St. Bartholomew's Church, London

St. Bartholomew's Church is a place with a long history. It was founded by, of all people, a court jester of Henry I. This jester was named Rahere, and by all accounts, he was a very pious man. The ghost of Rahere is said to walk the church, and evidently, it is always seen at 7 a.m. on July 1.

A figure thought to be that of a monk has been spotted more than once in the church. On another occasion, a man saw a cloudy white object that gradually took the form of a woman in white. The man recognized the figure as his daughter, who lived in Australia. The man was horrified, believing that the apparition was a premonition of his daughter's death, even though the figure looked overjoyed to see him.

Some time later, the man received a letter from his daughter. She had been dangerously ill, she said, but was now recovering. She recounted a strange occurrence: during her illness, she had a dream that she was in St. Bartholomew's Church, and was ecstatic to see her father there. She noted the day and time of this happening (as had her father), and when they compared notes, they saw that the uncanny incident had happened to them both simultaneously.

The Amityville Hoax

This is a story that simply refuses to go away, and unfortunately, many people believe that it is true.

The Amityville Horror was published in 1977, and immediately seized the interest of readers throughout the United States. An all-American family's dream home had turned out to be haunted! No, possessed! Kathy Lutz levitated in her sleep one night; George Lutz began to display violent behavior; green goo oozed from the ceilings; flies infested the house; the front door was ripped from its hinges.


Author Jay Anson was hired to write the book, and it became a best-seller. A movie was made in 1979, starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. In the film, the house was photographed so that two windows just below the roof looked like eyes, as if the house had a personality of its own.

The Lutzes had moved out of the "cursed" house, and they profited handsomely off the book and the movie. Soon - very soon - cracks appeared in their story of horror. For example, they claimed to have called the police multiple times due to the disturbances, but the police had no record of any calls. The front door showed no signs of damage, let alone the kind of damage that would result from being ripped from its hinges. The priest who was called to bless the house (and allegedly became very ill afterwards) saw nothing unusual.

The real Amityville horror is very different, and tragic. Before the Lutzes bought the house, it was owned by the DeFeo family, consisting of Ronald DeFeo, Sr., his wife Louise, and their five children. The oldest of these, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., was a problem child, and no wonder. His father was an angry and violent man, with apparently no clue as to  how to raise children. Butch was often in trouble, and his parents finally took him in for counseling.

Counseling didn't help, so the DeFeos began offering Butch cash rewards for good behavior. He promptly took the money and used it to support his heroin habit. He was expelled from school, and DeFeo, Sr. gave him a job in the Buick dealership that he (Ronald, Sr.) owned. Butch was paid weekly, even if he didn't show up for work. The money went towards heroin and a chilling new hobby - guns.

It wasn't long before Butch's job at the dealership didn't provide him with enough money, so he began a side career of embezzlement. During this time, he threatened - and even tried - to shoot his father, but the gun failed to fire.

The embezzlement was discovered quickly, and the police came to the dealership to question Butch.

Around 3:00 a.m. on November 13, 1974, "Butch" DeFeo murdered his entire family in their beds. It is thought that Louise and Allison DeFeo were awake when they were shot. Butch then showered, dressed, and went to work, pretending that all was well. The police soon focused on the sole surviving member of the family as the murderer, and Butch's story changed constantly. He was tried for the six murders and received six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life.

This is the true horror of Amityville - the slaughter of six people. Ronald DeFeo is still in prison. His attorney, William Weber, admitted that he and the Lutzes made up the story of the haunting. Many "experts" in parapsychology, including the infamous Ed and Lorraine Warren, "examined" the house and claimed that it was badly haunted.

This, despite the fact that no other inhabitants have ever had any problems there - apart, of course, from the endless gawkers who want to see the "evil" house. There's nothing to see; the owners - current and future - need to be left in peace.

Flight 401 and its Famous Ghosts

Quite a few people know the story. On December 29, 1972, Flight 401 (operated by the now-defunct Eastern Air Lines) crashed into the Florida Everglades. More than half of the passengers died, while the crew suffered fewer fatalities. Two men who happened to be out frog gigging that night saw the crash and hurried to the scene, taking survivors to safety throughout the night and well into the following day.

When the voice recorder was recovered later, it revealed that Captain Bob Loft's last words before the crash were: "Hey - what's happening here?" Loft died at the scene of the crash, as did First Officer Albert Stockstill (who was killed on impact). Second Officer Don Repo was transported to the hospital, where he died of his injuries the following day.

After that, the tales began. Sightings of the late Bob Loft and Don Repo were reported by crew members on board other Eastern Air Lines planes. The ghosts were seen standing in the aisles, or in the cockpit or galley.

In 1973, one of the vice-presidents of Eastern Air Lines spotted a man in a captain's uniform on board his flight. The two men chatted briefly, and the VP simply assumed that the other man was the captain of that day's flight.

He wasn't.

A few months later, Loft was seen on another flight. Crew members spoke to him, then he suddenly vanished.

A flight engineer saw Don Repo sitting in the engineer's own seat. Repo told the engineer that he (Repo) had already done the pre-flight check. And then he vanished.

A passenger went into hysterics when the man sitting next to her suddenly vanished. She was concerned for the man, who looked unwell, and asked a flight attendant to help - and the figure then disappeared.

A flight attendant saw Repo's face looking at her from a galley oven. She brought two of her coworkers to see the apparition; all of them saw the face and heard a voice say, "Watch out for fire on this airplane." The last leg of the plane's route was canceled when engine trouble developed.

Did Loft and Repo come back to watch over other flights of Eastern Air Lines? According to many stories, they appeared on planes that had had parts from the ill-fated L-1011 fitted into them. However, that plane was thoroughly mangled in the crash, as photos show, and nothing usable was left.

Eastern Air Lines went out of business in 1991. If Loft and Repo were out to protect their former company's flights, they can rest easily now.

Haunted property

Are you buying a house? Do you want to know if it's haunted, or if any deaths have occurred on the property?

Are you selling a house? Do you want to know the disclosure laws?

Just click here.

Staying in haunted places

For your next vacation, are you looking for a supernatural experience?

Take a look at this blog (run by me, of course) to find a haunted place to stay.

Walsingham haunted house in Georgia

I ran across this story for the first time when I read Bernhardt J. Hurwood's Ghosts, Ghouls, and other Horrors. It's alleged to have happened somewhere in Georgia, though the area is never specified.

I just found it again, in a book called True Ghost Stories, by Hereward Carrington. This book was published in 1915, and contains at least one other story republished by Hurwood.  Carrington claimed that the story was originally published in The San Francisco Examiner. Edited to add: Carrington was telling the truth; the story was printed in the Examiner, on November 29, 1891. Since you need a subscription to view the story, I wasn't able to read it in full, but I saw enough to know that this is the same story.

According to the story, a family named Walsingham moved into a house that was horribly haunted. The usual supernatural occurrences were noted, such as footsteps, the doorbell ringing when nobody was at the door, and items knocked over. With time, the family found it impossible to sleep, as the visitants made too much noise. Screams, shouts, and groans were heard around the house, sometimes even from under the house.

The family dog, a mastiff named Don Caesar, hated whatever was happening in the house, and often growled and barked at something invisible to the family. One day, he tried to attack something in the hall, and fell back - dead. His neck had been broken. Weirdly, the family cat appeared to enjoy the entities, and often appeared to be enjoyed pets from unseen hands.

One evening, as the daughter of the house sat at her vanity table, she felt someone place a hand on her shoulder. She looked in the mirror and saw the hand, but there was no body. Her screaming alerted the family, but nothing (including the hand) was to be seen when they entered the room. Her father, on another occasion, watched as the prints of bare feet formed in the dirt alongside him as he walked through the garden.

One night, several guests who had been invited to dinner got much more than they had anticipated. As they sat at the table, a groan was heard from the room above. By that point, the vocalizations were so common that nobody thought much of it. Soon, though, a red liquid began to drip from the ceiling and soak into the tablecloth. It resembled blood so much that Mr. Walsingham and some of the guests ran into the room above the dining room and pulled up the carpet.

They found nothing but dust. Meanwhile, the liquid continued to drip from the ceiling of the dining room. The following day, the tablecloth was analyzed, and the liquid was found to be blood. Human blood.

That was enough for the Walsinghams, who moved out. Nobody dared move into the house after that, given its reputation. Ghost hunters galore went to the place, but not many had the nerve to stay there overnight.

One such man was a fellow by the name of Horace Gunn, who bet that he would be able to spent twenty-four hours alone in the house. Carrington's book speaks of Gunn in the present tense; for example, the book states that "he declares that there is not enough money in the country to make him pass another night there. He was found the morning after by his friends with whom he made the wager, in a swoon. He has never recovered from the shock of his horrible experience, and is still confined to his bed suffering from nervous prostration."

Gunn attempted to light a fire in the fireplace when darkness fell, but each match he struck went out; he claimed that the matches were blown out by something invisible. Gunn, resigned to passing the rest of the night in darkness, was almost asleep when all hell broke loose. A loud shout, seeming to come from under the house, was heard. Footsteps ran upstairs and down, as if one person was chasing another. Finally, the noise stopped, and Gunn dared to hope that nothing more would happen.

He was wrong. He saw a light manifest on a wall, and the light gradually turned into a human head. Just a head, without a body. The head had long, shaggy white hair, and an injury in the temple that was bleeding profusely. The eyes looked directly at Gunn, who was frozen to the spot.

When the head disappeared, the spirits began to scream and howl, shaking the house and making an incredible racket. Gunn decided to forget all about the bet and leave as quickly as he could, but the entities had other ideas. When Gunn had almost reached the door, an icy hand seized his ankle and pulled him to the floor, when other hands (or the same?) gripped him by the throat and choked him unconscious. Gunn's friends found him the following morning, his throat bruised by the marks of thin fingers with long nails.

So. What is the real story here? Did the Examiner print a fictional story for Halloween, only to have it taken seriously? If there is any truth to the story, where is the house? Was the family really named Walsingham, or was the name changed to protect their privacy? Was this simply a 19th-century hoax, like the Amityville story almost a century later?

Musical Ghosts

Given the fact that so many musicians have died young, it's hardly surprising that some of them haven't been ready to let go of this earthly plane.

John Lennon has been spotted at the Dakota, where he lived the last years of his life (and where he was shot and fatally wounded on December 8, 1980). Fellow Beatle Paul McCartney has claimed that Lennon appeared while he was recording one of Lennon's unfinished works.

Elvis Presley is said to haunt Graceland, along with his mother. His face has occasionally been seen in an upstairs window. A little girl who wandered away from her parents during a tour was later found in the adjoining cemetery. She claimed that a man in a white suit had taken her around the house and then out into the cemetery, to Elvis' grave.

Buddy Holly went to his doom in a private plane, along with fellow musicians Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. A ghost plane has been spotted above a field in Clear Lake, Iowa - the same field in which the plane crashed. Strange lights have also been witnessed in that field.

Jim Morrison is said to haunt Sunset Sound studios in Hollywood. Recording artists have reported strange occurrences, including lights going on and off, and instruments suddenly going out of tune.

Hank Williams has been seen backstage at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, which once housed the Grand Ole Opry. This was a place where, in life, he performed frequently.