Haunted American History

Long before the curtain rose on one of America's oldest continuously operating theaters, the land beneath the Fulton Theatre ran red with blood. It was here, in 1763, that the last surviving members of the peaceful Conestoga people were slaughtered inside the walls of the Lancaster jail. Centuries later, actors, stagehands, and bartenders report phantom footsteps, ghostly applause, disembodied whistles, and apparitions wandering th...

In the summer of 1518, the people of Strasbourg watched in horror as a woman stepped into the street and began to dance. She didn't stop for days. Then dozens joined her. Then hundreds. Men, women, and children danced until their feet bled, their bodies collapsed, and some died from exhaustion. The city responded by building stages, hiring musicians, and forcing the victims to dance even more—turning a public health crisis in...

In the early 1980s, healthy young Hmong refugees across the United States began dying in their sleep. They went to bed exhausted and never woke up. Medical examiners found no poison, no disease, and no obvious cause of death. But the victims all shared the same terrifying belief: a malevolent night spirit called the dab tsog had come to crush the life from their bodies. The unexplained deaths became one of modern medicine's greates...

The city of Molalla, Oregon, proudly hides Bigfoot in its official logo. At first glance, it seems like a fun nod to Pacific Northwest folklore. But beyond the town limits lies a forest with a far darker reputation. Over the decades, its maze of logging roads and steep canyons became the dumping ground for serial killers, the hiding place of cults, the final resting place of missing people, and the setting for some of Oregon's most...

Tucked beneath the trees of southeast Portland lies a cemetery that holds nearly every chapter of the city's history. Here rest Oregon Trail pioneers, forgotten psychiatric patients, Chinese railroad laborers, ship captains, politicians, and a man who may have been wrongfully executed after begging to face his accusers one last time. Over the years, visitors have reported phantom voices, drifting incense, grieving spirits, and an o...

In the heart of Oregon's Willamette Valley sits the quiet town of Aurora, a place founded by a man who once predicted the end of the world... and, when it didn't happen, set out to build heaven instead.

Led by the charismatic Wilhelm Keil, the Aurora Colony became one of America's most successful utopian communities. Along the way came a coffin filled with whiskey crossing the Oregon Trail, a rooftop brass band, devastating epidemi...

For more than a century, the Oregon State Hospital has stood at the center of Oregon's mental health system. It was built with revolutionary ideas about healing through sunlight and fresh air, but decades of overcrowding transformed those ideals into underground tunnels, forgotten patients, and one of the deadliest accidental poisonings in American hospital history. Later came forced sterilizations, abandoned cremated remains hidde...

On the edge of Sauvie Island, just outside Portland, stands a beautiful Victorian farmhouse that no one has lived in for nearly twenty years. It can't be demolished. It can't easily be restored. So it simply waits, its windows dark and its doors locked. But the Bybee-Howell House is only part of the island's strange history. From the Multnomah people and their ancient wapato harvests to Gold Rush fortunes, a self-taught botanist wh...

For nearly 1,500 years, people have claimed that something enormous lurks beneath the dark waters of Scotland's most famous loch. It has been called a saint's miracle, a flesh-eating water spirit, a living dinosaur, and one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history. From medieval monks and Highland folklore to toy submarines, fake photographs, cutting-edge DNA science, and a monster worth millions to Scotland's economy, tonight we u...

In Guthrie, Oklahoma, one Victorian mansion has lived more lives than most towns. It began as the lavish home of a wealthy cotton baron, became a funeral home where the dead were prepared for burial, later housed a boarding school, and eventually transformed into one of Oklahoma's most famous haunted inns. Along the way, it became intertwined with the bizarre story of outlaw Elmer McCurdy, whose mummified body spent decades as a ca...

On December 30, 1999, firefighters responding to a house fire in the tiny town of Welch, Oklahoma, uncovered the beginning of one of America's most heartbreaking unsolved mysteries. Two parents had been murdered. Two teenage girls had vanished without a trace. For nearly twenty years, investigators chased false confessions, overlooked critical evidence, and missed clues that had been sitting inside a forgotten box in a sheriff's of...

Picher, Oklahoma, was once one of the richest mining towns in America. It supplied the lead and zinc that helped win two world wars and made fortunes almost overnight. But beneath the prosperity, the town was slowly poisoning itself. Toxic chat piles, rivers that ran orange with acid, collapsing mine shafts, and children suffering from lead poisoning eventually turned Picher into the most contaminated ghost town in the United State...

On the outskirts of Oklahoma City stood a quiet Catholic care home built to offer mercy to the sick and forgotten. Instead, it became the hunting ground of a young nurse who calmly confessed to smothering elderly patients simply to see what it felt like to kill. Decades later, the abandoned building became the center of ghost stories, flooded hallways, unexplained voices, and one of Oklahoma's most infamous paranormal legends. Toni...

On a lonely bridge outside Weatherford, Oklahoma, locals say you can still hear the sound of a horse-drawn buggy crossing in the dead of night. They speak of a grieving mother calling for her daughter, mysterious blue lights rising from the creek, and a ghost that may have become something far older than a restless spirit. But before there was a legend, there was a murder. Tonight, we unravel the tragic true story of Katie DeWitt J...

For more than a century, the Skirvin Hilton Hotel has been the crown jewel of Oklahoma City. It has hosted presidents, oil barons, celebrities, and NBA superstars. But it's also home to one of America's most famous haunted hotel legends. Players have fled their rooms in the middle of the night, reported phantom crying babies, slamming doors, ghostly apparitions, and mysteriously running bathtubs. But is the legend of Effie rooted i...

Say the name "Bloody Mary," and almost everyone knows the rules. Stand in front of a mirror, turn out the lights, and call her name three times. But why? Tonight, we trace the legend from the tragic reign of Mary I of England and the folklore of Mary Worth to modern psychology, where a simple mirror experiment caused ordinary people to see monsters, dead relatives, and strangers staring back through the glass. Somewhere between his...

The American Revolution gave us heroes, traitors, and a nation. But according to local legend, it also left behind ghosts that never marched home. From the phantom woman of Horse Creek who foretold presidential assassinations, to George Washington riding through Pennsylvania on the eve of Independence Day, the restless spirit of Benedict Arnold fleeing toward the Hudson, and the exhausted soldiers still marching New Jersey's back r...

During the Great Depression, someone stalked the shantytowns and rail yards of Cleveland, leaving behind dismembered bodies with surgical precision. The victims were forgotten drifters, the killer taunted the legendary Eliot Ness, and one suspect, a brilliant surgeon with political connections, may have escaped justice forever. Nearly ninety years later, DNA science is finally giving names back to the victims of one of America's mo...