Halloween is upon us. Can you believe it? I mean, wasn’t it summer like…this morning? Well, it is here and in full force as the smell of “Pumpkin Spice” everything fills the air. With that, I wanted to start this, in another of my “ongoing list of…” series, Spookiest Places to Travel. Haunted towns, creepy hotels and abandoned lighthouses…this is where you’ll find them (in no particular order).
Catacombes de Paris, France
The Catacombs of Paris are the final resting place for over 6 million people who, after public health became a concern due to the cities overflow of cemeteries, were relocated from their former graves. The mostly anonymous remains were stacked in the walls centuries ago in an eerily orderly fashion.
Malahide Castle, Dublin, Ireland
Rumored to be the most haunted castle in an already very haunted Dublin, the long history of Malahide Castle goes back centuries, with workers and residents claiming strange encounters throughout the years.
Stanley Hotel, Estes Park Colorado, US
Set against the Rocky Mountains, in a small Colorado town, the Stanley Hotel served as Stephen King’s inspiration when he wrote the Overlook Hotel into his terrifying masterpiece The Shining. King was plagued by nightmares during his stay at the hotel and claims that room 217, in which he and his wife stayed, was haunted. The same room had had a history of violence and tragedy, including a gas lamp explosion in the early 1900s that took out nearly 10% of the hotel.
The Gladesville Mental Hospital (fka The Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum), Sydney, Australia
One of Sydney’s shameful Houses of Pain, The Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum was developed under the façade of “peaceful treatment”, when in reality it was a harsh reflection of the stigmas mental health faced until very recently. Patients were routinely mistreated and, upon vocalizing their mistreatment, were further abused. It is presumed that the hospital grounds are also the final resting place for thousands of patients who were left buried, unmarked and barely remembered.
Salem Massachusetts, US
Funny story: my grandmother’s ancestor, Bridget Bishop was the first person to be executed during the Salem Witch trials in the late 1600s. No joke, you can read more about here HERE, and here is a picture I took of her gravestone:
The trials went from late 1693 to 1694 and over 200 people (mostly women) were executed for supposedly practicing witchcraft. Yup, that really happened. Heavily influenced by this very real and very terrible thing that happened all those years ago, Salem feels like what the design of Halloween was based on. A small coastal town, with a lot of the original structures still in place, including “Witch Houses” and the Charter Street Cemetery, which also acts as a focal point for the rest of the town and is where many of the victims of the trials were buried. Though less haunted then some of the other sites, Salem certainly deserves a spot on this list.
Kreischer House, New York, US
After the original owner, Edward B. Kreischer, shot and killed himself on the property in 1894, tales of the Kreischer House’s wayward spirit have been told. To make the stories even richer, care of the house was taken over by a mafia hitman in the 1980s. The abandoned Victorian is now the site of ghost tours and events, all in the name of its macabre history.
