Last Updated on August 3, 2021
#1. THE VILLISCA AX-MURDER HOUSE (IOWA)
Located at 508 East 2nd St. in Villisca, Iowa – the infamous Villisca Ax-Murder House is now a popular tourist attraction, replete with a cheekily blood-splattered signpost on the front lawn, for any haunted house completist to come and visit. The history? Well, back on June 12, 1912 – all six members of the Moore family were savagely chopped, slaughtered, diced and dumped by an ax-blade that was found in the house next to the victims. Two additional young house-guests were also found brutally butchered via the same ax, yet no killer was ever apprehended. Today, the place is still said to be rife with paranormal occurrences, including roaming phantoms, a door that mysteriously swings open and closed, faint children’s voices crying in the distance, etc. Of course, daytime tours and overnight slumber parties can be arranged at the right price, so book a trip and report back to us with your findings. As for the 2016 flick THE AXE MURDERS OF VILLISCA, I’ll save you the trouble. Skip at all costs!
#2. THE LIZZIE BORDEN HOUSE (MASSACHUSETTS)
Found at 230 2nd Street in Fall River, Massachusetts – The Lizzie Borden House easily ranks among the most famous and infamous American haunted houses of all time. The legend harks way back to 1892, when, after murdering her own father and stepmother with an axe in this very home, young Lizzie was tried and acquitted in the court of law. No one else was ever charged with the crime, and since the evidence against Lizzie was not strong enough to convict her in court, she ultimately walked away free. This despite police officers finding a hatchet with a broken handle in the basement and proof of Lizzie trying to burn her own clothing, possibly the very worn during the murders. It’s one of the great unsolved but damn-sure murder cases in American history, a la OJ. The story has been dramatized countless times, the newest coming via the movie LIZZIE out later this year. Today, The Lizzie Borden House is a quaint little Bread & Breakfast joint. You hungry?
#3. THE WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE (CALIFORNIA)
Not only is the fey and famed Winchester Mystery House – found at 525 s. Winchester Road, San Jose CA – the inspiration behind this list and the new Spierig Brothers flick out February 3rd, I’ve been here, it’s truly one of the creepiest locales you could ever set foot in. The crazy-cook widower Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, swore that her sprawling palace was haunted by all the victims of the repeating rifle, and as a retort, she built a vertiginous labyrinth of of continuous construction that lasted 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 38 years straight! The place makes no spatial or architectural sense whatsoever. Staircases that lead to nowhere, dead-ends aplenty, upper-floor doors that open to nothing but open air, etc. And while tours of the place have been open to the public for years now, rumors still abound of seriously haunted activity inside its ornate walls. As for the new flick, WINCHESTER, Sarah will be tormented by all those ghosts whose humanly bodies fell victim to rampant gun violence. (Check out our tour of Winchester HERE.)
#4. THE REAL AMITYVILLE HORROR HOUSE (NEW YORK)
Damn, I really wanted to give y’all a look at the abode that currently resides at the infamous address of the Amityville House of Horror, but the fact is, it just isn’t nearly as eerily foreboding as it was in the 1979 flick. So, in honor of the Stuart Rosenberg classic, we yield to the overt ghost-facade seen at night in the rain above. Peep that hooded dome, angular eyes aglow, the steep chimney for a nose and horizontal bar across the windows for a mouth. Too freaky! As for the back-story, it goes like so. Located at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, NY – On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. fatally shot six of his family members. Then, only 28 days later, the Lutz family moved into the house and immediately reported paranormal occurrences on the premises, the specifics of which were both novelized and dramatized in the film adaptation. Among the more outlandish disturbances? The interior walls of the house itself beginning to ooze thick red blood. As of June 2016, the Amityville House was back on the market for a cool $850,000. Any takers?
#5. THE LEMP MANSION (MISSOURI)
Pour one out for the dead homies! No really, The Lemp family – the pre-prohibition beer magnates of the Lemp Brewing Company – saw four different family members all commit suicide in their 33-room Victorian Mansion between the years 1904 and 1949. The gaudy estate is located at 3322 DeMenil Place, St. Louis, Missouri – now operating as a converted Restaurant and Inn – and is said to still harbor the haunting company of those four deceased family members. Dubbed by the Travel Channel as one of the most terrifying real life haunted houses in America, rumor has it that one of the spirits is of the “monkey faced boy” the illegitimate son of William Lemp, who was born with Down Syndrome and lurks in the attic. The Lemp Mansion has been featured in MTV’s Fear, Syfy’s Paranormal Witness, Discovery Channel’s Ghost Lab, the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures as well as a 2010 episode of Ghost Hunters.
#6. THE SNEDEKER HOUSE (CONNECTICUT)
Y’all remember THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT? Good. Now, y’all recall real life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren from THE CONJURING flicks? Well, here’s where the two converge, at the sinister Snedeker House, located at 208 Meridon Avenue Southington, Connecticut. It’s here in 1986 that the Allen and Carmen Snedeker, their three sons, one daughter and two nieces moved into this former funeral home and almost immediately starting sensing something seriously afoul. In the basement, funeral parlor items such as blood drains, toe tags, medical gurneys and coffin-lifts were found, and not long after reports were made of ghastly sexual attacks, evil apparitions and a vicious personality-altering fright-fest seen in their eldest son, who was said to have been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. The son has since been tagged with being responsible for some of the wicked household shenanigans, and word has that, ever since the Snedeker family moved out many years ago, new tenants have been spared of the haunts. For now!
#7. MYRTLES PLANTATION (LOUISIANA)
God, what a gorgeously macabre atmosphere that is! Indeed, the infamous Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana – which was built in 1796 by General David Bradford – is widely touted as one of the most authentically haunted houses in all of America. The former antebellum plantation, now a spooky tourist Bed & Breakfast, has a history chock-full of ugly, dehumanizing degradation, and is said to be haunted by no less than 10 different ghosts. Death modes inside the house reported in the past allegedly include illness, murder and poisoning – with specific haunting activity involving the sounds of dying footsteps, disappearing jewelry, guests waking up to find themselves totally tucked into their beds, people appearing and disappearing in hung photographs, a grand piano playing by itself, furniture randomly moving position, handprints suddenly appearing, etc. Word also has it the place was built atop a Tunica Indian burial ground, which, if PET SEMATARY taught us anything, may explain a whole hell of a lot!
#8. FRANKLIN CASTLE (OHIO)
If you so dare, make the trip to 4308 Franklin Blvd, Cleveland, Ohio to find the sumptuously sinister Franklin Castle, built in 1865. Labeled as the most haunted house in all of Ohio, which has its fair share, four children of Hannes Tiedemann were found dead inside the castle during just a few year span in the 1890s. It’s their adolescent spirits that are said to still linger inside the walls of the scarily lavish abode, wickedly taunting those bold enough to reside overnight. Word is specific supernatural activity includes rapidly spinning lights, doors flying off the hinges, young children crying and perhaps chilliest, a women dressed in black staring out the upper-floor window. And while papa Tiedemann was never accused or convicted of evildoing, many have claimed the sick sumbitch actually hung his own illegitimate 13-year old daughter and made it appear to be a suicide. More still, old man Tiedemann reportedly whacked his own mistress and buried her in a secret passage somewhere in the castle. Hell of a guy!
#9. THE SALLIE HOUSE (KANSAS)
If you’re looking for a place astir with a flurry of freaky paranormal happenings, then drive on up to 508 N. 2nd St., Atchison, Kansas to arrive at the infamous Sallie House. But do so at your own peril! According to lore, the abject evil dwelling in the place stems from a failed appendectomy of a little girl at the turn of the century. Sallie, a six year old, came into the physician’s office housed in the front screaming of abdominal pain. The doctor rushed the girl into surgery to remove her appendix before it burst, but dead in the middle of the procedure, the girl went limp, grew pale and died right there on the operating table. It’s said her ghastly spirit is the one that haunts the place, doing so until 1993, when a young couple rented the place and instantly witnessed inexplicably eerie phenomena. We’re talking objects flying across the room, fires breaking out, the operating room growing cold, ghostly sightings, gouging and shoving of the male occupant specifically. Sallie’s revenge!
#10. THE LALAURIE MANSION (LOUISIANA)
Where are my American Horror Story heads at? Y’all recall Season of the Witch (Coven, season 3), with the great Kathy Bates playing Madame Delphine LaLaurie? If so, then no stranger you should be to the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, which is located at 1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. F*ck this place! For the uninitiated, mama LaLaurie oversaw a ghastly torture chamber for southern slaves in the mansion from 1831 to 1834, until a fire lead authorities to discover her subrosa slaughter-fest. Word is Delphine would chain one slave to the stove, chaise and whip another one until she was forced to leap to her own suicide, etc. Today, passersby still claim to hear, see and feel the presence of these deceased souls, with everything from shouts, moans and screams heard nearby to ghoulish faces materializing in the windows. But hey, location-location-location, right? Until 2009, my doppleganger-uncle Nic Cage actually owned this historically horrifying haunt. Sick bastard!
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