- It's a well known fact that this very flower
bed is haunted.
Do you believe in ghosts?
It's okay to say yes because
a little more then 1/3 of American adults do too.
And some of them claimed to have experienced
the signs of hauntings that we are all familiar with
from horror movies.
Apparitions.
Weird sounds.
Unexplainable moved objects.
Even cold spots.
This isn't Amityville or Poltergeist we
are talking about here.
True believers say these are real haunted houses
that you can either stay away from or
you can enter if you dare.
Take the Whaley house, for example.
In 1852 a guy nicknamed Yankee Jim,
was convicted of grand larceny
and hanged to death on the site of San Diego
where the Whaley house now resides.
It's residence have long claimed to hear the sound
of Yankee Jim's boots clomping through the house.
In fact there is so much paranormal activity in the
Whaley house that some have declared it the
most haunted house in America.
Even Regis Philbin claims to have seen
a ghost when he stayed there.
I'm telling you guys.
I saw a ghost.
But that's still not as weird as the faces
of Bélmez.
There's a small cottage in the Spanish
town of Bélmez that's built on an old burial ground.
Former resident Maria Goméz Pereira discovered the
three dimensional face there rising up from the
cement kitchen floor in 1971.
It resembled a plasture casting as if a head
was buried below it.
Pereira tried to chip away the face with an axe,
but underneath she kept finding more and more faces.
Some were old men.
Other's were children.
Scientist have examined the site and have yet
to pinpoint exactly how the faces got there.
Although there are many forgery hypothesis.
You may have heard of Blickling Hall,
the most haunted home in all of England.
It was once where Anne Boleyn grew up,
one of King Henry XIII's wives,
and mother to Queen Elizabeth I.
When Boleyn couldn't provide Henry with a son,
she was scandalously charged with treason,
adultery, and incest, and then decapitated.
Every year on the anniversary of her execution,
those at Blinkling Hall have sighted her ghostly
arrival in a carriage drawn by a headless horseman.
Boleyn herself is said to carry her own severed
head with her.
Then there is the Villisca axe murder house.
(whistles)
Two girls stayed with the Moore family in Villisca, Iowa
after church one night in 1912.
Sometime between midnight and dawn,
an intruder entered the Moore's home and
brutally crushed the skulls of all eight people
inside with an axe.
The killer was never found.
And since then,
numerous haunting's have been reported.
Including falling lamps,
flying objects,
and mysterious voices.
Here's one with a plot twist:
the LaLaurie House.
Some in New Orleans suspected that the wealthy
LaLaurie family didn't properly feed or care
for their slaves way back in 1831.
LaLaurie was fined and forced to sell their slaves,
but her family bought them back for her.
Later, LaLaurie's cruelty was revealed when her cooks
set the house on fire,
and rescuers pulled chained,
malnourished slaves from the building.
Two died and two more were found buried in the yard.
LaLaurie fled town never punished.
The house is still known for it's haunting's.
LaLaurie even inspired a character on American Horror Story,
And actor Nicolas Cage bought the home in 2007,
calling it "ghost front property."
But he lost the haunted house to foreclosure in 2009.
Of course ghost sightings can't be proven,
but they do make for great stories.
But we want to know,
have you ever experienced a haunting yourself?
You believe in ghosts?
Let us know in the comments below, and
don't forget to check out the article for more
HowStuffWorks knowledge on ghosts, houses
and historical tragedies.