The Winchester Mansion, in San Jose, California, was built by Sara Winchester, the widow of William Winchester. Sara visited a psychic who told her that she must build a house large enough to house the souls of all those who'd been killed by Winchester guns, and Sara spent the remaining 36 years of her life (until she died in 1922) doing just that. The mansion's construction is just as odd as Sara's personality. There are stairways and doors that go nowhere, secret rooms and passages, and elevators that only go up one floor. Some believe that Sara had the house built in a confusing way so that the sprits wouldn't be able to find her and seek revenge. The number 13 is prevalent throughout: 13 bathrooms, stairways with 13 steps, and so on. There is a rumor that Sara would never give her workmen the day off, because she was afraid that the day she stopped building she would die. One day, however, after many complaints, she finally gave her staff a day off, and that is the day she died.

The Amityville Horror, although now considered a hoax, is one of the most famous haunted house of all time. The small house in Amityville, New York was made famous in the mid-70s when George and Kathy Lutz told the media of bizarre happenings which were alleged to have taken place at the house during the month they lived there.

These happenings included such things as flying pigs with glowing red eyes, walls that oozed blood, an infestation of flies in the attic, and a pit to hell in the basement.

Supposedly, whatever had tormented the Lutzes was also the thing that had driven Ronald DeFeo to shoot and kill his entire family in that house in 1974. On November 13, 1974 around 3:00 a.m., the son, Ronald DeFeo shot his mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters with a high-power rifle.

The Brown Lady is famous mostly as being one of the most reliably photographed ghost in history. Although she has not been seen since 1936, she is said to wear a long brown dress or cape. No one knows who the Brown Lady is, or how she is connected to Raynham Hall.

The first sighting was reported in 1835 by a house guest, Colonel Loftus. He actually viewed her twice. He said she was wearing a brown satin dress and had only black empty sockets for eyes. Another sighting was made by Captain Frederick Marryat. He intentionally slept in the "haunted room," but instead caught a glimpse of the Brown Lady an upstairs hallway. His description was the same as Loftus', except this time the Brown Lady was carrying a lantern. Marryat happened to have a gun with him, and fired point-blank at the figure. The bullets, of course, passed right through the ghost. The ghost was not reported again until 1926, at which time it was viewed by two little boys. In 1936, the famous photograph was taken by photographers Captain Provand and Indre Shira during a shoot for the magazine -Country Life-. Shira saw the ghost on the stairs, an instructed Provand to take a picture.

The Tower of London has a long and bloody history, and of course many ghostly legends are associated with the Tower. In 1483, two young princes were murdered in the Tower, and their ghosts were reported to have haunted the tower until the year 1674, when their bones were found and buried in a proper ceremony.

The most famous and most often reported ghost in the Tower is Anne Boleyn. She was beheaded by her husband, Henry VIII, in 1536. Other Tower ghosts include Sir Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes, and even the apparition of a bear. In 1816, a palace guard who was on duty spied the bear. Not realizing he was facing an apparition, the guard attempted to lunge at the creature with his bayonet. The guard reportedly later died of shock.

In 1864, a soldier saw a ghost and again attempted to use his bayonet. The soldier fainted when he realized his antagonist was a ghost, and was later court-martialed for neglecting his duties (hard to guard the castle when you're fainted dead away). However, the charges against the soldier were dropped when two witnesses came forward to support the soldier's ghost story.

Ghosts may not only be people. In 16 41 the Flying Dutchman was sailing around the Cape of Good Hope on its way to Holland. Its captain was a man called Henrik Vanderdecken. A huge storm blew up but the captain was so desperate to get home that he cursed God and swore that he would sail until Doomsday rather than stop. For these words against God he was doomed to sail forever until he could find another ship's captain to accept a letter from him which begged for the Lord's forgiveness. This has never happened and it is said that any ship that comes into contact with the Flying Dutchman will suffer a terrible fate.

Borley Rectory is often called "The most haunted house in England." The site of the rectory originally held a monastery, which was inhabited by Benedictine monks. Subsequent to this, the monastery came under the ownership of the Waldergrave family, who occupied it for three centuries. In the late 1800's a descendant of the Waldegraves, the reverend H.D.E. Bull, built a new rectory on the site of the old monastery. It was not until after the new rectory was built that strange things started to happen.

One of the spectres that was said to roam the grounds was a nun ho in the 13th century fell in love with and tried to elope with a monk.According to legend, the nun and monk were caught in their get-away horse and carriage. As punishment, the monk was hung and the nun was walled up alive in the rectory. Some people reported seeing the ghostly form of the horse and carriage in addition to the nun. The reverend Harry Bull, who died at Borley, also was reputed to have haunted the rectory. He would appear dressed in the grey jacket in which he passed away.

In the late 1920s, the house was owned by a reverend (Lionel A. Foyster) and his wife who reported poltergeist-like phenomena. Supposedly the prankish spirit locked the wife in the bedroom, and other times threw her out of the bed. There were also pebbles thrown at the windows, and mysterious writing which would appear on walls.

Harry Price, a famous ghost hunter, investigated Borley Rectory in 1929, and again in 1937. He supposedly witnessed some of the activity, including the ghostly nun. Although Price spent a great deal of time in the Rectory, his research is generally considered to be biased and therefore flawed.

Unfortunately, Borley Rectory burned down in 1939, taking its secrets with it. In 1945, human remains rumored to be those of the nun were found on the site, and were given a proper burial. But the legend of Borley has not died yet; people still visit the site today to see if they can spot the ghostly nun.

In Christ Church cemetery on the island of Barbados there is a burial vault of unknown origin. The earliest records call it the "Chase vault". It was first used for the burial of a Mrs. Goddard in1807, followed by two-year-old Mary Ann Chase in 1808 and her sister Dorcas in 1812, a probable suicide. A few weeks later, Dorcas' father Thomas Chase died. When the vault was opened, all the coffins had been moved from their original places. It was thought that thieves had been in the vault, but the concrete seal of the tomb was still in place.

Two more burials were made in 1816. In both cases, when the vault was opened, the coffins already present had been moved about. The casket of Thomas Chase was of lead, weighing 240 pounds, far too large to be moved by a single vandal. In each of these burials, the workers returned the coffins to their proper places and sealed the mauso leum with cement. It happened again in 1819. This time, the Governor sprinkled sand on the floor (to sho footprints), and pressed his personal seal into the fresh cement. In 1820 the tomb was opened again, and the coffins were again out of place, even though no footprints showed and the concrete seal was undisturbed. The governor ordered the coffins removed and the vault left open; the mystery has never been solved.

La Llorona is the legend of a woman who has lost her children, and who can be heard, and sometimes seen, weeping in the night. La Llorona (the name means "She who weeps" in Spanish) is in most stories said to be Mexican, although sometimes she is a woman who lived in the American Southwest. Thewoman has lost her children, usually because she herself has killed them because she wants to marry a man who doesn't want any children. She is so anguished over the depressing circumstances that she kills herself as well, and is thus doomed forever to roam her native land, weeping and wringing her hands. Sometimes she is said to be searching for her children, and sometimes she is said to appear only as a warning to those who see her.

In the Southwest, she drowned her children in the acequia (irrigation ditch,) and now she roams the ditches looking for her, or any, children. Usually the story is told with the intentions of keeping kiddies away from the ditches, so they won't drown.

Around Mexico City in 1550 according to legend, an Indian princess fell in love with a Mexican nobleman. The nobleman promised to marry her, but betrayed her and married someone else instead. The ultimate result of this treachery is that the princess murdered her children in a fit of rage, with a knife given to her by the nobleman. Afterwards, she wandered the streets crying for her children, and was eventually hanged for her sins. Since then her ghost has been searching for her children.

The Mary Worth (also known as Bloody Mary, Mary Margaret, etc) story is popular at sleepovers. As the story goes, a beautiful young girl named Mary Worth was in some sort of terrible accident (or occasionally the wounds are inflicted purposely by a jealous party), and her face was hideously deformed. From then on, she is shunned by other people, and she sometimes becomes a witch. Now for the scary part. Supposedly if you say Mary Worth's name three (or five, or ten... it varies) times while looking into the mirror, Mary Worth will appear and scratch your face off or kill you.

This small, abandoned cemetery should have faded into obscurity and probably would have if not for the 100 or so reports of eerie phenomena that have been reported there. Some have called it the most haunted place in America. The apparitions include a mysterious, phantom farmhouse with white porch pillars and a porch swing that squeaks until you approach it. There's also a pond on the grounds that legend says was a dumping ground for murdered gangsters (despite no records of bodies ever being found there). The pond is not only haunted by the restless souls of the unavenged murdered, but also by the ghost of an old farmer, who was pulled into the water by his plowhorse. Of course, no haunted cemetery would be complete without its lady in white, and Bachelor's Grove has one, too. She can be seen wandering the grounds, babe in arms, on nights when the moon is full.

It is a dark and stormy night. A person driving sees a forlorn figure at the side of the road and decides to give him or her a lift. Usually the hitchhiker is a young woman in some sort of trouble... her prom dat dumped her, or hercar broke down. The driver gets to her house only to discover that his passenger has disappeared without a trace from the back seat of his car. He knocks on the door to the house, maybe to make sure the girl is ok, and the door is answered by the girl's parent. Eventually it comes out that the girl died some years ago, and every year on the anniversary of her death (or her birthday), the girl hitches a ride back home with a stranger.

There are variations of this legend. Sometimes the girl appears to make it home safely, but the driver finds something the girl left behind in his car, and goes back to return it, thus learning the truth about the girl. Sometimes the driver lends the girl his jacket or sweater, and goes back the next day to retrieve it.

The ghost is described at various times as a soft green glow, or a handsome young man. During renovation in the late 1970's, they stumbled on a skeleton with the remnants of a grey riding coat with a knife sticking out of its ribs.

The ghost is that of a young man who was murdered in 1780. J. Wentworth Day, a ghost hunter, reported seeing a moving blue light in the theatre in 1939.

In 1867, a conductor was riding in the rear car when it uncoupled from the train. He waved his lantern to warn a following train, but a crash ensued and the conductor was decapitated. Since then, passersby have reported seeing a moving light at the Maco trestle - it's thought to come from the conductor's railroad lantern. "Unfortunately, he isn't aware of the fact that a train is no longer following him."