Château de Brissac
Château de Brissac, one of France’s most magnificent palaces, is said to be haunted by the phantom of the ‘Green Lady.’ Today, the castle that houses the Duke and Duchess of Brissac and their children has a tumultuous history that stretches back to the 10th century when the Count of Anjou chose this spot for a palace. After housing various generations, undergoing numerous constructions, and witnessing wars, the purportedly haunted palace was unable to exorcise the woman’s spirit in green. Her husband, according to legend, murdered her in the palace. According to local mythology, Charlotte was the illegitimate daughter of King Charles VII and was married to Jacques de Brézé, a king’s servant. The château was also owned by De Brézé.
Banff springs hotel room 873
One of the joys of a trip to Canada is staying at the Banff Springs Hotel. The regal 125-year-old beauty sits prominently in the Banff Valley and has hosted royalty from the United Kingdom to Marilyn Monroe. With that type of history, many things have happened behind those noble walls. The most storied hotel appears to be hiding something. There was a murder-suicide in room 873, according to accounts, in which a man killed his wife and children before killing himself. Screaming and bloodstains on the walls have awoken future hotel guests in the room, which reappear when the cleaning service removes them.
Poveglia island
Poveglia Island, off the coast of Venice and Lido, is known as the “Island of Ghosts” because of its shady past. According to a legend, people were carried kicking and screaming to the island if they showed even the tiniest signs of the Black Death.
The 7-hectare field was also utilised as a mass grave, with 160,000 dead believed to have been cremated to prevent the disease from spreading. Human ash is said to make up more than half of the island’s soil to this day. Many associate this island as the world’s most haunted island.
Castle of good hope
The Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, one of the oldest and largest of South Africa’s remaining colonial structures, once had a windowless dungeon where criminals drowned while chained to its walls—the location is reputed to be haunted today. Is there anything else that’s a little spooky? A big black dog that lunges at guests before disappearing, a bell that tolls on its own (said to have been rung by a guard who once hung himself with the bell-rope), and lights in the Buren bastion that turn on and off without human intervention.
Bhangarh Fort
Bhangarh Fort is one of India’s and the world’s most haunted locations, and simply hearing the storey, let alone seeing it, can give you the creeps.
While you may be awestruck by the magnificent building, many visitors report feeling uneasy and restless. According to the locals, anyone who managed to enter the fort at night never returned to tell their storey, as it is thought that spirits roam the fort at night, making it a hub for paranormal activity. According to legend, a hermit named Guru Balu Nath cursed the fort of Bhangarh. When the monarch begged him to build a fort on the spot where the sage used to meditate, the sage agreed by keeping a condition that the fort’s shadow should not fall on him. The king convinced him that the fort’s shadow would not fall on him at home, but it did, and the hermit’s curse followed, devastating the entire hamlet. It’s strange to see all of the houses in the area without a roof. The sage who cursed the village to its eventual ruin is supposed to blame. Locals claim that it is impossible to build a roof on these houses, and even if it is built, it collapses, resulting in the deaths of many individuals in the past.
Tower of London
The ghosts of scores of captives detained in the Tower of London, one of London’s most bloody execution sites, are supposed to haunt it. Anne Boleyn, the former Queen of England and wife of King Henry VIII, is the most famous of its phantom residents. King Henry VIII beheaded her in 1536, and her body has frequently been seen – sometimes without her head – on Tower Green and within the White Tower church.
The forbidden city, Beijing
Any trip to China should include a visit to the Forbidden City. It was built over 600 years ago and has seen more than its fair share of executions. Anyone who defied the emperor’s authority was quickly deposed. It wasn’t just the emperor who concocted spooky tales for Halloween. Eunuchs would go to any extent to further their quest for dominance, and jealous and spiteful servants and envious guards would often poison one another in the most devious of ways. Staff noticed strange events within the imposing red gates when the imperial palace was later opened to the public around the late 1940s. A woman clothed in white has been heard sobbing as she walks around the grounds, while guards have reported sighting a woman clad entirely in black as recently as 1995. The scenario is usually the same: the woman raises her head to speak, but her expression is blank. Her black hair hides her pale face.
Ancient Ram Inn
Many consider the Ancient Ram Inn in England the “most haunted home in Britain,” with its strange and fascinating history dating back to 1145, making it the oldest structure in the otherwise pleasant and harmless Wotton-Under-Edge in the English countryside. Ancient Ram has its own set of ghost legends, and its many iterations over the years have only to its creepy (and occasionally unsettling) aura. The site was home to a multi-millennia Pagan burial place before the building’s completion in 1145, and it rests on the Ley Lines, which lead right back to the ancient and mysterious site of Stonehenge. The weird paranormal phenomena observed on the property are connected to the property’s unique past as a result of this link.
Aradale Mental Hospital
Ararat Lunatic Asylum, or Aradale Mental Hospital as it was afterwards known, was Australia’s largest abandoned mental institution when it closed in 1997, having seen 13,000 deaths in its 130-year history. When it first opened in 1867, it had an annual death rate of 100 people. Patients, inmates, and employees are all included. The structure is now used for ghost tours, with claims of guests passing out abruptly, feeling nausea and aches when walking through certain rooms, wards with sinister scents, and “methodical hammering sounds” such as patients bashing their heads against walls. Another notable room is claimed to leave visitors experiencing “nausea, dread, and trance-like states” that persist until they leave the premises.
Amityville Horror House in New York
Whether you believe the “nonfiction” book or the horror film franchise it spawned, there’s no denying that some terrifying real-life events took place in this otherwise charming Dutch Colonial–style home at 112 Ocean Avenue. A young teenager murdered his parents and four siblings at their home in the early 1970s. After the killings, a new family bought the house and experienced all kinds of strange scents and experiences, as well as incomprehensible, scary visions. The family left after only 28 days. Don’t be that person who takes a photo in front of the house because it’s still a private residence.