True fact: Halloween is three days, not one. The traditional Celtic New Year, it was a time neither fall nor winter, neither this year nor the next, and so was charged with primordial power. Such liminal times were perfect windows for the dead to retrace their steps in the living world. Here a list where the veil between Us and Them is particularly thin.
The Tower of London
Can’t get more infamous than this one. It’s hard to tell just how many ghosts are actually here because there have been so many reports of different spirits from different times, from the sad shades of Henry VI and Anne Boleyn to a “presence” of a horseman one can only detect by his equine smell.
Gettysburg
The theory goes that traumatic events lead to hauntings, and with a casualty count of 50,000 soldiers in just three fateful days in 1863, I’d say this Pennsylvania Civil War battlefield qualifies. Most “incidents” involve ghostly cannon fire and screams; the rock formation of Devil’s Den is your best bet for a brush with the Otherworld.
The Queen Mary
Moored serenely off Long Beach, CA, the Queen Mary was the most glamorous ship of its age. It is now the most haunted ship in ours. The “Lady in White” in the Queen’s Salon is the most famous, but at least 150 individual presences are said to linger on the vessel.
The Stanley Hotel
You’ve heard of this — it’s where Jack Nicholson went nucking-futs in “The Shining.” The upshot is that the ghosts of this luxurious Colorado hotel aren’t particularly malevolent, although the spirit that likes to hang out in closets might give you a start. For the most part, though, you are more likely to encounter the late owner, Mr. Stanley, in the billiards room, or his equally late wife at the piano.
Castle Glamis
Pronounced “glahmz,” this is, hands down, the most haunted place in Scotland. There is the Grey Lady, the ghost of Lady Janet Douglas who was burned at the stake by King James I in 1537. In the 15th century, the 2nd Lord of Glamis was punished for playing cards on the Sabbath by getting into an eternal match with Satan himself, and continues to play for his soul in the cards room until doomsday. There is a vampire, a room filled with the stench of Hell, and an apparition simply known as the Mad Earl who runs screaming around the parapets.
Dan-no-ura
That this site is in open water might save you; Japanese ghosts are nothing if not bloodthirsty. In 1185, the Taira and Minamoto clans fought in the Shinomoseki Strait off the island of Honshu. The Taira lost disastrously; their ships sank, their emperor-heir drowned, their samurai flung themselves overboard to die rather than be captured. Ever since, ghosts, in form of flames, are seen to flicker over the strait, and the crabs there bare the faces of the dead on their carapaces.
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