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Historic Haunted Buildings in the USA

Historic civic, commercial, and institutional buildings with reported ghost stories and verifiable local history.

73 haunted places33 states60 cities & towns

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Editorial basis: cards use each listing's short description and are ordered by haunting level, then views. Approved community reports are counted separately.

Historic Haunted Buildings

Dock Street Theatre

Charleston, SC

A historic theatre in Charleston's French Quarter, on the site of America's first purpose-built playhouse of 1736, in a building that served as the 19th-century Planter's Hotel. It is among the city's most storied haunted buildings, with legends of actor Junius Brutus Booth and a woman called Nettie.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Ryman Auditorium

Nashville, TN

Nashville's 'Mother Church of Country Music', built as a gospel tabernacle in 1892 and home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. A National Historic Landmark still staging concerts nightly, it carries long-standing ghost stories tied to its founder and performers of its golden age.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

The Historic Drish House

Tuscaloosa, AL

An 1837 plantation-era mansion in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, blending Greek Revival and Italianate styles and now restored as an event venue. It is home to one of the state's most famous ghost stories, the 'death lights' said to appear in its tower, made famous in Alabama folklore collections.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Tingey House

Washington, DC

Tingey House — Quarters A of the Washington Navy Yard — has housed the Yard's commandants since 1804, and legend says its first master never left: Commodore Thomas Tingey, who saved and rebuilt the Yard, reportedly haunts the home he loved. It is a working official residence.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Seaview Terrace

Newport, RI

Seaview Terrace — Carey Mansion — broods over Newport's Cliff Walk, a 1920s French Renaissance pile famous to television as the original 'Dark Shadows' Collinwood. Privately held and closed, it collects lore of organ music and tower figures fitting its gothic silhouette.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House

Washington, DC

The Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House on Lafayette Square, an 1828 mansion of Washington's social elite, contributes its own thread to the square's famous hauntings — telling of its builder lingering by the drawing-room mantel, part of the capital's oldest ghost-story district.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

St. John's Episcopal Church

Washington, DC

St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square — the 'Church of the Presidents', with a pew held for every president since Madison — carries one of Washington's oldest legends: six white-robed figures said to appear in the President's Pew at midnight when the bell tolls for a notable death.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Union Hotel

Flemington, NJ

The Union Hotel in Flemington, New Jersey, faced the courthouse where the 1935 Lindbergh kidnapping trial gripped the world — its rooms packed with reporters and jurors. Long closed and awaiting revival, the landmark carries telling of trial-era echoes and a girl on the stairs.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Cutts–Madison House

Washington, DC

The Cutts–Madison House on Lafayette Square was Dolley Madison's final home, where the widowed first lady held court until her death in 1849. Washington telling has long placed her gentle ghost on the porch, smiling at passers-by — one of the capital's oldest stories.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Prospect Place

Trinway, OH

Prospect Place rises over Trinway, Ohio — a 29-room 1856 mansion built by abolitionist George Adams as an Underground Railroad station. Preserved by a family trust that hosts tours and investigations, it pairs a proud history with famous barn and ballroom ghost lore.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Belasco Theatre

New York, NY

The Belasco Theatre on West 44th Street keeps Broadway's most famous ghost: impresario David Belasco, who lived in a duplex above his 1907 playhouse and whose blue-suited figure, Broadway telling has long insisted, still watches over first nights from his old private box above the house.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

McPike Mansion

Alton, IL

A ruined 1869 Italianate mansion in Alton, Illinois — a town that calls itself one of America's most haunted — famous from national television and decades of investigations. The McPike Mansion's owners run tours and campouts while restoring it, and its cellar is the heart of the stories.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Artillery Company of Newport

Newport, RI

The Artillery Company of Newport keeps its 1836 stone armory on Clarke Street in Rhode Island — home of one of America's oldest military organisations, chartered in 1741 — as a museum of uniforms and cannon. Quiet lore gives it footsteps, moved kit and a watchful presence among the colours.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Sweetwater Mansion

Florence, AL

An imposing antebellum mansion in Florence, Alabama, begun in the 1820s and long held by the Weeden and Patton families — including a Civil War-era governor. Sweetwater's lore of figures, lights and a casket legend has made it the Shoals' most famous haunted house, though access has varied.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Riddle House

West Palm Beach, FL

A gabled 1905 'painted lady' now standing in Yesteryear Village at the South Florida Fairgrounds — moved there from downtown West Palm Beach, where it served beside a cemetery as a funeral parlour annex. The Riddle House is South Florida's best-known haunted building, famed from television.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Beechwood

Newport, RI

Beechwood, the Astors' Italianate mansion on Newport's Bellevue Avenue, hosted Gilded Age society under Caroline Astor — 'the' Mrs. Astor. During its years of costumed public tours, guides and guests traded stories of ballroom figures and a lady on the stairs; the estate is now privately held.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Belcourt of Newport

Newport, RI

A Gilded Age Newport mansion of 1894 built for Oliver Belmont and later home of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, designed like a Louis XIII hunting lodge with the ballroom upstairs and carriages below. Belcourt's owners have long told of footsteps, a haunted suit of armour and salon figures.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Butterworth Building

Seattle, WA

Seattle's 1903 Butterworth Building on First Avenue was purpose-built as a mortuary — reputedly the first in America designed as one — serving the city's dead in the years after the Klondike boom. Its later lives as offices and bars beneath fed Pioneer Square's richest ghost lore.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

George Stickney House

Bull Valley, IL

A curious 1840s-60s farmhouse in Bull Valley, Illinois, built by spiritualists George and Sylvia Stickney with rounded corners — legend says to deny spirits a hiding place. Now the village hall and police station, the Stickney House wears its seance-room history and gentle hauntings famously.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Berkeley Faculty Club

Berkeley, CA

The Berkeley Faculty Club, a 1902 Bernard Maybeck landmark in a redwood glade on the University of California campus, carries the university's favourite ghost story: a long-resident history professor whose old upstairs room — and gentle, watchful presence — became enduring campus legend.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Amargosa Opera House and Hotel

Death Valley Junction, CA

At lonely Death Valley Junction, California, dancer Marta Becket's Amargosa Opera House — a 1920s borax-company colony she transformed with painted audiences on its walls — pairs one of the desert's strangest artistic stories with hotel corridors long said to be haunted.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

The Grove

Jefferson, TX

An 1861 Greek Revival home in Jefferson, Texas, so consistently storied that its own tours call it 'the most haunted house in Texas'. The Grove's lore — a lady in white on her unchanging circuit, garden figures and knocks — has been recounted by owners for over a century.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Jefferson Davis Hospital

Houston, TX

A 1924 Houston hospital built directly over a 19th-century city cemetery — a fact, not a legend — that stood abandoned for decades as the city's most famous haunted ruin. Restored as artist lofts, the old Jefferson Davis Hospital is now homes: its stories remain, but viewing stops at the pavement.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Historic Haunted Buildings

Former Chicago Historical Society Building

Chicago, IL

A Romanesque granite fortress of 1892 on Dearborn Street, built for the Chicago Historical Society and later famous as a nightclub complex. Chicago telling has long called the building haunted — figures on its grand stair, glasses flying in its club years and a history reaching back past the Great Fire.

0 approved community reports

No approved photo available

Editorial rating (not community score) Moderate

Show all 73 places

About historic haunted buildings in the USA

This page gathers historic haunted buildings reported across the United States — drawn from local history, published folklore and visitor reports. Many are open to the public, and several offer tours or overnight stays.

Stories are recorded as accounts rather than established fact. Browse by state above, or open the full map to explore everything near you.