Haunted American History

00:18:04

The Vampire of Hollywood Cemetery (Virginia)

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/16

Hollywood Cemetery is the final resting place of presidents, Confederate soldiers, Richmond's elite—and, according to local legend, a vampire. The story begins with the catastrophic 1925 collapse of the Church Hill Tunnel, when witnesses reportedly saw a bloody, badly injured figure emerge from the wreckage. Over the decades, that tragedy became tangled with the tomb of William Wortham Pool, an otherwise ordinary Richmond bookkeeper who died years before the collapse.But the Richmond Vampire isn't

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00:24:22

The Bones Beneath Jamestown Island (Virginia)

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/15

Jamestown is remembered as the first permanent English settlement in America. What's remembered less often is how close it came to becoming a mass grave. During the winter of 1609–1610, hundreds died from starvation, disease, siege, and violence—and archaeological evidence eventually confirmed something historians had debated for centuries: some survivors resorted to cannibalism.Today, the island has its own collection of ghost stories, from footsteps inside an empty church to figures among the

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00:19:13

Twenty-Three Ghosts: The Peyton Randolph House...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/14

The Peyton Randolph House stands at the heart of Colonial Williamsburg, once home to the first president of the Continental Congress and generations of one of Virginia's most powerful families. Today, it's also called one of Williamsburg's most haunted buildings. Visitors report children running through empty rooms, apparitions beside beds, and unexplained activity in the basement—including a security guard who claimed something physically grabbed his legs in the dark. But beneath those stories is a

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00:24:38

The Most Evil Place in England?: Ancient Ram Inn...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/13

For decades, the Ancient Ram Inn has been called one of the most haunted buildings in England—a medieval labyrinth supposedly plagued by demons, witches, phantom soldiers, and violent unseen forces. Its longtime owner, John Humphries, claimed something dragged him from bed on his very first night inside. Years later, investigators digging beneath that same room uncovered the bones of a woman and child. But the deeper you dig into the Ram's history, the stranger the story becomes—not because its most

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00:18:53

The Fire, the Shotgun, and the Dogs in the Truck: The...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/12

For generations of Vermonters, the Dog Team Tavern was the kind of restaurant people remembered for the rest of their lives: enormous prime rib, a spinning “relish wheel,” rationed sticky buns, and a history that began with an Arctic medical mission. Then, early on September 1, 2006, the restaurant burned to the ground. Owner Christopher Hesslink's pickup was found behind the building with his two dogs safely inside. Hesslink himself was later discovered dead in the ruins beside a shotgun. His death

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00:21:42

The Car in the Wall: Brianna Maitland (Vermont)

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/11

On March 20, 2004, a Vermont State Police trooper found a car backed into the side of an abandoned farmhouse along Route 118. The doors were closed. The keys were missing. Loose change, a broken necklace, and an unsmoked cigarette lay outside. Inside were two uncashed paychecks belonging to seventeen-year-old Brianna Maitland. The scene was initially treated as a drunk-driving accident, and the car was towed before anyone realized Brianna was missing. More than twenty years later, she still hasn't

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00:19:13

The UFO Encounter They Couldn't Remember: Buff Ledge...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/10

On an August evening in 1968, two employees at a Vermont summer camp watched a strange light descend over Lake Champlain. Sixteen-year-old “Michael” and nineteen-year-old “Janet” claimed they saw smaller objects emerge from a glowing craft, one of them hovering close enough to reveal two child-sized figures inside. Then came a beam of light—and a blank space in their memories. Ten years later, recurring nightmares drove Michael to UFO investigator Walter Webb, who tracked Janet down and began an

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00:19:46

The Curse That Erased the Hayden Family: The Hayden...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/09

In 1823, Mercie Dale lay dying in a Vermont farmhouse convinced that her son-in-law had been poisoning her. Before she died, she supposedly left the Hayden family with a curse: their name would end within three generations, and the last Hayden would die in poverty. For decades, that prediction seemed ridiculous. Mercie's grandson built a railroad fortune and erected one of the grandest mansions in Vermont, complete with an enormous ballroom and a spring-loaded dance floor. Then the children began

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00:22:05

The Ghost Story That Changed With The Building : The...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/08

High above Bennington, Vermont, sits a stone mansion that has been a millionaire's private castle, a Catholic seminary, a college, and even a COVID vaccination site. But through every incarnation, stories have followed it. Students at Southern Vermont College reported phantom piano music, unexplained voices, a Woman in White, and a hooded figure wandering the grounds. One security guard supposedly found a 200-pound desk pushed against the inside of a locked, empty room.Tonight, we explore the

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00:22:40

The House That Became Hill House Anyway: Jennings...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/07

For generations of students at Bennington College, Jennings Hall has been the building you don't want to be inside after midnight. Phantom piano music drifts from locked practice rooms. Footsteps pace empty corridors. Doors slam without wind. And one story claims a terrified professor once fled into the Vermont snow as violent knocking traveled through the mansion toward him. But Jennings has another claim to fame: that the imposing granite estate inspired Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill

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00:16:59

The Devil's Not on Trial: The Fall River Murders...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/06

Between 1979 and 1980, three young women connected to the same troubled corner of Fall River, Massachusetts were murdered. Doreen Levesque was found beneath high-school bleachers. Barbara Raposa was discovered frozen in the woods. Karen Marsden vanished shortly after telling police she believed she was going to be killed. Then investigators began hearing about Satan worship, secret rituals, blood ceremonies, and a supposed cult operating inside the city's drug and sex trade. The resulting trial sent

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00:22:33

The Murder Blamed on Witches: Jeannette DePalma (New...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/05

In September 1972, a dog emerged from the woods of Springfield, New Jersey carrying a decomposed human arm. The remains belonged to sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma, who had disappeared 43 days earlier. Almost immediately, her death became something else. Newspapers reported a coffin made from branches, wooden crosses, a pentagram, mutilated animals, and whispers that Jeannette had been sacrificed by a Satanic cult. For nearly fifty years, those stories became inseparable from her name. But when

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00:25:01

The Boy Who Never Made the Bus: Macin Smith (Utah)

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/04

On September 1, 2015, seventeen-year-old Macin Smith apparently left his home in St. George, Utah, to catch the school bus. He never arrived. His wallet, cash, identification, passport, backpack, phone, and laptop were all left behind. More than a decade later, his online accounts remain untouched, extensive searches of the surrounding desert have found nothing, and investigators have never established what happened after the garage door opened that morning. A hidden handwritten note pointed toward

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00:24:42

The Haunted House With a Ghost on Staff: Asylum 49...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/03

In Tooele, Utah, there's a haunted attraction that never had to pretend it was an abandoned hospital...because it actually was one. Asylum 49 occupies the former Tooele Valley Hospital, built on land that had previously served as the county poor farm. For years, its full-contact haunted house operated on one side of a wall while elderly residents lived in an active care facility on the other. But employees soon began reporting things no actor was responsible for: slamming doors, shadow figures,

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00:22:18

The April Fools' Fire: Cottonwood Paper Mill (Utah)

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/02

At three in the morning on April Fools’ Day, 1893, the alarm bells at Utah’s Granite Paper Mill began ringing. The people living nearby heard them, checked the date—and went back to sleep. By sunrise, the mill’s wooden interior and machinery were gone, leaving behind a roofless fortress of granite that somehow refused to disappear.Over the next 130 years, the ruin became a Jazz Age ballroom, a counterculture rock club, a Halloween attraction, a Hollywood filming location, and eventually one of

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00:26:49

The Ghost of the Rio Grande Depot: The Purple Lady...

Haunted American History ·

2026/09/01

For decades, employees and visitors at Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande Depot told stories about the Purple Lady—a young woman supposedly killed by a train after a disastrous reunion with her returning fiancé. People claimed to see her reflection in the women’s restroom, hear her singing after hours, and feel her presence moving through the building’s basement corridors. But when Utah historians finally dug into the story, they found something unexpected: there was no dead woman, no train accident, no

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00:22:58

The Haunted Shore of the Great Salt Lake: Saltair (Utah)

Haunted American History ·

2026/08/31

On the shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake sits a concert venue with a strange problem: it seems to have inherited more than a century of history that didn't actually happen there. The original Saltair burned. Its replacement burned, burned again, and was eventually destroyed by arson. The third Saltair was built a mile away—then the lake rose and flooded it. Today, employees report phantom footsteps, children laughing in empty rooms, a woman staring across the salt flats, and a uniformed man watching

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00:20:53

The Monster the Internet Invented: The Grootslang...

Haunted American History ·

2026/08/30

For centuries, people living along South Africa's Orange River warned of something enormous beneath the water: a serpent capable of taking livestock, controlling floods, and guarding unimaginable riches in the deep places of the desert. Prospectors called it the Grootslang—the Great Snake. One terrified explorer claimed he watched it rise twelve feet from the river. Another supposedly disappeared while searching for its diamonds. And in 1910, British prospector Fred Cornell became concerned enough

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00:25:16

The Plane That Flew Into the Dark: Malaysia Airlines...

Haunted American History ·

2026/08/29

In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur carrying 239 people and disappeared. But the aircraft didn't simply vanish. Military radar showed it reversing course and crossing Malaysia. A forgotten satellite terminal continued quietly answering automated signals for hours. Investigators eventually determined the Boeing 777 had flown deep into the Southern Indian Ocean until its fuel was exhausted. More than a decade later, pieces of the aircraft have washed ashore thousands of

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00:22:30

The Abduction That Changed America: Amber Hagerman...

Haunted American History ·

2026/08/28

On January 13, 1996, nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was riding her pink bicycle through an abandoned grocery-store parking lot in Arlington, Texas, when a black pickup pulled in. A witness watched a man grab her, force her into the truck, and drive away. Four days later, Amber was found murdered. Investigators would eventually learn something even more devastating: she may have remained alive for as long as two days after she was abducted. At the time, police had no way to instantly warn every driver,

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