The Scariest Places To Visit In All 50 States

Massachusetts

Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
Fall River

You’ve likely heard the children’s rhyme: “Lizzie Borden took an ax / Gave her mother 40 whacks / When she saw what she had done / She gave her father 41.” Well, you can not only visit the scene of that famous 1892 double homicide, you can also sleep at the Bordens’ home, eat their last meal (Johnnycakes — a thick, cornmeal pancake — and eggs), and spend the night in the bedroom where the body of Lizzie’s stepmother Abigail was found. After a stay there, I can attest: This home painstakingly furnished to look exactly as it did on the morning of the murders will creep you right out. Daytime tours accommodate lame-o wusses. Better, though, the 175-year-old property hosts up to 20 overnight guests, one of whom will invariably pull out the house ouija board after the evening guide departs and try to contact Lizzie. I did not sleep a wink. — Camille Dodero

South Manitou Island
Leland

If there’s one island that comes packed with its very own creepy legends and haunting history, it’s South Manitou Island, 16 miles offshore from Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula. Featuring 300-foot sand dunes, deserted shoreline, and empty campgrounds, it’s about as terrestrially creepy as you can get. One legend suggests that a ship of cholera-stricken passengers stopped at the island, and sailors buried them in a mass grave while some were still alive. If that alone doesn’t stir you to set sail to the island, there are two cemeteries, a cedar forest where unbodied voices are often heard, and off the coast is the shipwreck of the SS Francisco Morazan, where a young boy is rumored to have died after an attempt at exploring it on his own. Fair warning to all who seek refuge. — AS

Minnesota

Forepaugh’s Restaurant
St. Paul

Forepaugh’s occupies a 19th-century Victorian house with a look that makes you think, “That thing looks haunted as all get-out.” Well, yup. Joseph Forepaugh, the original tenant, was quite attracted to a maid named Molly. When his wife found out, he cut off the relationship. Molly, who was pregnant, hung herself from a third-floor chandelier. Soon after, Joseph went for a walk and shot himself. Now, their home is a restaurant beset with accounts of flickering lights, rearranged furniture, cold chills, and unexplained noises. In the house’s nine dining rooms, Molly is said to sidle up near new brides, while Joseph prefers the confines of the cellar. Once a quarter the New American fine dining hub gives into the ghost hunters and holds a night of presentations from paranormal investigators. This year it’s also throwing a Halloween bash, with a 1920s circus theme and performers in every room. — Dustin Nelson

Mississippi

University of Mississippi Medical Center
Jackson

This gothic-ass state loves scary legends — the devil roaming Delta crossroads, ghosts haunting the mansions in Natchez — but a very real site of horror resides here in Jackson. Back in 2014, construction workers beginning a parking lot came across a mass grave of about 7,000 former Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum residents, buried around the turn of the century. The asylum closed more than 80 years ago, but it wasn’t uncommon in those days to inter deceased patients together in unmarked graves. Estimating that the cost for outside contractors to remove and rebury the remains would cost an extra $21 million or so, officials decided to let them rest in peace until they can exhume the bodies through university channels and build a historical center where the parking lot would have stood. Until then, it’s one hell of a spooky place to pay your respects to the anonymous thousands of dead. — Andrew Paul

Missouri

Main Street
St. Charles

This multicolored main drag looks like the perfect setting for a midwestern horror movie: charming, peaceful Main Street USA that’s actually haunted by dozens of roaming spirits. The legend dates to 1853 when the old Borromeo Cemetery was moved and a number of the graves they dug up had no bodies in them. Those spirits may or may not haunt places like the Little Hills Winery and its restaurant, where a man and woman are said to be on an eternal dinner date. Or the shops at 700 S Main Street, where mysterious cooking smells emerge, as well a deep French-speaking voice, and objects that vanish inexplicably. The town is also home to a haunted community college, a haunted high school, and a haunted forest. — MM

Montana

The Fairweather Inn
Virginia City

If you’ve ever been borderline homicidal because the kids in the hotel room next to you just won’t shut the hell up, steer clear of the Fairweather Inn. The lone lodging in this former gold mining town, with a current population of 198 folks, is said to be haunted by the ghosts of children who get into all manner of shenanigans: moving your luggage, turning the lights on and off, and generally annoying the bejeezus out of you. The city’s only other hotel, the Bonanza Inn, closed a few years ago and was said to be haunted by the ghost of an old nun, who presumably is better-behaved. — MM

Nebraska

Seven Sisters Road
Otoe County

We all get mad at our siblings. Most of us get over it and just get them a really crappy Christmas present. We do NOT, however, take all seven of our sisters out to separate hills and kill them, as one deranged Nebraska man did over a century ago. The road that runs through the hilly setting of this gruesome crime just outside Nebraska City is identified as County Road L on a map, but colloquially it’s named after the sisters who died there. Cars driving through routinely report headlights going dim, or electrical systems failing completely, leaving their cars stalled in the eerie darkness where they can hear the screams of young women echoing through the hills. Perfect choice for a pleasant drive on Allhallows Eve. — MM

Nevada

Bonnie Screams
Las Vegas

About 30 minutes from the strip, old Bonnie Springs Ranch serves as an 115-acre Western-themed amusement park, a reproduction of this former mining community full of “historic” buildings like an opera house, saloon, schoolhouse, and wax museum. Touristy reproductions, sure, but this settlement is still more than a century and a half old… and legitimately haunted. Reported apparitions include a little girl in the schoolhouse, shadows in the opera house, and figures in the wax museum moving on their own (to the extent that staff decided to nail them to the floor). Every Halloween the buildings are converted into creepy haunted houses as part of Bonnie Screams, the Ranch’s fully immersive “haunted ghost town” experience complete with zombie paintball. Tickets are $30. — Nicole Rupersburg

New Hampshire

Fright Kingdom
Nashua

You might not expect to find one of the most elaborate haunted houses in America in such a tiny town, but the 65,000-square-foot Fright Kingdom is up there with any Halloween attraction you’d find in a major city, with impressive convincing actors and special effects worthy of Universal Studios. The fright fest begins with a tarantula terrarium, a walk-through exhibit of live tarantulas clinging to glass panes, followed by themed scares like the Psycho Circus (maniacal clowns!) and Apocalypse Z (undead zombies!). It also rocks a monster-themed midway, making a trip here more like a giant Halloween carnival a mere haunted house. It’s open Friday-Sunday through November 4 and on Halloween; general admission starts at $25. — M.M.

New Jersey