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Taken from www.livescience.com
5 The Winchester Mystery House
I
n
1881, Sarah Winchester, the widow of famous gun maker Oliver Winchester, became
convinced that she needed protection from the evil spirits of all the people
killed by Winchester rifles. A psychic advised her to continually add rooms to
her San Jose, California, mansion to confuse any ghosts that may try to find
her. (It’s not clear why ghosts, which can supposedly move through walls, would
be confused by the rooms, but it apparently made sense to Winchester.) She did
so for nearly forty years, adding more than 100 rooms and staircases, until her
death in 1922. After Sarah’s death, her own ghost was said to haunt the halls of
her mazelike mansion. Today the building remains a popular tourist attraction, a
bizarre monument to superstition and paranoia.
4 The Amityville Horror
On
Nov. 13, 1974, six members of an Amityville, New York, family were killed by one
of the family’s sons, Ronald Jr. (“Butch”) DeFeo. In his legal defense, DeFeo
claimed that demonic forces in the home drove him to kill. The new owner of the
home at 112 Ocean Avenue later claimed a variety of ghostly phenomena, and the
story was further fictionalized into a best-selling novel and horror film. Yet
the supernatural events were never proven, and DeFeo’s lawyer later admitted
that the story was a hoax.
3 Alcatraz
The
San Francisco Bay’s resident rock, and perhaps the most famous prison island in
the world, Alcatraz has captured the public’s imagination in many films and
books. The prison, a cold, dank hellhole, saw many murders, riots, and suicides
during its 29 years of service. Along the way it spawned tales of inexplicable
sounds, cell doors closing on their own, disembodied screams, and scary
apparitions.
2 The Fox Sisters Cabin
Though
less well-known than the other haunted places, the Fox Sisters cottage is
perhaps the most important haunted house of all, since the phenomena here in
many ways set the standard for later hauntings and even launched a religion. In
1848 Hydesville, western New York, two young sisters named Maggie and Katie Fox
began supposedly communicating with the ghost of a murdered peddler. The
sisters, in a sort of crude séance, would ask questions of the spirit, who would
answer back with mysterious knocks or raps. Many people, including their mother,
were amazed at what seemed to be genuine contact with the dead. Both sisters
eventually admitted that they had actually faked the sounds—there had been no
murdered peddler, it had all been a prank. The women even demonstrated how they
had done it. But by then the belief had taken on a life of its own as a religion
called Spiritualism, which is still practiced today.
1 The White House
The
Washington, D.C., home of America’s presidents has surely seen untold tragedy
through the centuries, from being burned down in 1814 by British troops to
several attempted (and accomplished) assassinations. Among the White House’s
spooky stories include the appearance of Abraham Lincoln’s ghost. Lincoln’s
widow, Mary Todd, dabbled in the occult and held séances in the White House.
Other reputed ghosts include Andrew Jackson, Dolley Madison, and Abigail Adams,
though they are rarely seen today.
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