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Even ordinary homes can become haunted, but the sites of America's worst crimes are home to some of its most terrifying specters.
Haunted houses have a long history, with stories as old as Pliny the Younger's tale, an ancient Roman story of an Athens villa haunted by a chained man, to the ghost stories found in Arabian Nights. They remain an ever-present part of human society, one that parapsychologists attribute to violent events taking place in the related buildings. So, it is no surprise that the sites of some of humanity's most gruesome acts bear the echoes of those murders.
Here are ten of the most infamous American murder houses and vacant lots to be found in the United States and the spirits that haunt them.
1. The Hex Murder House
Rehmeyer's Hollow Road, Shrewsbury, PA.
In 1928, local witch Nellie Noll told John Blymire that recluse Nelson Rehmeyer was the source of his bad luck. Although both were avowed pow-wow men – or practitioners of hex magic, Blymire set out to break his "bad luck spirit" by burning 60-year-old Rehmeyer's copy of the Pow-Wows spell book and burying a lock of his hair.
With the help of 14-year-old John Curry and 18-year-old Wilbert Hess, he tied up and beat Rehmeyer to death in his home when he refused to give up his book. They then set his body aflame to break the hex. Though his wife and daughter escaped harm because they lived on an adjoining farm, the elder pow-wow man reportedly haunts the Hex House to this day. You can visit historical exhibits there, including burn marks on the floorboards from Rehmeyer's murder.
2. Kreischer Mansion
4500 Arthur Kill Road, Staten Island, NY.
In 1885, German businessman Balthasar Kreischer had a pair of Queen Anne mansions built for his sons. Within a decade, the senior Kreischer died, his brickworks closed, and both sons perished, Edward by suicide and Charles in a fire that destroyed his mansion. The remaining house was left empty until new owners turned it into a restaurant, and a mafia front before once more being left vacant, employing formerMarinee Joseph Young as its caretaker.
In 2006, Young was hired by the Bonanno crime family to kill Robert McKelvey, and he did so by strangling, stabbing, and drowning the man on the Kreischer Mansion grounds – before dismembering and burning the body in the furnace in the cellar. Rumor has it that the Kreischers haunt the residence, including a spectral woman who peers from the windows.
3. Amityville House
112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, NY.
John Moynahan had this Dutch Colonial built on Long Island's south shore in the 1920s, but the DeFeo family brought it to infamy. In 1974, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. killed his parents and four siblings there at the behest of a dark presence. A year later, the Lutz family moved in, only to discover that his demons lingered.
First, local priest Father Mancuso was threatened by a monstrous voice during a blessing; then, the parents began having vivid nightmares, with wife Kathy feeling embraced by an unseen force. Meanwhile, father George discovered a hidden room in the basement, and daughter Jodie befriended an invisible, demonic pig. Cold spots, strange odors, spectral slime, and cloven footprints followed, until the family fled the house just 28 days after arriving. At one point, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren visited and photographed a demonic boy, though no hauntings have been reported since.
4. Cleveland Strangler Murder House
12205 Imperial Avenue, Cleveland, OH.
In 2005, Anthony Sowell was released from prison after serving 15 years for attempted rape. Despite a decorated career in the US Marine Corps, he had a history of assaulting women and girls, including his 11-year-old niece. Still, no one suspected his murderous tendencies.
