How to Find

Real Haunted Places

by Fiona Broome and the Hollow Hill staff ©2005


Associates often ask us how to find real haunted places. Usually, they're looking for specific addresses, but if we can teach people how to find unreported haunted sites, they're likely to have much better experiences.

What's wrong with the tried-and-true haunted sites? For beginners, popular haunted sites can be a good idea. The energy at those sites is often weak (or imaginary) and, if they aren't really ready for encounters with ghosts, they'll realize it quickly. To find them, see our advice at Where Can I Find Information About Ghosts? and How to Find Local Ghosts.

But, for serious ghost hunters, there are several problems with popular haunted locations:

  • Every site absorbs energy from people who visit it. More visits = more layers of residual energy. Before long, it's like a flower garden that people have trampled; the original appeal of the site is lost.

  • Police patrol it more often, or close it. Generally, the police are among our best allies. They keep vandals and trespassers out of old, public sites. However, there comes a time when the police can't closely monitor a high-traffic site, and they simply close it from dusk to dawn. Without special permission, we can't visit that site after dark.

  • Pranksters "create" hauntings. Once we featured Gilson Road Cemetery online, someone tried to startle us by creating eerie, floating red "orbs" with a laser pointer. For a brief moment, it was startling.

    Also, the police are known to dress up in sheets to scare trespassers in some haunted cemeteries. With that going on, it's difficult to detect real ghosts.

So, how to do find undiscovered and unreported haunted places?

There are two ways to discover (or rediscover) haunted sites that others don't know about. Which path you choose depends upon your interests.

    1. Look for "odd" reports and anomalies.

    People seem to unconsciously avoid ghosts. So, look for the parts of town where there are perfectly good plots of land... but nobody's built on them in years.

    If real estate seems unusually cheap in one area (Wilton, NH comes to mind), and crime isn't an explanation, there's a good likelihood that they have ghosts.

    Be careful of areas that have abandoned toxic waste sites nearby. They can be very dangerous to your health.

    However, if a site was used as a trash dump, that's another indication that it may be haunted. For example, Gilson Road Cemetery--one of our favorite haunts--is just up the street from a Superfund (toxic waste) site. And, the area used for refuse at Vale End Cemetery (Wilton, NH) is also one of the "hottest" parts of that haunted cemetery.

    Use your cellphone and/or car radio (AM only) as a guide. At many haunted sites, electrical devices seem to fail. If your car radio always goes out when you pass a particular cemetery, playground, or empty field, check it out. Do the same when you find very small pockets of land--in otherwise populated areas--where your cellphone won't work.

    2. Research your area at the library.

    Start with local geology. If you learn that there are massive quartz deposits underneath part of your county or town, look for ghosts there. Quartz seems to attract hauntings.

    Research local history in general. For example, if there was an Indian (Native American) settlement, the land that they used may be haunted by their spirits and others'. In the Americas, sites associated with burial or funeral rituals are correctly rumored to be among the most haunted.

    If there was a significant tragedy many years ago--over 100 years ago, at least--that site is another good spot for research. Look for reports of fires, where the buildings weren't rebuilt.

    Or, if you're on a river, perhaps a boat capsized and the drowned victims' bodies were piled on the shore, briefly.

    During wars or outbreaks of disease, buildings--especially hotels and church buildings--sometimes became temporary hospitals or morgues. These spots may show some good spikes in EMF activity.

    Read local history and folklore. Make special note of houses referred to as "the haunted house," or similar phrasing. In the past--especially the 18th century and earlier--people accepted ghosts and hauntings as natural facts. For this reason, haunted sites are mentioned without much fanfare. One early history of Tyngsborough, MA makes only casual reference to "the haunted house," as well as an incident in which a ghost was encountered along the river.

    By the late 19th century and during most of the 20th century, people dismissed ghosts as products of overactive imaginations. So, many of these ghost stories were lost, and can only be found by researching very old books and newspapers.

    However, most of these old sites are still very haunted. And, since they haven't been visited by ghost hunters, the energy may still be fresh and vital. In fact, once the ghosts realize that visitors are returning, they may put on quite a show. These can be some of the most exciting places to investigate.

There are undiscovered, haunted places near your home. With enough time and research, you can find unreported hauntings in any town. This is what serious ghost hunters do; we're not waiting for a client to call, or for someone to mention a well-known haunt.

For a list of the sites that we've heard about or have researched ourselves, see Where to Find Real Ghosts.

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Hollow Hill is a ghost information site; our information is only as reliable as readers' reports. We assume no credit for your ghosthunting adventures, and accept no liability for your misadventures. Use common sense. Read our ghost hunting recommendations. Before visiting any "haunted" site, verify the location, accessibility, safety, and other important information.

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