After an October haunted by pumpkin spice lattes and kids’ costume displays, it’s time to break out the real scares. While your neighborhood may claim to have the best haunted house ever, does it have its very own petrifying poltergeists or resident ghosts and ghouls? If you’re ready for shivers down your spine, read on to hear about the top six creepy, hair-raising, and downright spooky apartment complexes in the United States!
#1: 3755 Sunnyside Ave
Chicago, IL
Here’s a nice haunting to get us started. After a short stint living with the groom’s parents, a couple was finally able to get their own apartment. For awhile, they didn’t notice anything weird, only what seemed to be clouds of grey in their peripheral vision. Years later, after the couple had kids, they noticed this “friendly ghost” seemed to like to hang around their kids. When the mother, a week shy of giving birth to her child, finally saw the ghost in his full form, she understood why. Their little visitor was a little boy dressed in play clothes from the thirties. Eighty years is a long time to go without a play buddy!
#2: Bluff Springs
La Follette, TN
Once prey to a peeping tom, this apartment building is now prey to his ghost. The man came every night to spy on the building’s residents until, one night, he was caught. On the way to the local jail, the police cruiser was involved in an accident, killing everyone in the car. Ever since, residents claim to hear movement and see glowing red eyes outside their building every night at 12:03 a.m. It seems even criminal activity doesn’t end with death…
#3: Bayly Orem House
Cambridge, MD
Occupied by an old woman and her cat since 1888, Bayly Orem House had one rule: don’t enter the front parlor. The woman living there kept the room meticulously clean but let no one in. For years, no one thought anything of this and they respected the fancy of a lonely old woman. When she fell down the stairs, her cat rushed for help, but the woman died before anyone could arrive. As it was the most carefully kept room in the house, the woman’s family held the visitation in the parlor. The morning of the funeral, they arrived back at the home to transport the body, but the door was locked. With no other choice, her family broke down the door and found the woman’s loyal cat sitting beside the body and the room’s only key. The parlor, now one of the building’s many apartments, still retains this peculiar presence, with tenants complaining of flickering lights, books mysteriously falling off shelves, and the faint sound of laughter.
#4: 14 West 10th Street
New York, NY
This West Village brownstone gained the nickname “The House of Death” due to its impressive ghost-to-resident ratio. The most famous spirit seen roaming the halls is American literary legend Mark Twain, who lived in the building between 1900 and 1901. Other sightings include Lisa Steinberg, daughter of former New York criminal defense attorney Joel Steinberg, who killed her in 1987, a lady in white, and a young child with her cat. Which of the building’s 22 ghastly residents will you see?
#5: Lalaurie House
New Orleans, LA
Madame Lalaurie, who moved to the French Quarter Mansion in 1832, was a well-known and respected socialite. She threw the grandest parties and dressed her daughters in splendid gowns, but behind all that opulence was a dark side. In April 1934, a slave who could no longer take her abuses lit the house on fire. What the firefighters found was beyond human comprehension: a torture chamber of the most gruesome sort containing more than a dozen slaves. Run out of town by an angry mob, the Lalaurie family was never heard from again, but the same cannot be said for Madame Lalaurie’s helpless victims. Their ghostly screams, groans, and apparitions have scared away all manner of tenants through the years, from schools and hotels, to restaurants and shops. A recent renovation even found a hidden graveyard beneath floorboards in the back parlor. Only the truly brave (or truly sceptical) live in the building’s current luxury apartments.
#6: Alexandria Hotel
Los Angeles, CA
Originally a hip hotel and restaurant, serving the likes of President Woodrow Wilson and actor Charlie Chaplin, the Alexandria Hotel has since been converted into a low-income apartment complex. One tenant complains of a ghostly dancer who greets guests in the ballroom and often stalls the elevator at that floor. Others have spotted an angry teenager outside Charlie Chaplin’s old suite and ethereal mobsters congregating in the old Prohibition-era tunnels below the building. If you catch a show at the new ground-level comedy club, you may just spot one of them!
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