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The Haunted Sanatorium of the Gotthard Abandoned in the Swizz Mountains

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Now long abandoned and left to decay in the Swizz forests, The Sanatorium of the Gotthard is said to still have some patients that never checked out. Is it really someone haunting the old hospital in the mountains?

In the shadow of Switzerland’s Gotthard Massif, with mountains looming over the misty dense pine forests, stands a decaying relic of the nation’s darker past. The Sanatorium of the Gotthard, near the village of Piotta, also called The Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale di Piotta, is more than a run, a place where history, death, and whispered legends have blurred into one lingering, malevolent presence.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

Today, its broken windows gape like hollow eyes, and ivy-strangled walls crumble beneath the weight of decades of silence. But those who have braved its abandoned corridors claim the building is anything but empty. According to legend, there is said to be a mountain of corpses in the basement of the sanatorium, and some of them are said to still be haunting the place. 

Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale di Piotta (1919)

A Sanatorium Built for the Afflicted

Constructed in the early 20th century, the sanatorium was originally designed to house tuberculosis patients, a common affliction in the Alpine regions due to the damp mountain air and close living conditions and opened in 1905. It was initiated by Fabrizio Maffi, who later became an Italian senator and fled to Switzerland. Just a year after its opening, the sanatorium went bankrupt for the first time.

Sanatorium of the Gotthards remote location, isolated in the hills, made it an ideal quarantine facility, but also the perfect setting for stories to ferment.

During World War I, the sanatorium’s role expanded. It began treating wounded and shell-shocked soldiers, men maimed not only in body but broken in spirit. It was here, according to local folklore, that the line between medicine and malevolence began to blur.

Among the most enduring and unsettling rumors is the tale of a nameless doctor who allegedly conducted experimental procedures on both TB sufferers and injured soldiers alike. Surgeries without anesthetic, grotesque experiments with electricity and cold therapy, and cruel psychological trials are said to have taken place within those bleak rooms. Though no official records confirm these claims, the sanatorium’s very architecture hints at secrets, a discreetly hidden morgue, unmarked underground tunnels, and sealed wings where sunlight no longer dares to enter.

Decades of Decay and Unease at the Gotthard Sanatorium

The Sanatorium of the Gotthard was quietly shuttered in 1961 as modern medicine outpaced its usefulness and the place faced economic hardships they would not overcome. Over the following 60 years, the building fell into disrepair, succumbing to the encroaching forest and harsh mountain winters. Yet even in its decay, it never quite fell silent.

Urban explorers and thrill-seekers drawn to its crumbling halls speak of disembodied voices, the sound of shuffling footsteps in empty rooms, and a lingering, oppressive chill that clings to the air like mist. Some claim to have seen pale figures watching from broken windows or glimpsed fleeting shadows in the peripheral dark. The sensation of being followed is nearly constant, and many leave with an inexplicable sense of dread.

Urban Explorers: The abandoned building has become a popular place for urban exploring and ghost hunters. // Source: Wendelin Jacober/Wiki

One widely retold account describes a man attempting to drive up the narrow road to the Sanatorium of the Gotthard, only to feel his car begin to roll backward on its own, as if some unseen force was physically repelling him from the site. Despite firming his grip on the steering wheel and applying the brakes, the car continued its slow, deliberate retreat down the road, stopping only when he gave up the attempt.

The Haunting Legacy of the Morgue

Perhaps the sanatorium’s most notorious feature is its basement morgue, where rows of rusting gurneys and shattered cabinets still linger, untouched for decades. Visitors report a sudden drop in temperature upon entering, and the unmistakable, sour scent of old antiseptic and decay — though the building has been abandoned for generations.

Read More: Check out Ghostly Encounters at the Sanatorium of Santo Angel de la Guarda, The Ghosts of the White Plague Haunting the Alfaguara Sanatorium and The Haunted Preventorio de Aigües in Alicante also.

Some locals insist that the spirits of those who perished in agony within these walls — from soldiers torn apart by war to TB patients abandoned by hope, remain trapped, their suffering bound to the place of their torment. There are also said that a doctor carried out demonic experiments on patients, said to be associated with the fictional character, Dr. Mabuse. Lights flicker in its hollow shell, and faint, mournful cries sometimes rise above the wind that rattles its ancient eaves.

A Warning Carried by the Wind

Even today, few locals will approach the sanatorium after nightfall. Hikers claim to hear whispers in the trees, and it’s said that animals avoid the path leading up to the ruined building. Storms seem to gather with unsettling speed over its roof, and the once-healing Alpine air turns cold and heavy as one nears its gates.

The Sanatorium of the Gotthard was sold from Canton Ticino to a Kazakh group of investors in 2016, wanting to turn it into a winter sports training center, although nothing has happened. 

In 2021, the “Corriere del Ticino” reported a strange ritual filmed in the ruins. The video shows a man who claims to be Swiss, dressed in black with a hood featuring a skull. He waves a (likely fake) skull in one hand and holds a notebook in the other, with a fire in front and small candles around it. What is happening in the old sanatorium today?

The Sanatorium of the Gotthard endures as one of Switzerland’s most chilling forgotten places, a decaying testament to human suffering, medical ambition, and the spirits that refuse to be forgotten. To wander its halls is to court the past — and perhaps meet whatever lingers in the shadows.

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References:

Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale di Piotta – Wikipedia

https://www.satyrography.com/panoramas/sanatorium-gotthard/Sanatorium-Gotthard.html

Piotta TI: Verlassenes Sanatorium zieht Geisterjäger und Neugierige an

Dr. Mabuse – Wikipedia

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The Griswold Vampire Case and the True Identity of J.B. in the Coffin

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Dug up after his first burial, the mysterious grave of J.B haunted New England as one of its vampire graves from the New England vampire panic. Who was this man, and what happened to make his friends and family dig him up and rearrange his bones, actually turning him in his grave?

When people think of America’s vampire folklore, names like Mercy Brown often rise to the top. But lurking deeper in the shadowy annals of New England’s vampire panic is the strange and unsettling case of a man identified only by his initials: J.B. His grave, discovered in 1990 in Griswold, Connecticut, became the centerpiece of a chilling historical mystery that hints at the desperate and fearful superstitions of rural 19th-century America.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from USA

But who was J.B? And what happened back then that was so horrifying, they had to dig his corpse up to make sure that he would stay dead?

A Grim Discovery in the Griswold Woods

In 1990, three young boys playing near a gravel pit in Griswold stumbled upon something macabre — a collection of human bones near a sand and gravel mine. When they told their mothers what happened, they didn’t believe it, but when they returned with a skull.

The police first thought it had something to do with the serial killer, Michael Ross, but they soon realized that the bones were from something much older. What was initially believed to be the remains of a modern crime victim quickly turned into an archaeological investigation when it was determined that the bones belonged to an early 19th-century graveyard known as the Walton Family Cemetery.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

Connecticut State Archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, was excavating the cemetery and found something no one could have expected. Among the graves, one burial in particular captured attention: a coffin marked only with brass tacks, spelling the initials “J.B. 55”. The remains inside had been subject to a post-mortem ritual that hinted unmistakably at vampire panic practices. The skeleton had been exhumed and carefully reburied with its head decapitated and put on the chest. Its thigh bones were placed in a cross beneath the skull — a classic “skull and crossbones” arrangement used in old folklore to prevent the dead from rising.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

This was no accident. This was a deliberate act meant to keep something sinister at bay.

The New England Vampire Panic: Death’s Superstitious Grip

The grave of J.B can easily be seen together with a string of exhumations in the New England area during the 19th century as a part of the vampire panic that grew forth after a tuberculosis epidemic broke out, that made even the most logical man hunting for the undead.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, tuberculosis (then called “consumption”) was an incurable and terrifying disease. It slowly wasted away its victims, hollowing them out until death. In the face of its horrors, rural communities often turned to folklore for explanations.

One deeply held belief was that when several family members fell ill in succession, it might be the work of a vampire among the dead — a family member or neighbor who, from beyond the grave, was spiritually draining the living. 

To stop them, they thought they had to dig them up and perform a ritual on the undead. Signs of vampirism were blood left in their organs, unnatural lack of decomposition, their hair and nails growing and bloated bellies, looking like they had recently fed. If some of these signs were present in the grave, they believed that they were a part of the undead and vampires. The grim solution? Exhume the suspect’s body and perform a ritual to stop them.

This often involved cutting out and burning the heart, decapitating the body, or rearranging the skeleton to prevent it from rising. The Griswold case suggests this very ritual was carried out on poor J.B who had been exhumed around five years after his death and where they removed his heart in an attempt to stop the undead from rising and feeding on the living. 

Who Was J.B. and What Happened to his Grave?

Despite modern forensic analysis, the identity of J.B. remain a mystery for decades. Archaeologists and historians placed the burial in the 1830s to 1840s, based on coffin construction and burial artifacts. Forensic examination of the bones revealed that J.B. was a middle-aged man who had indeed suffered from tuberculosis. His bones bore signs of the disease’s toll — lesions on the ribs characteristic of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Bellantoni

The practice of marking coffins with initials was common in the period, but unfortunately, no surviving burial records from Griswold matched those initials, and no contemporary accounts of a local vampire panic in the area have yet surfaced. Yet the condition of the grave makes it clear: someone believed J.B. was a threat from beyond the grave.

When scientists revisited the case, they turned to a farmer named John Barber. Next to him, where a grave marked IB45 containing a female around 45-55 years old. Could it be a family laid to rest next to each other? There was also a grave marked NB 13, suggesting a father son relationship. Something an obituary from 1826 supports. This was for the 12 year old Nicholas Barber where they also mentioned his father, John Barber. This was also confirmed through DNA testing. 

Face of the Vampire: Using DNA extracted from a skull, a forensic artist created a facial reconstruction of a man believed to be a vampire from the 18th century. Using 3D facial reconstruction software, a forensic artist determined that JB55 likely had fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, brown or black hair and some freckles, according to a statement. (Image credit: Parabon Nanolabs, Virginia Commonwealth University)

Most often, the organs to those accused of vampirism were cut out and burned. Most often it was the heart, or perhaps the kidneys. Often, it wasn’t years before they dug them up, so what happened if there were no organs left?

When the townspeople opened his grave, his body was probably a skeleton already. To get to his decomposing heart, they most likely broke open his ribs to remove it, removed his head and put it back together. His heart and organs were most likely burnt. Most often the undead showed these signs of something being wrong, but what if there were nothing to take?

If there were no organs to take, the separation of the skull from the body was a part of the ritual instead, many that have looked into the case have hypothesized. The rituals craved for people to ingest the ashes of what they cremated, but we simply don’t know what really happened when they exhumed J.Bs body.

It is also said that there were no signs of tuberculosis in the other bodies found near J.B in the cemetery. So for what reason did they dig him up?

Fear Beyond the Grave of John Barber

The story of J.B. of Griswold is a chilling reminder of the power of fear, folklore, and superstition that seems so foreign and barbaric to people not believing in them. In a time before germ theory and antibiotics, death crept so relentlessly through small communities that people were willing to embrace the macabre to protect the living.

Today, the remains of J.B. are studied and preserved as part of Connecticut’s archaeological history, but his story — or rather, the silence of it — still haunts the annals of New England folklore. His grave stands not just as a testament to a forgotten life, but to the uneasy marriage of death and superstition that once gripped early America.

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References:

New England ‘Vampire’ Was Likely a Farmer Named John 

DNA Testing Reveals the Putative Identity of JB55, a 19th Century Vampire Buried in Griswold, Connecticut

Bioarcheological and biocultural evidence for the New England vampire folk belief

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The Vampire of Alnwick Castle: Northumberland’s Restless Dead

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In the castle often dubbed the Windsor of the North, the Alnwick castle also houses some dark legends. One of them being that there once was a vampire demon lurking in the dark corners of the castle. 

Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England has been called  the Windsor of the North and has been the home for the Percy family since 1309, including the current 12th Duke of Northumberland. It has played a crucial role in the history of England, as a stronghold in the border wars with Scotland as well as the power battle in the Wars of Roses.

Long before Alnwick Castle gained modern renown as a filming location for Harry Potter’s Hogwarts or Downton Abbey, it was home to far darker, bloodier folklore. In the 12th century, this formidable Northumbrian stronghold was at the center of one of Britain’s most unnerving medieval vampire tales — chronicled by the historian William of Newburgh.

The Tale as Told by William of Newburgh

William, writing around 1196, recounted the terrifying legend in his Historia Rerum Anglicarum, documenting the story of a long-deceased servant to the Lord de Vesci of Alnwick in the 11th century who refused to stay buried. It was said he came from Yorkshire to escape the law. Or was it the master of the castle himself who stayed underneath his castle after his death? According to local accounts, after his death this malevolent soul rose nightly from his grave to prowl the surrounding village.

William of Newburgh: Many of the tales about the British vampires comes from the 12th century historian, William of Newburgh. William’s major work was Historia rerum Anglicarum or Historia de rebus anglicis (“History of English Affairs”), a history of England from 1066 to 1198, written in Latin. It is written in an engaging fashion and still readable to this day, containing many fascinating stories and glimpses into 12th-century life. He is a major source for stories of medieval revenants, animated corpses that returned from their graves, with close parallels to vampire beliefs.

He was said to be a horrid man, although his misdeeds aren’t always specified. He was also a very jealous man and suspected his wife had taken a lover and wanted to caught her in the act. He told her he was going out on a journey for many days, but in secret snuck back after dark. He went to spy on her and climbed to the roof of his house to look in her window. Some say that he was hiding on a beam overhanging her room. 

Whether his wife cheated or not is debated. Some say that a man really did enter her room, causing him to lose his balance and fall down. He fell through the roof or off the beam and crashed to the floor and injured himself badly. As he lay dying on her floor, he refused to repent his sins, and died with the cursing words of his wife looming over him. 

The creature, often referred to simply as the Alnwick Vampire, brought with it a pestilent air of death. Villagers spoke of a sickening stench and oppressive atmosphere whenever the restless corpse stalked the streets. It is also said that a pack of hounds howling was following him. In the original source, it’s not often mentioned they feared for their blood to be sucked out of them, but being “beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster.”

Howling Hounds: Often in William Newburghs tales of the undead, there is a pack of dogs following as the dog motif has been connected with death for ages in European mythology. The black dog is a supernatural, spectral, or demonic hellhound. It is usually unnaturally large with glowing red or yellow eyes, is often connected with the Devil, and is sometimes an omen of death.

The villagers were so afraid they started to lock themselves inside of their homes at night. It is also said that the castle was close to being abandoned and that people started to move away. Soon after the nightly disturbances began, a dreadful plague outbreak swept through the village, and the suffering townsfolk laid blame squarely at the feet of the wandering revenant.

A Grim Solution: Dismemberment and Burning

Local priests and terrified townsfolk, desperate to end the curse, gathered on Palm Sunday at two brothers who had lost their father to the plague and wanted to stop it before it consumed them as well. and decided upon a grim but time-honored medieval remedy: they would exhume the vampire’s corpse and destroy it.

A band of brave men dug up the grave. He was not found six feet under as he had been buried the first time, but right under the surface with just a bit of soil barely covering him. 

His body was naturally preserved and bloated. It was said it had swollen to almost twice its size and his flesh was more pink than deadly white. Although the stench of flesh was overwhelming. 

To put an end to the horrors, they dragged the body from the earth, hacked it to pieces as gallons of fresh hot blood poured out of him, pure evidence of him being a bloodsucking monster. The body pieces were taken outside of the town and burned the remains to ash.

William of Newburgh recorded the event in chilling detail, remarking on how the decay and pestilence lifted almost immediately after the body’s destruction.

Vampire or Revenant? A Medieval Fear

This account from Alnwick is one of the earliest written vampire legends in England. Even to this day, William de Newburgh is claimed to have been a serious historian who relied on good and trustworthy sources. 

In the story though, he does call the castle Anantis, and it has since then been affiliated with the Alnwick Castle. This sort of became canon lore after Montague Summers published The Vampire in Europe in 1929 where he called the legend the Alnwick Vampire. 

There have been some that have speculated that the castle from the story was actually Annan Castle of the Bruce family in South West Scotland. However, the structure of the story does remind quite a lot of an Irish vampire story about an evil lord jealous of his wife and dies when spying on her and her suspected lover.

Read More: The Legend of Ireland’s Vampire King Abhartach and the Haunted Giant’s Grave

It is also said that William heard the story from an old monk who lived when the story happened, meaning it must have been sometime in the late 11th, early 12th century like most of his vampire stories. It wasn’t called vampire though, but some sort of bloodsucker or sanguine, the latin word for it. 

Revenant: The term vampire or the undead was not used in medieval time, but several of the stories about the Revenant, Sanguisa or the bloodsuckers of folklore bear resemblance to what the modern world would classify as a vampire legend. In folklore, a revenant is a spirit or animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living and was in medieval times used interchangeably with ghosts. They come from various cultures like the Celtic and Norse, some reminding more about a classic ghost story, some more of a vampire legend. Although today a mixed version of the western and eastern European mythologies of the undead.

In the medieval mind, such revenants were often considered a cross between a ghost and a vampire who were physical corpses that left their tombs to infect the living, causing plagues, death, and despair. The cause of their resurrection was often attributed to sin, improper burial rites, or a cursed nature in life.

Other Ghosts at Alnwick Castle

In addition to a legend of a bloodsucking undead, it is also said that the ghost of a Grey Lady is haunting the castle grounds. It is said that a young teenage girl was working as a maid in the castle in the Victorian time. One day she was working in one of the kitchens. She fell down a chute to the tunnels below the castle. The dumb waiter used to raise and lower food between the castle floors and broke and fell on top of her. It crushed her to death. 

It is said that she is walking in the tunnels and dark corridors deep below the castle. 

Today, Alnwick Castle embraces its eerie history, and there is even a gin inspired by the legend. Ghost tours and local folklore evenings recount not only the vampire of the 12th century but also tales of spectral knights, weeping women, and shadowy figures that stalk the castle halls and grounds after dark.

And though centuries have passed since the old master’s body was consigned to the flames, some claim that on misty nights, a strange stench lingers in the old graveyard, and figures are glimpsed where no one should be.

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References:

The Alnwick vampire

Vampire and Ghost of Alnwick Castle

The Secrets of Alnwick Castle’s Haunting Past

1196 (ca.): Vampire of Anantis | Anomalies: the Strange & Unexplained

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The Architect’s Ghost: Hauntings at Grand Hotel Giessbach

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The Grand Hotel Giessbach has housed the Swiss elite for over a century and is said to be haunting the ghost of Horace Edouard Davinet, the architect behind it all. 

Above the glacial waters of Lake Brienz, the Grand Hotel Giessbach is a Swiss landmark of timeless elegance. Built in 1874, the hotel’s grand façade and sweeping views of cascading waterfalls have drawn royalty, artists, and weary travelers alike. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from Switzerland

Horace Edouard Davinet, the renowned 19th-century architect, poured his soul into creating the Giessbach after being commissioned by the Hauser family of hoteliers, from Wädenswil in the Canton of Zurich who wanted to expand on the guesthouse they had there. The Grand Hotel Giessbach was said to be one of his crowning achievement, a luxurious Belle Epoque retreat with stucco-decorated ballrooms and salons meant to harmonize with the surrounding Alpine wilderness. Yet behind its Belle Époque charm lies a spectral secret — the restless spirit of the man who designed it.

The Ghost of the Architect

Horace Edouard Davinet was a Franco-Swiss architect. He was born in 1839 and studied, worked and lived in Bern where he designed buildings for the Swiss elite. Before he died in 1922, he designed several hotels, including the original Rigi Kulm Hotel at the summit of Rigi mountain in Switzerland. Although there is nothing but designing the hotel that connects him to this Grand Hotel Giessbach, this is where they say he haunts.

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Two World Wars plus economic crises with their devastating consequences for the Swiss hotel industry combined with a different understanding of tourism led to the fading of the lustre and glory of the Giessbach. After many years of decline, the Grand Hotel Giessbach closed its doors in 1979 before opening up again with a haunted rumor.

Edouard Davinet: architect and inspector of the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, 1919, by Wilhelm Paul Friedrich Balmer, Museum of Fine Arts in Bern.

And though Davinet passed away long ago, it seems his devotion to the building has tethered him to its halls. And as the hotel director, Mark von Weissenfluh says: “We firmly believe that our hotel is primarily home to good spirits,”

The Haunting of the Grand Hotel Giessbach

For decades, staff and guests alike have whispered of eerie happenings within the Grand Hotel Giessbach, particularly during the quiet, snow-draped winter months when the rooms sit empty and the wind howls through the valley. Footsteps echo along deserted corridors, doors creak open without cause, and the air turns inexplicably cold in certain parts of the hotel — especially near the grand staircase, said to be Davinet’s favorite feature.

He is said to have gently touched two employees on the shoulder during their nightly rounds, but there are no malicious or negative stories coming from guests and staff about encounters with the house spirit. 

The most unsettling encounters, however, involve the large, formal portrait of Davinet that hangs prominently in the hotel’s main hall. Many claim to have seen the eyes in the painting follow them as they pass, while others report a faint, spectral figure resembling the architect himself, standing motionless at the top of the staircase, vanishing the moment one’s gaze meets his.

Though skeptics brush it off as old hotel creaks and overactive imaginations, many believe Horace Edouard Davinet’s spirit continues to walk the halls of Grand Hotel Giessbach, ever watchful, ensuring that his masterpiece stands proud against the passage of time and that no one forgets the man who dreamed it into being.

For those brave enough to stay during a quiet winter’s night, keep an ear open for those ghostly footsteps — and if you pass the portrait in the main hall, you might just catch a flicker of movement in the architect’s unblinking eyes.

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References:

https://www.beobachter.ch/konsum/reisen/grandhotel-giessbach-fliegende-geranien-und-spukgeschichten?srsltid=AfmBOoqKeErPZ9YGbiVNyikuifpNuxSU0AEi9kTriL4aqcaPFlPWTK_M

Horace Edouard Davinet – Wikipedia

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The Restless Dead of Rhode Island: The Vampiric Legend of Ruth Ellen Rose

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Dead as a young girl, the family of Ruth Ellen Rose believed her to be one of the undead, a vampire rising from her grave every night to feed on her siblings, slowly dying of the same disease she did. To stop this, they decided to dig her body up and carve her heart out. 

In the hushed woodlands and misted graveyards of 19th-century New England, terror did not always arrive in the night — sometimes it crept in through the sickroom window, carried on the breath of a wasting cough. One such unfortunate to fall victim to this grim tradition was Ruth Ellen Rose, a 15-year-old girl whose short, tragic life and eerie afterlife have lingered in Rhode Island folklore ever since.

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Born in 1859 in Exeter, Rhode Island, Ruth Ellen Rose lived — and died — in the heartland of America’s so-called Vampire Panic. New England, though a landscape of tidy farmsteads and Puritan steeples, harbored a persistent, unshakable fear: that the dead could rise from their graves, not in bodily form, but as a spiritual parasite, draining the life from their surviving kin. Consumption, what we now know as tuberculosis, ravaged families so regularly that superstitions took root like stubborn weeds.

Her Mother was Mary Taylor from the Dixon and Peckham family, but she died in 1866. Her father, William G. Rose was a farmer, mill superintendent, and first president of the Exeter Grange. He was also a lieutenant colonel in the Rhode Island militia. He remarried to Mary Ann Griswold Morrarty. Her former husband had been from the Tillinghast family, and this would likely be one of the things that sealed Ruth’s fate. 

Ruth’s illness was slow and torturous and came in waves. By 1874, at just 15, she succumbed to the wasting disease. But death, in the fearful lore of Exeter, was not always an ending.

A Family Cursed by Blood

Not long after Ruth’s death her siblings began to show the telltale signs of consumption. She had a lot of them, and although many of them lived long lives, there were some who died earlier. Like Emma Tillinghast, her step sister who died of consumption, although her death is most often noted to be in 1870 when she was 16. This epidemic also took the lives of their infant little brothers Horace and Edwin. In most documents, Ruth is not even listed in the flock of children so the details of the story sometimes become lost to legends.

William Greene Rose

And rumors swirled. William Rose, Ruth’s father, was not just a grieving parent. Whispers claimed he dabbled in Druid rituals, dark rites passed down from the Old World. At least that is how the stories about him have evolved until today. Local legend still speaks of an ancient stone altar, hidden in the woods of Peace Dale, upon which he was said to perform secret sacrifices to halt the spread of the mysterious illness plaguing his bloodline.

Perhaps it was superstition, or perhaps it was grief twisted into madness, but that same year, William disinterred his daughter’s body. He cut out Ruth’s heart himself and consigned it to the flames in an attempt to stop the curse of the undead. The ash was scattered, a desperate and macabre remedy meant to sever the supernatural link between the dead and the dying.

A Legacy of Unearthed Daughters

Ruth’s tragic end was not without precedent. The tale takes a darker turn when one examines her stepmother’s lineage. Mary, her stepmother, used to be a Tillinghast and this family came with stories of vampires. Stukely Tillinghast, whose own daughter, Sarah Tillinghast, had perished of consumption decades earlier — and was similarly suspected of preying on her family from beyond the grave. The echoes of that old curse seemed to pass through generations like a genetic illness, or perhaps, in the eyes of those fearful villagers, a vampiric inheritance.

Read More: Check out the whole story of The Rhode Island Vampire and the Legend of Sarah Tillinghast 

Thus, it wasn’t merely disease that haunted these families, but their own shared history, where graves were never truly at rest and tragedy was expected to call twice.

An Unquiet Grave

Today, Ruth Ellen Rose lies in an unmarked grave in South Kingstown Historical Cemetery #11, colloquially known as Rose’s Lot. Or perhaps she’s not there at all, as her grave has never been found. Her father and stepmother’s headstones remain standing, weathered but intact, while Ruth’s resting place is conspicuously absent of any enduring marker. Perhaps it was lost to time — or perhaps deliberately left nameless to deny the restless dead a tether to this world.

George Rose Lot

The land itself retains a peculiar unease. Locals have spoken of strange happenings in the overgrown cemetery — flickering lights, phantom footsteps, and the sound of a distant, rasping cough when no one else is near. Some say that Ruth’s spirit lingers still, denied peace by the violence of her end and the stain of her family’s fear.

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References:

Food for the Dead: On the Trial of New England’s Vampires 2011933367, 9780819571700 – DOKUMEN.PUB

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6505849/william-greene-rose

The Vampires of Rhode Island: Not Unfamiliar With This Plague. Ruth Ellen Rose, 15, Exeter 1874 – The Avocado

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The Night Horse Zawudschawu: Phantom of the Gruyère Moors

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Luring weary travelers to get on their back, the dark night horse Zawudschawu, is said to prowl the swampy moors of Gruyère Moors. 

In the shadowy heart of Switzerland’s Gruyère region, where dense mist clings to the rolling moors and ancient forests murmur with forgotten names, an unsettling legend endures — that of the Night Horse Zawudschawu. 

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There are many monsters said to roam the valleys and mountains. In the town, Sitten in Wallis, there is a three-legged steel seen prancing through the streets in the moonlight. Whispered from generation to generation, the tale speaks of a phantom steed with a coat as black as midnight and a wild, pale mane that shines like frost in the moonlight.

A haunting view of Gruyère Moors and Castle Gruyere, shrouded in mist, home to the legend of the Night Horse Zawudschawu.

Zawudschawu of Gruyère Moors

Zawudschawu is no ordinary apparition. It roams the lonely paths and marshy edges of the Saane River, appearing when fog blankets the land and the air hangs heavy with silence, grazing in the night. Sometimes the horse is described as dark, sometimes with a coat like iridescent milk-white and his wild mane as white as the snow.

It chooses its victims carefully: the weary, the lost, and most often, the elderly traveler making their slow, solitary way home beneath the cover of darkness.

The creature’s trick is subtle. It approaches without sound, its hooves barely disturbing the ground, before kneeling with an eerie grace as if offering mercy — an inviting escape from the cold and treacherous moors. Many, believing the spectral horse to be a gift of fortune, have mounted its back, feeling an odd, unnatural warmth radiating from its body in the chill of the night.

But Zawudschawu is a deceiver.

In one of the most infamous tellings, a drunken man crossing the moors late at night found himself face-to-face with the spectral steed. Grateful for the chance to avoid the long, cold walk home, he climbed onto its back. The horse carried him smoothly through the mist, every stride eerily silent, its breath visible like smoke. Just as the lights of his village flickered in the distance, the creature’s demeanor shifted. Without warning, it veered off the path, galloping straight for the black, rushing waters of the Saane. The last thing the man saw was the glint of malevolent amusement in the creature’s eyes before he was hurled into the freezing depths. And the last thing he heard — an inhuman, mocking laughter, fading into the mist.

Lake Of Gruyère: A serene view of the Lake Of Gruyère surrounded by autumn foliage, evoking the mysterious atmosphere of the Gruyère Moors where the night horse drowns his victims.

The Old Tale of Zawudschawu in Modern Switzerland

Is the Zawudschawu always dangerous? There are plenty of stories about the horse having brought weary and tired people back home as well. 

To this day, elders in the Gruyère countryside warn against night travel across the moors. They speak of Zawudschawu’s lingering presence, of hoofprints found in morning frost where no horse should be, and of chilling laughter carried on the wind. Some believe the horse was once a cursed soul, others say it’s a forest spirit soured by centuries of human trespass.

Whatever the truth, on foggy nights in Gruyère, wise folk stay close to hearth and home — lest the Night Horse Zawudschawu find them in the dark.

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The Last Strigoi Hunt: The Vampire Panic of Marotinu de Sus, Romania

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In the rural and more superstitious parts of Romania, the fear of the undead is not necessarily something of the past. Although mostly done in secret and as a family business, the hunt for vampires or strigois, still happens. Something the family of Petre Toma experienced when he was accused of haunting extended family after death. 

In the shadowed villages of southern Romania, ancient beliefs about the restless dead linger alongside the hum of modern life. For while the medieval terror of the strigoi, vampires and morois may seem a distant superstition to outsiders, in certain corners of Dolj County, these spectral fears still pulse through the bloodlines of families whose lives are shaped by old-world rites. And if we are to believe some of the comments of the locals, it’s not necessarily that rarely it happens, it’s just not every case that makes it to the newspapers. 

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In the tiny village Marotinu de Sus where around 700 people live scattered around in the countryside,  locals gather in the village’s only store and bar for a chat, often drinking hard. If you ask them, they will say they have at least one vampire story in their families and that they have been thought to hunt down and kill vampires, or the strigoi since they were children. One of the most notorious modern vampire cases in Europe occurred not in some fog-drenched, Gothic past, but in February of 2004.

A Haunting in Marotinu de Sus

One dark night that December the year before, Petre Toma, a 76 year old villager had driven in a carriage pulled by his horse through the village southwest in the country close to the Bulgarian border. He was drunk and fell off the carriage, scaring the horse that stomped him dead. He was buried in the local cemetery and his family started their morning process. But it would not be in peace. 

In death, it seemed, he had not severed his connection to the mortal world and became a moroi, an undead. 

Moroi and Strigoi: Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. Moroi are often associated with other figures in Romanian folklore, such as strigoi (another type of vampire). In some versions, a moroi is a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living. They are also sometimes referred to in modern stories as the living offspring of two strigoi.

His own sister, Flora Marinescu, started to complain that her daughter-in-law had fallen ill and that it was Petre who was to blame. It was also said that their son and grand daughter became ill. The woman reported terrifying nocturnal visitations: a pale, spectral figure appearing in her room, its face unmistakably that of her deceased uncle.

According to Toma’s neighbour, Mircea Mitrica, she had been shouting: ‘He’s on top of me! He’s eating me! He’s killing me!’ She couldn’t walk and complained about feeling drained, as if something had taken her blood. In Romanian folklore, such occurrences were seen as ominous signs of a strigoi. Fearing this ancient evil had once again returned, Petre’s brother in law and husband to Flora, Gheorghe Marinescu, took decisive — and deeply traditional — action.

The Ritual of the Dead

They could have called for the local Orthodox priest to perform an exorcism, but he would have needed a permit, and they feared it would take too much time. After a couple of nights discussing and drinking, they decided to act themselves. After all, they all knew how to rid themselves of the strigoi according to the old ways. 

The first time Gheorghe Marinescu tried to do the ritual, he ended up drinking too much liquid courage and couldn’t use the shovel. But in his mind, it needed to be done. Marinescu gathered a small group of family members, friends and neighbours and tried again. Also in attendance was his neighbour, Mircea Mitrica. 

And after steadying their nerves with alcohol, the party made their way to the cemetery under the cover of darkness. They exhumed the body of Petre Toma to look for evidence of him being one of the undead. According to those present, they claimed that the man had what looked like fresh blood around his mouth, for them, clear signs of vampirism. 

After confirming their suspicions, they split his ribcage with a pitchfork to remove his heart and staked through the rest of his body for good measure. In some sources they say they sprinkled garlic over it, but this part is rarely mentioned from the sources of those actually in attendance. Many tall tales were added over the years of this mission. The neighbour, Mitrica, claimed that the heart was still pumping when they pulled it out from his chest and that the face of his former neighbour was red and his beard had grown. 

The group put his heart in a plastic bag and put the body back in the grave. According to some sources, they didn’t put it back with care, and left it in a state of filth, earth and decay. They went to a nearby crossroad to start the ritual, where the world of the living and dead meet. 

According to Gheorghe Marinescu, his heart squeaked and tried to jump away when it was burned on the bonfire, also something that happens to a strigoi heart according to legend. This was all to perform an age-old vampire ritual believed to protect the living from the vengeful dead.

According to custom, the heart of a strigoi must be burned. Its ashes are then mixed into water and drunk by those afflicted by the revenant’s haunting, believed to break the malevolent bond between the strigoi and its victims.

This is what they did when they went home and lit a second bonfire to make the mixture. They gave the tincture to the sick woman to drink. A local named Anisoara Constantin who lived there at the time commented in an article: ‘Well, the sick woman got better again, so they must have done something right,’

According to the party, they all went back to see the woman afflicted with the illness they tried to cure the very next day. She was better and could walk and talk without any pain and invited them all to her house to eat, drink and celebrate her recovery. 

The ritual, grisly as it may sound to outsiders, has ancient roots in Eastern European lore. The strigoi were thought to rise from the grave to drain the life force of their relatives, and unless dealt with through fire or staking, would slowly devastate entire families.

Modern Consequences for Ancient Beliefs

The following day, news of the nocturnal disinterment and ritual reached Dolj County police when his daughter complained about the disturbance and desecration of her father’s grave and corpse. 

The six who attended the ritual were arrested and charged with “disturbing the peace of the dead.” Despite their protestations that they had only acted in defense of their loved ones, they were each sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay damages to the family of the deceased.

In the end, they did not end up serving their sentence and had to pay a total of 900 Euro in damages to the family. The case drew widespread media attention, becoming a sensation in Romania and abroad, with international headlines decrying it as evidence of vampire hysteria persisting in 21st-century Europe.

A Legacy of Fear and Precaution

The case left a lingering mark on the region, but if we are to believe the comments of some of the locals, it seems that this case didn’t happen in isolation.  

‘No one is bothered who did it, it’s their own business. This ritual often takes place, but in secret, within the family. The problem comes when the police get involved.’ says 80-year-old Tudor Stoica in an article. 

In the nearby village of Amărăştii de Sus, local custom adapted to meet the lingering fear. Now, as a preventive measure, it’s reported that villagers drive a fire-hardened stake through the heart or belly of the recently deceased, especially those thought to have harbored grudges or strange tendencies in life. In the village where Peter Toma was exhumed, they also do something similar with knitting needles or other sharp objects.

Such rites, though rarely reaching world wide headlines, serve as chilling reminders of how the old beliefs still hold power in places where death is regarded with a wary eye and where the border between the living and the dead remains perilously thin. And most likely, this was not the last Strigoi hunt at all. 

As his sister and wife of the man accused of disturbing his grave, Flora Marinescu said: “What did we do? If they’re right, he was already dead. If we’re right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. … Is that so wrong?”

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References:

How Balkan vampires captured the world’s imagination – Emerging Europe

A village still in thrall to Dracula | World news | The Guardian

Romanian villagers decry police investigation into vampire slaying | McClatchy Washington Bureau

“I dug out his heart with a pitchfork” | Michael Bird Writer & Journalist

I-am scos inima cu o furcă – The Black Sea

VIDEO/ Reportaj în satul unde țăranii au dezgropat un mort și i-au înfipt un țăruș în inimă. Oamenii încă mai cred că l-au împiedicat să devină strigoi și-au salvat o fetiță!

Strigoi – Wikipedia 

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The Haunted Halls of Pacific Isle Mortgage

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In the unassuming looking office building Pacific Isle Mortgage, workers have been complaining about a ghost disturbing their work. Running around the hallways and pranking the employees, the ghosts are said to be of the mischievous sort. 

In Pearl City, Hawaii, along the busy stretch of Kamehameha Highway, sits the unassuming office building of Pacific Isle Mortgage. Little do people just pass through that this building is one of the most haunted buildings on Oahu island. 

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from the USA

At first glance, this two-story structure at 379 Kamehameha Highway, Suite B, appears to be just another typical business location, where the daily grind of paperwork and phone calls fills the air. However, those who have spent time within its walls know that something far more unsettling lies beneath the surface.

Source

Unseen Presences at the Pacific Isle Mortgage

For years, employees working in this building have reported strange and eerie occurrences that defy explanation. It all began innocuously enough—lights flickering, a door inexplicably swinging shut on its own—but the activity soon escalated, leaving those who work here in a constant state of unease.

Read also: Another office building thought to be haunted in Hawai’i is the Atlas Insurance Building in Honolulu

One of the most unnerving experiences happened to a woman who was working late one evening. As she sat at her desk, diligently reviewing documents, she felt a strange sensation. At first, it was just a light touch, as if a gentle breeze had brushed past her. But then, she distinctly felt someone playing with her hair, gently tugging at the strands as though a playful child were standing behind her. Heart pounding, she spun around in her chair, only to find the room empty, her hair swaying slightly from the invisible touch.

Echoes of Laughter

The building’s spectral inhabitants are not always so subtle. On more than one occasion, the faint sound of children laughing has echoed through the hallways, a chilling contrast to the otherwise quiet and professional atmosphere. Workers have reported hearing the patter of small footsteps running down the corridors, accompanied by gleeful giggles, yet no children are ever seen. These phantom children seem to delight in playing unseen games, their presence felt but never fully understood.

Read Also: The Haunted Wipro Office Building of Kolkata’s Salt Lake City

In one particularly unsettling incident, an employee arrived early to work, only to hear the unmistakable sound of children’s laughter emanating from the second floor. Convinced that she was the first to arrive, she cautiously ascended the stairs, her heart racing with each step. But when she reached the top, the laughter abruptly stopped, leaving behind an eerie silence. The office was as it should be—empty and still, save for the lingering sense that she was not alone.

A Building with a Past?

What could be the source of these paranormal disturbances? Some speculate that the building may have been constructed on land with a history, perhaps the site of a forgotten tragedy or a place where spirits were left restless. There really isn’t much to go on regarding the building’s history. The place itself was built in 1970.

Could it be that where the Pacific Isle Mortgage now stands, used to be a sacred heiau from ancient times? Others believe that the spirits may be tied to the objects or people that have passed through the office over the years, their energies lingering long after they have moved on.

Despite the unnerving experiences, the employees of Pacific Isle Mortgage continue their work, albeit with a heightened awareness of the building’s haunted nature. The playful, and sometimes mischievous, spirits have become an unsettling part of the office’s daily life—a reminder that even in the most mundane places, the supernatural may be closer than we think.

So, the next time you pass by 379 Kamehameha Highway, take a moment to consider the unseen occupants who share this space with the living. Perhaps, if you listen closely, you might even hear the distant echoes of laughter, a reminder that the spirits at Pacific Isle Mortgage are always near, watching and waiting.

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The Legend of the Vampire Nancy Young Rising from her Grave

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Said to suck the life out of her siblings, the young girl, Nancy Young was believed to be a vampire after she died of consumption in Foster, Rhode Island. To stop the curse of the undead, the family exhumed her body to put it on fire. 

When people think of America’s “vampire panics,” their minds often drift to the misty graveyards of rural New England — where names like Mercy Brown and Sarah Tillinghast have secured their place in eerie folklore. But lurking in the shadows of this unsettling chapter of history is a lesser-known, yet equally tragic figure: Nancy Young Foster of Rhode Island.

Read More: Check out all ghost stories from USA

Though her story didn’t make international headlines like Mercy Brown’s, it’s a haunting reminder of the desperate lengths 19th-century families went to when death came knocking — and refused to leave.

Rhode Island: Along the rocky shores of Rhode Island State, a lot of vampire legends took form, driving people to exhume their dead and beloved from their graves to rid themselves of the curse of the undead they believed sucked the life out of their family.

Consumption and a Curse in Foster, Rhode Island

In the 1800s, consumption, now known as tuberculosis, was ravaging families across New England. In an age before germ theory was understood, when one family member after another fell ill with the same wasting sickness, superstition often filled the void left by medical ignorance. In some rural communities, it was believed that a deceased loved one, buried in the local cemetery, was feeding on the life force of the living from beyond the grave.

She was the oldest daughter of Levi and Anna Young, living together on their farm straddling between Rhode Island and Connecticut, just a few miles from where Sarah Tillinghast farm in Exeter was. She was managing the accounting on their land filled with her siblings and an inherited slave called Elija. They had arrived on the farm in 1806 and produced corn and other produce.

Read More: Check out the story about Sarah Tillinghast that share a very similar story

Nancy, a young woman likely in her late teens or early twenties, reportedly succumbed to tuberculosis on the sixth of April, 1827 and buried her in the newly walled off burial ground close to the farm. She was one of the first in her family to be buried in this lot, but soon the number of grave would grow. 

After her death, other members of her family began to exhibit the same harrowing symptoms and now it consumed Nancy’s sister, Almira— persistent coughs, bloodied handkerchiefs, sunken eyes, and a ghostly pallor. Fear took hold as she was slowly withering away from something they didn’t know the cause of. 

One day, Levi found his daughter in her room, claiming to feel better. She told him about her seeing Nancy in her dreams at night, telling her they soon would be together. Something about this vision made Levi so concerned he went to the elders for advice. They came to the conclusion that it had to be Nancy, returning from her grave in the night to feed the life out of her sister. 

According to many legends, it is said that Nancy came back to haunt more than one of her seven siblings, sucking their blood every night she climbed out of her grave. But it seems like Almira was the only one actually sick in this timeframe and not all of them died of consumption before they took drastic measures to stop the disease from spreading. 

A Grim Exhumation

Though details of the exact year and names of those involved have grown hazy with time, local lore holds that Nancy’s body was exhumed by her desperate family and neighbors. Convinced that she was the source of their suffering — a vampire preying on them from the grave — they undertook a grisly ritual to sever the connection.

Leading them was Levi and Nathan Lennox, often called Doc according to some of the online sources. Although appearing in more than one online retelling, there really isn’t much documentation to fact check his existence and is probably just an added detail for the legend. He was, according to the stories, not a doctor, but the locals trusted him knowing about strange things and superstitions, like what to do with an undead. 

Read Also: Check out The Mercy Brown Vampire Incident in Rhode Island

As was customary in such cases, her heart was likely removed and burned, either at the gravesite or in a nearby blacksmith’s forge, a common element in these folk cures. It was believed that by destroying the heart, the vampire’s hold over the family would be broken, and the sickness would be halted. In some versions of the story, they burned the whole body, scattering the ashes.

What happened to the remains they burned though? As custom often stated, it was common to either mix the ashes into a tonic given to the sick to drink. Some sources claim that the fumes of the smoke coming from her remains were inhaled by the family to cure themselves from the family curse of the vampiric infliction. 

The details and confirmation to the details surrounding her exhumation and what happened to her remains are still up for debate. 

An Obscure, Enduring Legend

Unlike the Mercy Brown case, Nancy Young Foster’s story wasn’t splashed across the newspapers of New England or abroad. Instead, it lingered quietly in local oral history, passed down in hushed tones and fireside tales. 

There are some written accounts of it, one from a newspaper in 1936, from the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner in 1892 and most of what we know today is from the works of Michael E. Bell who researched the many cases of exhumation based on the vampire legends, written down in his work Food For the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires. 

Now, the legend has taken hold in many variations, and some versions of the legend claim that nothing was done to Nancy, there was no ritual, no staking of the body or burning of the organs. Some say that she is still out there. 

But what of Nancy’s siblings? Almira died of tuberculosis the 19th of August in 1828, only 17 year old. Their brother Olney died a couple of years later when he was 29, of what, it doesn’t really say, but it’s likely it was from consumption as well. Many of the Young siblings died young. Huldah died when she was 23 in 1836, Caleb died in 1843 when he was 26 and Hiram in 1854 when he was 35. Two other brothers lived to be older but also succumbed. Only their youngest daughter, Sarah seemed to be the one to escape the illness and lived to an older age. 

The Vampire Legacy of Rhode Island

Today, her name surfaces mostly in the footnotes of vampire lore enthusiasts and paranormal historians, but in her time, Nancy’s fate was another somber reminder of how death and superstition wove themselves into the everyday lives of New Englanders.

Foster: The Swamp Meadow Bridge in Foster, Rhode Island. // Source: Basheer Tome/ Wikimedia

Her gravestone is still on her family plot, tipped after all these years and all this ruckus surrounding her burial. 

If you ever find yourself wandering the old burial grounds of Foster, Rhode Island, take a moment to listen. In the heavy silence of dusk, with the chill of fog threading through the trees, you might just feel the lingering sorrow of a girl accused of preying on her own blood, buried twice — once in earth, and again beneath the weight of forgotten superstition.

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https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/24831878/nancy-young

New England’s Vampire History | Legends and Hysteria

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The Murderess Haunting of The Calcasieu Courthouse

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The Calcasieu Courthouse in Louisiana is said to be haunted by Toni Jo Henry, a notorious figure in local history who was executed there in 1942. Visitors often report unexplained occurrences like strange sounds as well as the smell of burning hair from the way she died.

The Calcasieu Courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is steeped in history since it was built in 1912. And the old Parish Court House on 1000 Ryan street is also believed to be haunted by the lingering spirit of its most infamous prisoner, Toni Jo Henry. She was the first, and for now, the only female executed by the electric chair in the state.

The Haunted Courthouse: Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. // Source. It is said that the court building is haunted by the murderer, Toni Jo who were put to death by the electric chair: Wikimedia

The Life and Crimes of Toni Jo

In the early 1940s, Toni Jo, a former sex worker, gained national notoriety for her cold-blooded murder of a man named Joseph P. Calloway. 

Her real name was Annie Beatrice McQuiston, and she had lived a rough life. After her mother died early on from tuberculosis, she ended up as a prostitute. She started out working in a factory, but after her foreman knew about her mother, fearing her to contaminate other workers,he fired her. When she told her father about what happened, he beat her up and she ended up leaving home in search of a new life.  

She fell in love with a man named Claude Henry, or simply Cowboy when she was working in a brothel, and it is said she got clean and wanted a new life in California. He, on the other hand, was a fugitive after killing a cop, awaiting 50 years in jail. She married him, but he was arrested soon after. 

Toni Jo wanted to get him out of the Texas jail he was serving time. She teamed up with a homeless man named Arkie and brutally tortured and killed a car salesman named Joseph Calloway who picked them up along the road in Jennings, Louisiana. 

They dumped the body in a ditch and went straight to a dive bar the same night. Drunk at a bar they bragged about it and the other people present reported them to the cops at once. 

Her charm and beauty couldn’t save her, as it took three grueling trials before a jury finally convicted her of the heinous crime three times. On November 28, 1942, Toni Jo made history as the first and only woman in Louisiana to be executed in the electric chair. And the place it happened was in The Calcasieu Courthouse.

She said in an interview right before her execution to the  the American Press’ Eliot Chaze:

“The victim does not return to haunt me. I never think of him. I’ve known all along it would be my life for his. I believe mine is worth as much to me as his was to him. I wonder, though, sometimes, why it’s legal now for another fellow to kill me.”

Outside, thousands of people had gathered. Some to see justice be done as the court had ordered, some supported her, thinking that killing her as well was no justice at all.

The Haunting of Toni Jo

Since her execution, tales of Toni Jo’s restless spirit have permeated the The Calcasieu Courthouse where the execution took place. Employees and visitors alike have reported feeling an unsettling presence, particularly in the areas where she spent her final days. Some have even claimed to smell the distinct and eerie scent of her perfume or even of burning hair, a grim reminder of her tragic end. There are also stories about hearing the sounds of her footsteps or even her dying screams.  

The ghost of Toni Jo Henry is said to be mischievous, often disrupting the daily routines of The Calcasieu Courthouse staff. Locked doors that were previously open, office equipment that malfunctions without explanation, and lights that flicker ominously are just a few of the strange occurrences attributed to her. Some workers have even reported hearing soft whispers and feeling an icy chill when passing through certain hallways.

Perhaps some have even seen her as she looked in her final moment in a simple white dress holding a white ivory crucifix. Her long black hair she got much attention for, cut off.

Face of a Killer: The case got a lot of attention by the media. Both for her terrible crime as well for her good looks. Here is a photo of Toni Jo Henry being held for press photographers by Sheriff Henry W. Reid on February 21, 1940. // Source

Toni Jo’s spirit seems determined to leave her mark on the place where she met her fate, making the Calcasieu Courthouse a focal point for ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts. The haunted legend of Toni Jo Henry continues to captivate and terrify those who walk the halls of the courthouse, ensuring that her story—and her presence—remain an indelible part of Lake Charles’ dark history.

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References:

Calcasieu Courthouse | Acadiana Historical 

The Story Behind the Outlaw That Haunts the Calcasieu Courthouse | by Maria | Horrifix | Medium

ABOUT US | Calcasieu Clerk 

Mysterious Happenings: Haunted Tales Surround Louisiana Courthouse

An online magazine about the paranormal, haunted and macabre. We collect the ghost stories from all around the world as well as review horror and gothic media.

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