The Spookiest Ghost Stories From All 50 States

8. DELAWARE

Photo of Woodburn, the Delaware Governor's Mansion
Library of Congress

Since 1965, Woodburn has served as the official residence of Delaware’s governor. But more than a century before that, it became known as a home to more than one apparition. Around 1815, the home’s owners were entertaining Lorenzo Dow, a well-known Methodist clergyman. When the group sat down to breakfast one morning, Dow asked if their other guest would be joining them … but there was no other guest. When Dow described the man he had seen the evening before, it became clear that it was Charles Hillyard III (the late father of the home’s then-owner). Rumor has it that if you leave out a glass of good wine at night, it might be gone in the morning: Hillyard was a bona fide oenophile. Sounds like the kind of ghost we could hang with.

9. FLORIDA

A photo of the exterior of the Don CeSar Hotel in Florida.
Ebyabe, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY SA 3.0

The Don CeSar hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida, was built by Thomas Rowe and named for a character in the opera Maritana. Rowe had attended the opera during his time as a student in London, and he fell head over heels for its star, a Spanish aristocrat named Lucinda. They regularly met at a fountain in the city and made plans to sail to America and be married. But Lucinda’s parents didn’t approve of their romance and took her back to Spain. He wrote her faithfully, but his letters were returned unopened. Only one letter of Lucinda’s ever reached Rowe. “Time is infinite,” she wrote. “I wait for you by our fountain … to share our timeless love, our destiny is time.” According to legend, Lucinda died of a broken heart; Rowe, who said he would never love anyone else, would go on to build his hotel. It was completed in 1928 and features an exact replica of the fountain where the lovebirds spent happier times. Rowe’s ghost has been spotted on the beach, on the hotel’s fifth floor and in the lobby, and in the garden, where he is sometimes seen holding the hand of a woman believed to be Lucinda.

10. GEORGIA

Lake Lanier in Georgia at sunset.
Peter Salanki, Flickr // CC BY 2.0

When the Army Corps of Engineers flooded the foothills of the North Georgia mountains to create Lake Lanier in the 1950s, 59 square miles of farmland, homes, and businesses disappeared beneath the water. In the process, the federal government relocated more than 250 families—along with 20 cemeteries and all their corpses. A nasty streak of freak accidents and mysterious drowning deaths have convinced locals that the lake has been cursed ever since. Some people who have survived near-drownings at the lake have reported feeling hands dragging them down beneath the surface.