Thrillist is an online media website specializing in food, drink, travel and entertainment. With Halloween just around the corner, they recently named their choices for the most haunted place to visit in every US state.
“Every state has its own urban legends and places where only the brave tread,” writes Thrillist Travel. “We’re talking old mental hospitals, valleys filled by ghosts, cemeteries, historic hotels — no matter what scares you, your state has a place to freak you out.”
Below are their picks for the best spot to put you in the Halloween spirit in each New England state.
Massachusetts
Thrillist chose the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River as the creepiest spot in Massachusetts, writing the following:
"In case you don’t remember the world’s most disturbing nursery rhyme, Lizzie Borden hacked up her parents with an axe back in 1892. And now, you can sleep at the delightful B&B/infamous crime scene where it all happened. On your visit, you’ll sleep at the Bordens’ home, eat their last meal (Johnnycakes and eggs), and sleep in the bedroom where the body of Lizzie’s stepmother was found.”
New Hampshire
The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH was built in 1902 and served as partial inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. Huge and secluded in the White Mountains, the hotel is said to be haunted by the ghost of Carolyn Stickney, wife of the original owner.
According to Thrillist she “appears in people’s photos as a hazy apparition, floats around the hallways, and is a regular fixture in room 314.”
Connecticut
The Curtis House Inn in Woodbury, CT has been renamed the 1754 House, but according to Thrillist - and celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay - the change has not stopped guests (including Ramsay) from experiencing "disembodied voices, mysterious footsteps, and unwelcome otherworldly bedfellows throughout the inn's 265-year history."
Ramsay even featured the inn on the TV show Hotel Hell, bringing in a paranormal investigator and describing his own "unsettling difficulty exiting his room during a five-day stay."
Rhode Island
The White Horse Tavern in Newport, RI is considered the country's oldest bar. Dating back to 1673 and serving as a boarding house in the early 20th century and British military quarters during the Revolutionary War, the spot is sure to have some paranormal history.
One story involves a 1720s drifter who stayed in one of the rooms only to be found dead the next day. According to Thrillist, the traveler “now chills by the fireplace.”
Maine
Stephen King fans will remember Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor as the place where Gage Creed was buried - and later exhumed. The author himself even appeared in the 1989 movie version of his novel Pet Sematary as the priest presiding over Missy Dandridge's funeral in the same cemetery.
In addition to its connection to the terrifying film, Mount Hope Cemetery also has a haunted reputation with visitors reporting ghostly apparitions, unexplained shadows, figures lurking about the grounds, and even the voices of small children.
Vermont
Vermont's Lake Bomoseen State Park in Castleton was once home to a booming community of slate quarries, processing mills, and European the immigrants. While the businesses are gone, many of the foundations still remain creating an eerie haunted feel for visitors.
Thrillis reports “a boatman that’s been spotted rowing across the tranquil lake, leaving no ripples in the water en route to a happy hour at a tavern that will never open." Shudder.
View the entire list of Thrillists’s creepiest place to visit in every state.