S. With the hotel’s impressive roster of famous guests (Will Rogers and Wiley Post stayed here before their doomed flight, for example), it comes as no surprise that the handsome building is rumored to be haunted. Alleged sightings are so frequent that the property maintains a “ghost log” in the lobby. One of the most prominent spirits said to haunt the hotel is that of John J. “Black Jack” Sturgus, Anchorage’s first police chief. In 1921, Sturgus was found shot in the back near the hotel; his murder remains unsolved. Reports suggest that his ghost returns to the scene…

I’m a skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, partly because I’m generally skeptical by nature but mainly because I scare easily and I’d rather believe in a busted air conditioner than a howling wolf ghost or something equally as terrifying lurking in the basement. That said, weird things tend to happen to me—a lot. So much so that I’ve earned the title of “ghost magnet” among some of my most well-traveled friends. I’ve felt my hair tugged in an empty wine cellar, watched closed doors opening on their own, and woken up to the feeling of needles going into my feet in a hotel that was once a sketchy hospital. Although I’m more likely to believe that haunted hotels are just old buildings settling into their foundations rather than…

1 Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, CHICAGO Chicago is pretty haunted, and Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery is considered to be one of the most haunted places in the Chicago area. It sits within the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve and dates to the early 1800s, originally serving as a burial site for German settlers. Though it contains only about 80 documented graves, many of the headstones have been lost or vandalized, adding to the site’s powerful reputation for paranormal activity. The cemetery is the source of over 100 reports of ghostly sightings, including apparitions, inexplicable noises, and glowing balls of light. Perhaps the most famous spirit said to inhabit the cemetery, the Madonna of Bachelor’s Grove, is described as a woman in a white dress who wanders the graveyard, sometimes carrying an infant. She’s…

I have been warned. This much is clear within minutes of ducking out of a helicopter onto the high-desert oasis of Skinwalker Ranch in northeastern Utah one searingly bright October afternoon. As a visitor approaching the dark and inscrutable paranormal forces patrolling this property, I could be targeted. The admonition has come in several forms. There was the prayer for safe deliverance given by chopper pilot Cameron Fugal, the brother of property owner Brandon Fugal, as we approached the ranch. This didn’t necessarily rattle me, since I’d recently watched Cameron deliver a similar invocation on season 1 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the hit History Channel show that has generated attention for the property. There was the surreal experience of being greeted on the helipad by half the show’s…