International Haunted Places
Africa
South Africa has plenty of active spirits. The Cape Town Castle ghost has been
appearing for over 300 years. The tall luminous figure is most often seen
walking along the battlement of the castle, built in 1665. The ghost of one of
the men who died building the underground tunnel which runs from the Post Office
to Main Railway Station in Johannesburg haunts the dark passageway to this day.
Spokeveld ("Spook Country") is along the southern edge of the Great Karoo
between the Patatas River and the Southkloff. The entire region is haunted by
spectral wagons, phantom horse riders, and ghostly wanderers. In a more modern
setting, Port Elizabeth Highway (between the Hex River Mountains and Drakensberg)
is haunted by a phantom automobile that is blamed for causing more than one
accident.
Asia
Singapore is Asia's most haunted city. Strange lights flit through Hougang
School, near East Coast Beach, and people are slapped by an unseen presence at
the Changi Beach Houses. Ghosts appear from nowhere and beg for food along the
coast near Lor Halus, and St. John Island is haunted by a ghost that calls for
help and then runs away. The Hou Gang Tenements are haunted by the apparition of
a screaming lady, and a person was reportedly killed by a ghost in Bedok Tenant
House. In the Fort Sentosa district, the Punggol White House is haunted by a
whole family who committed suicide together, while headless apparitions
terrorize passengers as they pass through certain MRT mass transit stations in
the city.
At the Parliament House in Suva, Fiji, security cameras recorded their ghost for
five minutes. The footage was shown on national television and the Prime
Minister called for an exorcism that was performed in 1997. Chuang Kung and his
wife Chuang Mu are ancient Chinese ghosts who still possess beds in private
residences and interfere with sleep, lovemaking, and childbirth. The spirit of
Zashiki Warishi, a young Japanese boy is responsible for poltergeist activity in
a whole neighborhood in Tokyo, while in the mountains, the ghost of Yama Uba is
a blamed for the disappearance of small children.
Mount Everest is haunted by the ghost of climber Andrew Irvine who died there in
1924. His phantom ghost shares tents with climbers and encourages them to make
the final ascent. The ghost was first reported by Dougal Haston and Doug Scott
in September 1975 and has been seen several times since. In India, Brahmadaitya
is ghost of an unmarried Brahmin monk who takes up residence in a tree after
death, but the bitchy boogey will break people's necks if they trespass his
property. Pretas are the rooming ghosts of Hindu men who died by violence and
whose corpses were disposed of "unceremoniously." Mumiai is a Indian poltergeist
that invades homes throughout Bombay, while Virikas are small spirits that
appear surrounded by a reddish mist and make guttural sounds. Paisachi and Bauta
are male and female ghosts who haunt so many homes that they have been given
nicknames.
Australia
Australia is a very haunted continent! Important cases from New South Wales are
the Old Government House in Parramatta, the Quarrantine Station in North Head,
and the Rookwood Cemetery. Cases from Victoria include the ghost of Frederick
Baker, who died of a heartattack while playing Mephistopheles in "Faust" at the
Princess Theatre in Melbourne, the spirits of the Old Melbourne Gaol (Jail), and
the Block Arcade, which is haunted by three firemen who lost their lives trying
to put out a fire that erupted in a grain storage warehouse that used to stand
on the spot. Another haunted spot in Melbourne is the Victoria Market, which is
built right on top of Melbourne's first cemetery. Reports of ghostly encounters
at the market go back to the 1840s and continue to this day. Brisbane in
Queensland is the most haunted city in Australia and locations covered from that
city will include the Old Government House, the Parliament House, and the
Brisbane Arcade, and City Hall, where at least three ghosts haunt the hallways.
One is an elegant woman, another a maintenance man who continually rides the
elevator that killed him in a freak accident, and the last is an American sailor
stabbed to death in a fight with another sailor in the downstairs tearoom.
Brisbane cemeteries are also hotspots of paranormal activity.
Lutwyche Cemetery ghosts are presaged by the "smell of death;" singing white
lights haunt Toowong Cemetery; and apparitions dart across the roads in
Bridgeman Downs Cemetery. However, Australia's best documented ghost is known
simply as the Ghost of the Outback. It has been seen scores of times in a
clearing near Corroboree Springs, which is about 100 miles from Alice Springs.
The short dark-featured spirit is thought to be a member of the Arunta
Aboriginal Tribe, which used the site for secret and occasionally fatal
intitiations.
Cases from Tasmania include the Theatre Royal ghost in Hobart and the floating
apparitions of Royal Hobart Hospital. West Australia Fremantle Museum has three
ghosts of former prison inmates who erected the building under forced labor.
Every resident of the town of Stawell has reported seeing the 8-foot-tall
phantom of a man who stays near one particular house in town. A stone building
known as the Garth on the bank of the South Esk River just outside Fingal in
Tasmania is haunted by the angry ghost of a settler who hanged himself when the
bride he sent for from England jilted him.
Canada
There are hundreds of hauntings on record in Canada. One recent example is the
Firkins' House in Heritage Park in Fort Edmonton, Alberta, which haunted by the
presence of a friendly young man, the son of one of the early owners. Another
benevolent presence haunts the Vogue Theatre Vancouver, British Columbia. Less
friendly is the ghost of an Indian Chief seen on the Sarcee Reservation or the
apparitions of two men who appear in the Banff Springs Hotel. Both sites are
near Calgary.
Central and South America
Buses traveling in the area of former U.S. Army facility Fort Clayton in Panama
City report the sudden appearance of an extremely ill American soldier lying on
the back seat of the bus. The pale man asks to be dropped off at the clinic and
then disappears. The Azeman is a ghostly woman who haunts the villages of
Surinam (Dutch Guiana) in northeastern South America. The unwelcome phantom
bites a piece of flesh from the big toe of sleeping persons and saps their
blood.
Caribbean
The City Cemetery in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, is haunted by ghastly apparitions of
decomposing bodies. In recent years, the cemetery has been plundered by grave
robbers who sell casket handles, shoes, and anything else they can salvage from
the tombs. Bakas ghostly ghoul are members of a secret society in Haiti who
agree to return from the grave. The Chase Mauseleum in Christ Church Graveyard
in Barbados, West Indies, is famous in ghostly lore. The coffins of family
members buried in the early 1800s move around in the locked vault, sometimes
lining up vertically along the walls. At one time, the Governor of Barbados
personally sealed the vault but nine months later the coffins were all
rearranged, even though all the seals had not been tampered with. Finally, the
government reburied the coffins in separate places and that seemed to have
stopped the phenomenon. The empty Chase vault lies open now for all to see.
Europe
In Iceland, there was a law on the statute books for many years that enabled
people to legally summons a ghost that had been tormenting them to court and
have it bound over to authorities. In Finland, the fiery spirit of the child
ghost Liekkio haunts many homes, while in Hjalta Stad, Sweden, the semi-naked
figure of a bald old man who was ostracized by the community causes panic
throughout the city. A ghost of King Valdemar IV, the "psychic king," appears in
Gurre Wood near Helsingor, Denmark. Another Danish monarch, King Abel, appears
at Poole near the city of Slewig whenever some crucial event is about to happen.
Lorelei is the famous singing ghost that sits on a tall rock on the right bank
of the Rhine in Hesse-Nassau, but the White Lady of Hohenzollerns is much more
mobile. She has appeared in castles all over Germany, including Neuhaus, Berlin,
Bechin, Tretzen, and Raumleau. The White Lady is thought to be Princess Perchta
von Rosenberg, who haunts the descendents of her cruel husband. Another
well-heeled female ghost appears to descendents of Count Johannes Rathenau, an
Austrian noble who slaughtered the defenders of Schloss Altebar in Bavaria
during the Middle Ages. To this day, the Baroness Russlein von Altebar seeks her
revenge, first appearing as a beautiful courtesan then turning into a rotting
corpse. In Vienna, she boarded the cab of Walther Rathenau, who died of fright.
Major Helmut Rathenau met her in a casino in Badden Baden and died of a heart
attack. In Munich, Carl Heinz Rathenau was "turned into a mummy" after meeting
the comely ghost on the street.
At Euro Disney in France, a mysterious vortex of energy haunts the small
children's section. Brittany, on the northwest tip of France, is haunted by
Ankou, a ghostly grim reaper, and in the Monts d'Aree (Black Mountains), the
French government built a nuclear reactor right on the spot locals call the
Gates of Hell because of all the ghost sightings. Most of the sightings are of a
demon dog and a little girl sacrificed by devil worshippers at the site. In
Alais, France, a private residence is haunted by the voice and figure of Guy de
Torno, who continues to keep a jealous eye on his widow. The ghost of Joan of
Arc haunts the basilica at Domremy dedicated to her memory, and the entire court
of Marie Antoinette appears in the gardens of Trianon in Versailles. In
Saragossa, Spain, the Palazon family holds conversations with a voice speaking
from a stovepipe that identified itself as Duenda de Zaragoza, a person who
lived in the house in the 1930s. A more friendly ghostly presence haunts a gay
bar in Geneva, Switzerland.
Household ghosts are so common in Russia that they have developed distinct
classifications for them. Domovoi are domestic ghosts that tend to be nuisances
or poltergeists but help out with chores if treated with respect. Domovikha are
more quiet household spirits whose presence you can sense in certain rooms. The
roads of eastern Russia is haunted by the ghost of Zorya Vechernaya, who can
usually be seen at dusk driving a white chariot. The home of Josef Pisinger in
Prague, Czechoslavakia, is haunted by the short ghosts of dwarves, while the
Heidenreich House in Bucharest is haunted by the ghoul Bassarab, the sole
survivor of the dynasty of Walachia, now a province in Romania. Vaso Miskin
Street and the adjoining marketplace in Sarajevo, Bosnia, is haunted by the
ghosts of innocent people slaughtered there, and the streets of Bijeljina are
haunted by Mehmed, a Muslin killed by a Serbian strike force.
Great Britain & Ireland
Examples of British ghosts include the ghost of a man dressed in Regency-style
clothes who appears in several rooms at 10 Downing Street, the fourteen ghosts
that haunt the Sanford Orcas Manor near Sherborne in Dorset, England's most
haunted house (Borley Rectory), and England's most haunted city (Derby), where
nearly every building has a ghost story to go with it. Well-documented
poltergeist cases will also be featured. They include the so-called Drummer of
Tidworth case, in which drumming and banging sounds accompanied levitations and
flying objects in the home of John Mompesson in Wiltshire, and the Enfield
Poltergeist that appeared in the Harper family home in Middlesex and was
responsible for coins falling from midair, teapots floating, furniture moving,
and people being tossed out of chairs and beds.
The rest of Great Britain also has plenty of ghosts to report on. The "bean-nighe"
is an ugly Scottish banshee that shows up to wash the clothes of those who are
about to die. Another ghost of the highlands is Bodach, a shriveled old man who
enters and leaves homes through chimneys.
The Irish spirit Ad'h Seidh can change into a beautiful woman or lowly farm
animal depending on what area around Dublin she haunts. Phouka is the Irish term
for ghosts that appear as horses or goats to trick people.
