Ever had an experience you can’t explain? Ever gotten an uneasy feeling without explanation? Maybe it was a ghost. This article from allthatsinteresting.com details 11 “real ghosts” in the US.

Kate Morgan: The Beautiful Stranger

It was 1892 and Kate Morgan was a grown and capable 24-year-old woman. According to California’s notorious Hotel del Coronado, she checked in to the resort on Thanksgiving Day. Some say she never checked out. Employees recalled that Morgan said she was waiting for a gentleman to join her. After five days as a guest, the ghost story goes, nobody showed and Morgan shot herself in the head. While nothing was found at the scene to identify her, police telegraphed her description to authorities around the country. The media dubbed her the “beautiful stranger” for her description and it was soon discovered she had an estranged husband. Her gentleman caller, it was presumed, was a lover. Morgan was also reportedly pregnant when she killed herself.

Before her suicide, Morgan worked as a household caretaker in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. During her travel to the hotel, onlookers saw her verbally spar with an unidentified male. He got off mid-route and abandoned her, leaving Morgan melancholy upon her arrival. Though unclear whether this figure was her husband or not, Morgan sorrowfully wandered into town and procured a pistol. According to Beautiful Stranger: The Ghost of Kate Morgan and the Hotel del Coronado, there’s no shortage of people who’ve reported paranormal activity in the hotel. Guests have experienced flickering lights, a rogue television, and a change in temperature that appears out of nowhere and vanishes just as inexplicably. Doors have opened and shut on their own, footsteps and voices have been heard but no people have been seen.

Because human curiosity knows no bounds, Morgan’s room has been the most requested room of them all at the hotel. Even a group of independent paranormal researchers stayed there to document the so-called hauntings. The team employed infrared cameras, night vision goggles, radiation sensors, indicators for toxic chemicals, microwave imaging systems, and high-frequency sound detectors. Though Morgan stayed in Room 3327 (formerly 302), her apparition has appeared elsewhere. There have been several sightings in room 3519 (formerly 3502 and intended for maids), for instance. Guests have reported objects moving independently. Stranger still, the hotel owner’s mistress also killed herself at the resort after discovering she was pregnant. Of course, countless guests had already reported seeing her, both in the hallways and by the beach. The hotel gift shop, too, has seen unexplained phenomena, with items flying off shelves and often landing right-side up. Ultimately, it’s unclear what exactly is going on at the hotel. An elaborate ruse by management? Buyer’s remorse on behalf of guests? Or, possibly, real paranormal activity in plain sight.

Ed & Lorraine Warren

James Wan’s 2013 horror film The Conjuring introduced mainstream audiences to the “true story” of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren and their horrifying experience with the Perron family. The true ghost story, though, may be even scarier than the film. According to USA Today, Lorraine Warren consulted on the movie and was adamant that it was true to what happened to her and the Perron family. “The things that went on there were just so incredibly frightening,” she said. “It still affects me to talk about it today.” Neurologist Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, however, investigated the couple and is convinced they fabricated the whole thing. “The Warrens are good at telling ghost stories,” he simply stated.

The Perron’s alleged haunting began in January 1971 when they moved into their new farmhouse, built in 1736, in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Carolyn and Roger Perron and their five daughters began to notice strange occurrences almost immediately. Oddly enough, they continued to live there for nine years. Andrea Perron was 12 years old at the time and claimed the film was “a beautiful tapestry” with “many elements of truth to it, and some moments of fiction.” Little did the Perron family know that the 200-acre home was said to have once been inhabited by a woman named Bathsheba Thayer and her four children, three of whom died young. The town labeled Thayer a satanist who allegedly hanged herself from a tree in the backyard, and the Perrons were allegedly attacked by her spirit. Some of these incidents were harmless. Some claim she never lived there at all. Other incidents on the property, however, were fairly violent.

The Perron children allegedly played and did chores with some of the spirits. Thayer’s ghost was not as friendly. She purportedly moved furniture to scare the new tenants, appeared fully at times, and as depicted in the film, haunted the family’s matriarch most of all. Carolyn Perron was allegedly pinched and forcefully slapped by Thayer’s ghost.“Whoever the spirit was, she perceived herself to be mistress of the house and she resented the competition my mother posed for that position,” said Andrea Perron.The Warrens were hired to help in 1974, but the Perrons eventually asked them to leave after Carolyn Perron became temporarily possessed. Her daughter allegedly witnessed this first-hand.“I thought I was going to pass out,” she said. “My mother began to speak a language not of this world in a voice not her own. Her chair levitated and she was thrown across the room. Both my mother and I would just as soon swallow our tongue than tell a lie. People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. But I know what we experienced.” The so-called “Conjuring House” where the Perron’s experienced the paranormal has recently been bought by two new owners. The fearless couple said they haven’t felt anything “evil” in the house, though it is certainly “busy.”

The Ghost of Myrtles Plantation

In 1992, when the proprietress of Louisiana’s Myrtles Plantation photographed the property as part of an insurance company requirement, something remarkable happened. In between two of the buildings, a figure appeared. A dark, female shape stood upright in the corner. The St. Francisville site naturally had a cruel history of slavery and today it is considered one of the most haunted places in America. According to The Myrtles Plantation website, even a film crew for National Geographic Explorer agreed that the photo contained what looked like the ghost of a slave girl. They recommended using it as a postcard, which the plantation did. Though her shape is clearly silhouetted between The General’s Store and the Butler’s Pantry of the property, the exterior boards of the house are just as visible. She was partly translucent, partly opaque, and entirely, glaringly present in the photograph.

In May 1995, a patent researcher named Norman Benoit visited the site to do some rigorous analysis of the potentially paranormal incident. He found that this was, indeed, the image of a person who was simply not present at the time the photograph was taken. He enlarged it, increased the contrasts, and found that the dimensions and proportions of the figure were entirely in line with human measurements. The postcard has since been dubbed the Chloe Postcard — named after the young slave girl who was said to have caught the attention of the plantation’s owner, Clarke Woodruff.

As the story goes, Chloe was propositioned by Woodruff into a sexual relationship. Seeing as she was a slave, Chloe had little choice in the matter and was deathly afraid Mrs. Woodruff would find out. So she began eavesdropping on Mrs. Woodruff. She was caught one day and had her ear cut off as punishment. For revenge, she slipped poison into the family’s food. Mrs. Woodruff and two of her kids promptly died. The other slaves, afraid they’d be seen as co-conspirators by the surviving Mr. Woodruff, hanged Chloe from a tree. They then cut her down and threw her body into the river. Some believe her spirit lived on, stalking the grounds.

In the 1970s, the plantation was purchased by the Meyers family and turned into a bed and breakfast. Ghostly apparitions and noises have been reported there ever since. Even before American slavery, though, the property was built on top of an Indian burial ground — which purportedly led to sightings of a Native American woman’s ghost on the gazebo centuries later. William Winter, a man killed at Myrtles Plantation, has also been seen. Of course, there’s no scientifically accredited way of confirming whether or not a ghost has been captured on film. Thus, only the stories from one highly ominous photograph remain.

The Mystery of Winchester House

The legend of the Winchester Mystery House has endured for more than a century, especially when a film starring Helen Mirren brought the tale into popular consciousness. It’s a story of love, loss, and a good dose of lunacy. Sarah Winchester was the widow of William Wirt Winchester, the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and she was born into privilege in 1840. But tragedy struck when Sarah Winchester’s husband and infant daughter died. She promptly visited a spiritual medium who told her these misfortunes were revenge by the evil spirits of those who were killed by Winchester rifles. The only solution, she believed, was to build a home big enough to protect her from those evil spirits. She inherited the modern equivalent of over $500 million as well as half of the company and was thus more than capable of doing so. She left New Haven, Connecticut for sunny San Jose, California and got to work building a mansion that could confuse the paranormal.

It was said Sarah Winchester’s intention was to build a home that could confuse the spirits and protect her from them. Winchester never did confirm her true intentions for the house, but builders said they had daily seances during construction. She allegedly tried reaching out to “good spirits” in order to consult them on how best to appease those who haunted her. Ultimately, the project would take 38 years to complete. The 160-room home had 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens. The house featured secret passageways, upside-down columns, rooms that were sealed off, and staircases that led nowhere. Even the bathrooms were meant to confuse them, as only one out of 13 worked.

Despite a 1904 earthquake, the house was built on a floating foundation that saved it from destruction. The top three floors were removed, unfortunately, leaving it with only four stories today. After Winchester’s death in September 1922, the legend of the Winchester Mystery House only grew larger. Winchester’s niece, Marion, inherited all of her belongings which she then promptly auctioned off. Only five months after Winchester’s death did her home open to the public for tours. Nearly a whole century later in 2016, a secret attic was discovered. Two years later, the eponymous Winchester movie was filmed at the actual house. Despite the fact that not a single paranormal investigation has captured anything remotely extraordinary, visitors continue to report feeling the presence of spirits. Visitors have claimed to have heard footsteps in her bedroom, door knobs turned by themselves, and even to have felt drastic temperature changes.

SOURCE: ALLTHATSINTERESTING.COM