11 of the most haunted places in the US
![<p> Whaley House in San Diego is "[t]he most haunted house in America," according to Life Magazine. The home was built in 1857 on the site of a former graveyard and gallows. Over the years it has served as a family home; a grain store; the San Diego county courthouse; the city’s first commercial theater; a ballroom; a billiard hall; and a school. It subsequently opened as a museum in 1960. </p> <p> The oldest resident ghost at Whaley House is said to be the convicted robber "Yankee Jim" Robinson, who was hanged in 1852 from a gallows that stood on the property before the house was built. According to a newspaper report, as the wagon holding him beneath the gallows moved away, Yankee Jim dragged his feet on the wagon for as long as possible, before swinging like a pendulum and slowly strangling to death. </p> <p> Although Thomas Whaley, a settler and merchant, witnessed Yankee Jim's gruesome execution, that didn't prevent him from purchasing the property a few years later and building a house there. But within a few weeks of moving in, the Whaley family reported hearing heavy footsteps, as if made by the boots of a large man. </p> <p> The reports of footsteps and other sounds have persisted for more than 100 years: The youngest daughter of the family, who lived in the house until 1953, was reportedly convinced that it was haunted by the ghost of Yankee Jim, and visitors to the museum in the 1960s also reported hearing a phantom walking noise. </p> <p> Other visitors say they’ve seen the ghosts of the Whaley family themselves, and the ghost of a woman in a long skirt in the former county courtroom. One parapsychologist reported that he saw a phantom dog running inside the house, similar to a fox terrier — the type of dog owned by the Whaley family. </p>](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/Q6hTGwhqgmI8wJbFZAjs6A--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTM5Nw--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/live_science_953/8af8121f2a5d299a857afb7f3428e491)
BACHELOR'S GROVE CEMETERY
This small cemetery in a forest on the outskirts of Chicago has earned a reputation as the most haunted graveyard in the United States, thanks to more than 100 documented sightings of ghosts, strange lights and other suggestively supernatural episodes.
During the 1950s, after an outbreak of vandalism at the remote site, several people claimed to have seen an entire phantom farmhouse shimmering above the graveyard, which receded as they approached it. Others say they have seen the ghost of a farmer and his plow horse who died when they were dragged to their death in a nearby pond.
Some people driving on the roads near the cemetery at night have reported encounters with a phantom 1940s "gangster"-style car that appears on the road in front of them, before turning off the road and disappearing. Others claimed to have crashed into the phantom car at a sharp curve in the road — but after the shock had passed, there was no damage, and no other car.
In 1991, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper ran a celebrated photograph taken by a visitor to the graveyard, showing what appeared to be the semi-transparent form of a woman in an old-fashioned dress sitting on a gravestone. The photographer, part of a paranormal research team, claimed that the woman was not visible when the photograph was taken. The figure in the photograph has become known as the "Madonna of Bachelor's Grove," and may be linked to the legend of the "White Lady," the ghost of a woman buried next to her young child, and who is said to walk through the graveyard on nights of the full moon, with the infant wrapped in her arms.
From a former sanitarium to a well-known lighthouse to a battlefield from the American Civil War, here are the most haunted places in the United States.
