International Haunted Places

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.


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