(SC) Most Haunted Mausoleums & Cemeteries

There are three St. Louis Cemeteries in the Big Easy, but #1 is said to be the most haunted. It's the oldest, for sure, opening in 1789 to replace St. Peter Cemetery, which burned in 1788. It's no wonder the cemetery holds some haunts - with more than 100,000 people buried in a section of land about the size of a block, you'd expect that a few of them might have a little unfinished business. The tomb that tends to attract the most attention is that of Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo priestess. People mark three "X"es on her tomb, believing that doing so will cause her to grant them a wish.

You have to admit that a church reduced to rubble does spark the imagination. And the fact that the crumbling church finally fell down on Good Friday - also good fodder. Rumor has it that if you go up and knock on a rock in the rubble pile as if you were knocking on a door, the Devil himself will rise up and answer.

It's fitting that the cemetery Edgar Allan Poe now calls home is considered one of the scariest in America. Poe's ghost has been spotted, of course, but another freaky story is that of the Cambridge Skull. A minister was murdered, you see, but his head never stopped screaming, even after he died. The murderers finally gagged the skull and buried it in a block of cement to attempt to muffle it, but if you listen closely, it can still be heard. If you're one of the lucky ones to hear it, the story goes, you'll never get the sound out of your head and will likely be driven insane.

This cemetery isn't only home to apparitions of people - apparitions of an entire house have been reported by a startling number of people who can all identify a similar white farmhouse with pillars and a porch swing. Bachelor's Grove also has "evidence" of the paranormal - the picture to the left was taken in 1991 and has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. What do you think - altered picture? Other strange reports from Bachelor's Grove have included unexplained lights, faces in the mist and faces that appear on tombstones only to disappear shortly thereafter.

With its witch hunt history, it seems safe to assume that Salem is probably one of the most haunted places in the U.S. The oldest cemetery there is no exception. In fact, one famous resident of the grounds wasn't just buried there - he died there too. Giles Corey was the only person to die by torture during the Witch Trials. Corey refused to admit guilt or innocence regarding his use of witchcraft, because either way he answered would allow city officials to take his property. So the sheriff made Corey lie down in a hole in the middle of the field and then added stones to a board placed across his chest. More stones were slowly added until Corey was eventually crushed to death two days later. Now Corey is said to appear in the cemetery right before tragedy strikes the town; he was supposedly seen just days before the Great Fire of 1914.

Between this and Bachelor's Grove, Chicago's a scary place to be! I know you've heard this ghost story before, and this might be the place it originated: many years ago, a girl was walking home one night after a dance. She was hit and killed by a car, and has spent the last 80 years hitchhiking to the cemetery. When a kindly driver accepts and pulls up to drop her off at the gates, she vanishes. In Chicago, this gal is called Resurrection Mary. Many people have reported seeing her or almost hitting her in the road, and some people have even claimed to have picked her up. While it sounds like one of those urban legends, there may be an element of truth - in 1927, a girl named Anna Norkus did die in a car accident on her way home from the Oh Henry Ballroom.

Might be one of the only places where you can experience a ghost smell. Because so many died at the Battle of Gettysburg, it was impossible to clear the bodies and get them buried in a timely fashion. As you can imagine, the stench would have been awful. For quite some time after, people couldn't walk near Cemetery Hill without something to mask the stink of death, so they dipped handkerchiefs in peppermint and vanilla and held the cloth to their noses. To this day, some people report smelling peppermint at Cemetery Hill.

You might think Deadwood's Boot Hill would boast the most ghosts - after all, it's home to Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock, among others. But it's Boot Hill in Tombstone that has the photographic "evidence" of ghosts. To me this one definitely looks like a Photoshop job, but maybe you can tell me otherwise. A tourist was taking a picture of his friend in Old West gear at Boot Hill and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until the film was developed, revealing a man in a cowboy hat who appeared to be rising out of the ground.

Hollywood just lends itself to ghost stories, doesn't it? So many broken dreams and scandals. And a lot of them seem to have ended up at Hollywood Forever. Some of the ghosts that have been seen include Clifton Webb, Virginia Rappe (the girl at the center of the Fatty Arbuckle murder/rape scandal), and William Randolph Hearst. Now, Hearst isn't actually buried at Hollywood Forever, but people have reported seeing him visiting the grave of his old mistress, Marion Davies.

This cemetery is an oldie dating back to the 1600s, so it's easy to believe that it could be haunted. The graveyard is also known as the White Lady Cemetery because of the famous ghost that reportedly haunts it. As you might suspect, a mysterious ghost adorned in white roams the grounds of the cemetery and sometimes even ventures beyond the gates a bit and into the road. Like Resurrection Mary, drivers have reported "hitting" her when she appeared out of nowhere in the road. Other people have told stories of a set of red eyes peering at them from the confines of a bush or a tree.

Showman-Edwards Cemetery is listed as destroyed in Ohio Cemeteries: 1803-2003 by K. Roger Troutman, listing "stones in brush pile" as the only known information.

To get to the cemetery, you have to cross a scary old wooden bridge. Not only does it look creepy, but it's falling apart! There was a sign posted to warn people not to cross on horseback, and to warn that no more than five people should cross at a time! You could see where certain parts were patched up.

Olive Branch Cemetery is a very beautiful cemetery. It is located on a small hill, and there is a terrific view of the surrounding farms.

Many people know Olive Branch Cemetery as the home of "Carrie's Grave". I've heard a couple different versions of the haunting story:

The first story I heard goes like this...many, many years ago there was girl named Carrie. She was always picked on by other kids, they were extremely mean to her. One day they pulled a prank on her that went bad, and she was killed. She was buried in Olive Branch Cemetery. Seems the poor girl couldn't get any peace even after she died though. The local kids would visit her grave late at night and trash it, even going as far as breaking her gravestone to pieces. Her parents were furious and heartbroken, so they put a cast iron fence around her gravestone to keep the kids out. The kids still tried to trash the grave though, even with the fence. However, the first time the kids tried to destroy her grave after the fence was put up, Carrie came out of her grave and killed the boy by driving a fence post through his chest. Today people claim to hear Carrie scream every night, exactly at midnight.

I didn't see the name Carrie on any of the gravestones within the fence when I visited. However, one of the gravestones did have the name Susan on it, so the second story is a little more believable...

According to the second story, Carrie was the baby of a a proud mother named Susan. Sadly, Carrie became sick with a plague, and died a slow, painful death. Susan was heartbroken, and she started to go crazy. VERY crazy. One night Susan went to the cemetery and dug up her beloved Carrie. She treated the dead body like it was a live baby until she died. When Susan and her husband died in the early 1800s, they were buried in the fenced-in plot with Carrie. Today people claim to feel a presence behind them when they visit the grave, like someone following them. And on the date Carrie died, people claim to see Susan's ghost weeping at the grave, holding her dead baby.

Harris-Jones Cemetery, better known as Crybaby Hill, Knob Hill, or Boot Hill Cemetery. It is very small and it hasn't been active for many years. Whoever owns the cemetery takes fantastic care of the grounds.

Supposedly the illegible gravestones on Crybaby Hill belong to several babies who were murdered and buried at the cemetery. At night, many people have claimed to hear the babies crying. Some even claim to hear them crawling through the cornfield that surrounds the cemetery! Pretty creepy story, but from reading the gravestones, I didn't notice many babies buried there.