Famous Ghosts

Quite possibly the most well-known and well-documented account of a haunting in history. As the story has it, in December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their dream home on 112 Ocean Avenue. This was the same house where Ronald DeFoe had murdered his entire family with a shotgun just one year earlier. The family soon began to experience a bizarre chain of terrifying paranormal events. They were forced to flee their house in terror just 28 days later.

In 1977, George and Kathleen Lutz recounted their tale to author Jay Anson, who released what was to become known "The Amityville Horror". Shortly thereafter it was made into a feature film of the same name starring Margot Kidder, James Brolin, and Rod Steiger.

Unfortunately, this haunting has not contributed much to the research of the paranormal, as the Lutzes eventually admitted to hoaxing the whole thing after several lawsuits were filed. They confessed that they had never experienced any paranormal events whatsoever. The only true event at Amityville was the murders committed by Ronald DeFoe. However, DeFoe said that he did not receive orders to kill from the "voices" he heard in his head, as the book suggested.

For details, check out Kevin Wagner's "The Amityville Hoax".

The Brown Lady is famous mostly as being one of the most reliably photographed ghost in history. Although she has not been seen since 1936, she is said to wear a long brown dress or cape. No one knows who the Brown Lady is, or how she is connected to Raynham Hall.

The first sighting was reported in 1835 by a house guest, Colonel Loftus. He actually viewed her twice. He said she was wearing a brown satin dress and had only black empty sockets for eyes. Another sighting was made by Captain Frederick Marryat. He intentionally slept in the "haunted room," but instead caught a glimpse of the Brown Lady an upstairs hallway. His description was the same as Loftus', except this time the Brown Lady was carrying a lantern. Marryat happened to have a gun with him, and fired point-blank at the figure. The bullets, of course, passed right through the ghost. The ghost was not reported again until 1926, at which time it was viewed by two little boys.

In 1936, the famous photograph was taken by photographers Captain Provand and Indre Shira during a shoot for the magazine -Country Life-. Shira saw the ghost on the stairs, and instructed Provand to take a picture.

"The Bell Witch" haunted the Bell home in Tennessee in the early 1800s. The "witch" was actually a poltergeist, which did lots of annoying things like throw things around and scream/knock loudly at all hours. John Bell, the father, died during the Bell Witch's tenure. Some claim he was poisoned by the Witch. Betsy Bell, John's daughter, is suspected of having faked the whole thing. Reliable records are lacking, so we'll probably never know whether the Bell Farm was truly haunted.

Borley Rectory is often called "The most haunted house in England." The site of the rectory originally held a monastery, which was inhabited by Benedictine monks. Subsequent to this, the monastery came under the ownership of the Waldergrave family, who occupied it for three centuries. In the late 1800's a descendant of the Waldergraves, the reverend H.D.E. Bull, built a new rectory on the site of the old monastery. It was not until after the new rectory was built that strange things started to happen. One of the spectres that was said to roam the grounds was a nun who in the 13th century fell in love with and tried to elope with a monk. According to legend, the nun and monk were caught in their get-away horse and carriage. As punishment, the monk was hung and the nun was walled up alive in the rectory. Some people reported seeing the ghostly form of the horse and carriage in addition to the nun.

The reverend Harry Bull, who died at Borley, also was reputed to have haunted the rectory. He would appear dressed in the grey jacket in which he passed away. In the late 1920s, the house was owned by a reverend (Lionel A. Foyster) and his wife who reported poltergeist-like phenomena. Supposedly the prankish spirit locked the wife in the bedroom, and other times threw her out of the bed. There were also pebbles thrown at the windows, and mysterious writing which would appear on walls.

Harry Price, a famous ghost hunter, investigated Borley Rectory in 1929, and again in 1937. He supposedly witnessed some of the activity, including the ghostly nun. Although Price spent a great deal of time in the Rectory, his research is generally considered to be biased and therefore flawed. Unfortunately, Borley Rectory burned down in 1939, taking its secrets with it. In 1945, human remains rumored to be those of the nun were found on the site, and were given a proper burial. But the legend of Borley has not died yet; people still visit the site today to see if they can spot the ghostly nun.

The ghost is described at various times as a soft green glow, or a handsome young man. There is an entry on this particular haunting in THE BOOK OF LISTS (circa 1980). According to the entry, during renovation in the late 1970's, they stumbled on a skeleton with the remnants of a grey riding coat with a knife sticking out of its ribs. The folklore is that whoever sees the ghost is destined for theatrical greatness."

Further details (provided directly from -The Book of Lists-, Bantam, 1977): The ghost is that of a young man who was murdered in 1780. J. Wentworth Day, a ghost hunter, reported seeing a moving blue light in the theatre in 1939.

The Tower of London has a long and bloody history, and of course many ghostly legends are associated with the Tower. In 1483, two young princes were murdered in the Tower, and their ghosts were reported to have haunted the tower until the year 1674, when their bones were found and buried in a proper ceremony. The most famous and most often reported ghost in the Tower is Anne Boleyn. She was beheaded by her husband, Henry VIII, in 1536.

Other Tower ghosts include Sir Walter Raleigh, Guy Fawkes, and even the apparition of a bear. In 1816, a palace guard who was on duty spied the bear. Not realizing he was facing an apparition, the guard attempted to lunge at the creature with his bayonet. The guard reportedly later died of shock. In 1864, a soldier saw a ghost and again attempted to use his bayonet. The soldier fainted when he realized his antagonist was a ghost, and was later court-martialed for neglecting his duties (hard to guard the castle when you're fainted dead away). However, the charges against the soldier were dropped when two witnesses came forward to support the soldier's ghost story.

The Winchester Mansion, in San Jose, California, was built by Sara Winchester, the widow of William Winchester. Sara visited a psychic who told her that she must build a house large enough to house the souls of all those who'd been killed by Winchester guns, and Sara spent the remaining 36 years of her life (until she died in 1922) doing just that.

The mansion's construction is just as odd as Sara's personality. There are stairways and doors that go nowhere, secret rooms and passages, and elevators that only go up one floor. Some believe that Sara had the house built in a confusing way so that the sprits wouldn't be able to find her and seek revenge. The number 13 is prevalent throughout: 13 bathrooms, stairways with 13 steps,and so on. There is a rumor that Sara would never give her workmen the day off, because she was afraid that the day she stopped building she would die. One day, however, after many complaints, she finally gave her staff a day off, and that is the day she died.

For tourist info on The Winchester Mansion, click here.

In Christ Church cemetery on the island of Barbados there is a burial vault of unknown origin. The earliest records call it the "Chase vault". It was first used for the burial of a Mrs. Goddard in 1807, followed by two-year-old Mary Ann Chase in 1808 and her sister Dorcas in 1812, a probable suicide. A few weeks later, Dorcas' father Thomas Chase died. When the vault was opened, all the coffins had been moved from their original places. It was thought that thieves had been in the vault, but the concrete seal of the tomb was still in place.

Two more burials were made in 1816. In both cases, when the vault was opened, the coffins already present had been moved about. The casket of Thomas Chase was of lead, weighing 240 pounds, far too large to be moved by a single vandal. In each of these burials, the workers returned the coffins to their proper places and sealed the mausoleum with cement.

It happened again in 1819. This time, the Governor sprinkled sand on the floor (to show footprints), and pressed his personal seal into the fresh cement. In 1820 the tomb was opened again, and the coffins were again out of place, even though no footprints showed and the concrete seal was undisturbed. The governor ordered the coffins removed and the vault left open; the mystery has never been solved. [ information taken from Daniel Cohen's _The Encyclopedia of Ghosts_, Avon Books 1984.]