The Spookiest Ghost Stories From All 50 States

26. MONTANA

A close up of a man's hand as he hitchhikes.
iStock

Taking a drive along Highway 87 by Black Horse Lake in Montana? If the legends are true, you’ll want to think twice before agreeing to pick up just any hitchhiker. Locals claim that a man known as the Phantom Hitchhiker of Black Horse Lake—a Native American man wearing a jean jacket—appears on the road, then violently smashes against your windshield as if struck by your car. It is said that the man was involved in a fatal car crash many years ago and has reenacted it ever since.

27. NEBRASKA

A painting of Blackbird Hill by Karol Bodmer.
Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

Blackbird Hill, Nebraska, is best known as the gravesite of the eponymous Omaha Indian Chief named Blackbird, who was famously buried sitting upright on his most prized horse. But the hill is also home to one of Nebraska’s oldest ghost stories. In the late 1800s, a local man discovered that his wife still had feelings for a long-lost lover. Consumed in a fit of jealous rage, he stabbed his wife and then, in a panic, picked up her body, ran to the cliff on Blackbird Hill, and jumped. It’s said that if you listen closely on October 17, you can hear a woman screaming near the top of that hill.

28. NEVADA

A map of Nevada with a thumb tack in Carson City.
iStock

Long before the founding of Las Vegas, a pair of lovers named Timber Kate and Bella Rawhide toured the saloons of Nevada performing a live sex show. One day, Bella abandoned the act and left Kate for a man named Tug Daniels, breaking her former partner’s heart. Kate eventually ran into Bella and Tug in a Carson City brothel, resulting in a knife fight. During the melee, Tug murdered Kate, and it's been said that her disheveled ghost still haunts the halls of the bordello.

29. NEW HAMPSHIRE

The exterior of the music hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Ken Gallager, Wikimedia Commons // CC BY SA 3.0

Before the Portsmouth Music Hall was built on Chestnut Street in 1878, the site was home to the Temple, a public meeting house where black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass spoke against slavery; a Baptist meeting hall; an 18th-century prison; and