Haunted Psychiatric Hospitals
Jamie
Actual Photo of the closed State Hospital
I grew up a couple miles from a closed state psychiatric hospital with rumors or somewhat questionable treatment of patients. There were even rumors of the hospital, when shut down, just let all the patient go. For a couple years in a row, a local radio station sponsored a “haunted house” put up in one of the main buildings. I remember each year having a different theme — yes, haunted hospital was one of them. Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure that I would ever set foot in a place like that, it just seems to want to upset possible bad energy, but as 11 and 12-year-olds, this made perfect sense. Back in the early 90s, parents would just drop your kids off at said closed down state psychiatric hospital, offer a “have a good time” and a “see you at 10pm.”
We typically went with a couple of friends, one of them being a current bestie who is and has always been vertically challenged. She stood out and the people running the haunted house took notice. It seemed ever single room we entered throughout the haunted house not only knew her name, but knew who she was. This freaked the HELL out of her. I of course, laughed at it and them the entire time, while she hid behind me (the tall one.) As a kid, she didn’t notice that the man handling the front door heard her name and radioed it ahead with her description to all the cast of spooky characters working there. I mean, well done sirs. It was definitely worth the $20 for me. Bestie is still slightly scarred from this experience.
Spooked in a Bookstore (because guys are creepsters)
Elise
I had some time to kill before going to a friend’s Halloween party. I went into a Books-A-Million at the mall and wandered into the graphic novel section (The Exile Outlander Graphic Novel had just been released and I wanted to check it out). A guy came over and asked if I liked graphic novels…oh great! a guy who likes books! He’s in the Books-A-Million already…that must mean something good, right? Wrong. He told me he likes to read books in his room (at his parent’s house)…which he had nicknamed “The Planet” and had glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling. He then asked if I had read Arabian Nights…because I reminded him of one of the woman characters and (exact quote here…) “I’ll bet when your love is in full bloom, your face shines with the light of 1,000 suns”.
Haunted Hayrides
Nikki
Every fall friends and I head out to the Yucaipa Valley for apple picking, apple cider doughnuts, pumpkin picking and a whole Pinterest board full of fall related activities that we don’t get to experience in LA. After a day of gorging ourselves on fall goodies and drinking my weight in apple cider we head over to Riley’s Farm which hosts a Sleepy Hallow dinner theater including hay rides, dinner, pumpkin carving contests, bobbing for apples, blue grass music and high school students (now adults, we’ve been going so many years) doing a hokey version of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hallow complete with a REAL headless horseman ride by! Because I have really bad allergies, I haven’t taken part in the hayride until last year. Men in tricorn hats, flanked by more men/high school boys on horses follow your wagon into the corn fields and proceed to scare you silly with scarecrows and men walking through rows of corn. It was NOT ok. Needless to say, we’re going back. AGAIN.
The Original Annabelle (and friends)
Beth
Source
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A huge section of my even more huge family lives in Charleston, SC which is not only a gorgeous city, but also is full of all kinds of history. And like a lot of southern cities, that history can be painful and so lend itself to hauntings. My cousins lived in this older house on James Island, and I went to stay with them for a couple of weeks over the winter break when I was 15. I slept in my cousin, L’s room … large, big windows, old original hardwood floors, an empty fireplace, an attached bathroom with creaky pipes and strange faucets. L, for some reason, had a shelf along the top of her room that was full of old dolls. Yep. Old family heirlooms that fit the decor, sure, and gave the room charm, ok, but were also creepy as hell. And in the two weeks I was there … totally screwed me up. Those bastards did NOT stay on that freaking shelf. We’d wake up to them on the floor, in the rocking chair in the corner, fallen over. The rocking chair would creak on its own. And later in life, her brother told me that the room was inexpressibly scary. L wouldn’t talk about it, but there were times when someone was just sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to talk to her in the middle of the night. WHAT.THE.HELL. I’m almost glad I only got the dolls.
Visits from the beyond
Lauren (half of Christina Lauren)
Source
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I actually have a few “haunted house” stories and it’s funny because I’m still not sure I believe in ghosts? We’ve stayed at the Driskill in Austin, Texas, and I am totally convinced that place is haunted as hell. But my favorite haunting story is the one that happened when I was a kid. We had this old building behind our house, we called it the “Back Building” because we were creative like that. When we were kids (my sister and I), it was just one giant, empty room with concrete floors, but my parents eventually fixed it up and made it into an apartment for us to each use when we were in our senior year in high school (Score! Oh, the shenanigans). Anyway, when I and my sister were 7 & 8 years old, respectively, we went into the Back Building with a few friends and decided to have a séance. We had candles and we sat in a circle on top of blankets. We may or may not have had a Ouija board. At this point, the building was mostly empty but for some dust and toys on a shelf and some of my dad’s sporting gear. We started trying to talk to the spirits, asking for a sign of the afterlife. Nothing. We used our spookiest voices. Nothing. Finally, we said, “Grandma [my mother’s mom, Virginia, died when my mom was 19, so we never met her], we miss you and wish that we had some sign that you were around with us.” Right at that moment, a doll on the top-top shelf just fell off and landed on the floor with a crash. No one was over there, and it had been sitting there, immobile and collecting dust for at least a year. Of course, instead of being thrilled that our grandmother was saying hi, we screamed our heads off and ran into the house. My grandmother was actually known to appear to my dad on occasion, even though he never actually met her. She once appeared in his windshield during a torrential downpour to tell him that the bridge up ahead was collapsing and to go a different way. My dad, a little freaked out, turned around and drove home a different way. Apparently the bridge had collapsed and some people were injured that night. Go grandma!!
The House
Summary:
Delilah and Gavin’s new love is threatened by a force uncomfortably close to home in this haunting novel from New York Times bestselling duo Christina Lauren, authors of Beautiful Bastard. His shirt is black, jeans are black, and shaggy black hair falls into his eyes. And when Gavin looks up at Delilah, the dark eyes shadowed with bluish circles seem to flicker to life. He lives in that house, the one at the edge of town. Spooky and maybe haunted. Something worse than haunted. And Gavin is trapped by its secrets. Delilah and Gavin can’t resist each other. But staying together will exact a price beyond their imagining.
Available October 6, 2015 (Pre-order here)
GIVEAWAY
We have two signed copies of The House for two lucky TN readers. Follow the directions in the Rafflecopter below and winners will be picked on Tuesday 10/6/2015: a Rafflecopter giveaway What are some of your favorite haunted house or real haunting stories?
