The O’Hare Mansion once stood in Greencastle, Indiana. It has since been demolished but has left behind a legacy of some of the best pieces of paranormal photography every captured.
A man called Guy Winters was convinced by some friends to join them in exploring the ruins of old mansion. The building, which had been built by the O’Hare family in the 1800s, had been out of use and had fallen into disrepair. During his exploration of the house Guy took many photos of the building and when he had those pictures developed he was shocked to see ghostly apparitions in the finished photographs. Upon further examination he also found that the spirits appeared on the orginal negatives for the images.
These ghosts have been nicknamed the Pink and Gold Ladies. Guy sent the photos to a tv station who tacked down the surviving members of the O’Hare family. He met with Mary O’Hare who recognised the Pink Lady in the photos as her mother, Irene O’Hare, and told him that the room the Pink Lady is standing in was once her mother’s bedroom.
The French and Belgian anti-Santa, Père Fouettard’s name means “Whipping Father” as he carries a whip to beat naughty children around Christmas. He is usually described as having a sinister face with a long unkempt beard and hair. He wears long dark robes and carries a whip or stick to carry out his work. In some stories he has a wicker backpack, which he uses to carry bad children away. Some versions of
Père Fouettard dress identically to Saint Nicholas except his suit is black instead of red.
When he was a mortal man Père Fouettard was a butcher who kidnapped three little boys who were on their way to school. The boys were wealthy so he robbed them off their belongings before murdering them. He slit their throats, chopped them into small pieces and placed the body parts into a barrel to stew. His crime was discovered by Saint Nicholas, who brought the boys back to life. Saint Nicholas decided to punish Père Fouettard by making him his assistant for all eternity.
A pub in North Yorkshire has a killer chair. Thomas Busby was a petty thief who enjoyed a drink so much that he had claimed a favourite seat in his local pub. In the summer of 1702 Busby got into a blazing row with his father in law who sat in the chair to annoy him. Later that night Busby broke into his father in law’s house and murdered him. It didn't take long for the police to connect Busby to the crime and he was arrested, tried and found guilty. He was sentenced to death and his final request was a last drink in his favourite chair. Shortly before being taken to his execution he declared that “death shall come swiftly to anyone who dares to sit in my chair”.
The first recorded victim of the chair was a chimney sweep who sat in the seat years after Busby was executed. Several minutes after finishing his drink and returning to work to fell off a roof and died. Over the next couple of centuries people dared each other to use the chair. Most refused but during World War 2 numerous Air Force officers accepted the challenge and none of them returned from battle. in 1967 a pair of pilots sat in the chair and died moments later when their car hit a tree on their way home. After their deaths the landlord decided that the chair should be removed from public display and he placed it in the pub basement where it stayed for several years.
The chair still managed to kill people while in the basement. A bricklayer who was working on the pub found the chair in the corner of the basement and decided to rest in it. That afternoon when he went back to work he fell from the pub roof to his death. Other deaths included a roofer who used the chair and had a roof collapse beneath him afterward, a cleaning woman who stumbled into the chair and later suffered from an aneurysm, and a delivery driver who crashed his van an hour after sitting in the chair.
The landlord finally had enough of the chair and its body count so he contacted the Thirsk Museum and asked them to take the chair. The museum agreed and after making careful arrangements to transport the chair they placed it on display in their museum, hanging six foot off the floor so no one can sit in it.
A spirit from Scandinavian folklore, Gjengangers are extremely violent and malicious.
They are the spirits of people who were murdered, committed murder or who committed suicide. The difference between a Gjenganger and a regular ghost is that a Gjenganger has no ghostly qualities, they are completely corporeal and look like a normal living person.
Gjenganger are extremely malicious. They will rise from the dead to torment their own family and friends. They will also spread disease by pinching sleeping people. When a person has been pinched by a Gjenganger their skin will become sunken and blue, and the person will quickly die. They will also cause accidents and frighten people simply to amuse themselves.
There are many ways to kill a Gjenganger or protect yourself from one. According to viking stories they are mortal and it is possible to kill one with a sword. Crucifixes, prayers, painting a cross in tar above your door or placing the grave shovels in the shape of a cross on a
Gjenganger’s grave, will ward off a Gjenganger.
In May 2016, a photographer at the Goodlife Festival in Australia was capturing photos of the crowd. When the photograph was placed on the festival social media pages people started noticing what looked like a puff of smoke in the background of the photo but when they took a closer look they noticed that it was actually the figure of a little girl. The festival management got in touch with the photographer and confirmed that it was unaltered.
After getting in touch with the owners of the land that the festival was held in they discovered that there had been sightings of a little girl ghost in the area and that her name was Lucy. She had died in the early 1900′s after falling from a roof.
Japanese folklore has a special category of ghost that consists of spirit children. Normally they are playful and bring good luck to whoever lives in their house. As there are a few different types of this kind of ghost I have complied them all into the one post:
Zashiki warashi
A mischievous house spirit that brings good luck to any house it haunts, a
Zashiki warashi is a beautiful child with a blushing face. Typically they appear around five or six years old, wear traditional Japanese clothing and can be either male or female. Normally they can only be seen by the owner of the house they are haunting.
Zashiki warashi love creating mess and mischief. Typical signs of a Zashiki warashi haunting are, unexplained child sized dirty footprints throughout the house, phantom child laughter and household appliances turning on by themselves during the night.
Zashiki warashi can be dangerous. They are guardians of the house and will bestow luck on its inhabitants, but if the house falls into disrepair the Zashiki warashi will leave. A Zashiki warashi leaving can cause bad luck to such an extreme it can lead to death. But generally the Zashiki warashi is friendly. They have been known to befriend children and keep infertile couples company. Leaving food offerings and placing coins in the foundation of a new house will keep a Zashiki warashi happy.
Chōpirako
A Chōpirako is very similar to a
Zashiki warashi but they are more beautiful. Their skin glows a white light and they appear more beautiful than they were in life. They normally haunt their own families, and are the ghosts of children who were so loved in life that after their death their room becomes a shrine to them. They normally haunt this shrines.
Chōpirako bring riches and luck to the houses they haunt but they require a lot of maintenance to keep them happy. Their room must be kept in pristine condition and very few people are allowed to enter.
Usutuki Warashi
A low ranking house spirit that is more frightening than the usual child house spirit. The Usutuki Warashi crawls out of the dirt under the floor boards and roams houses at night, making creaking and thumping noises. It also enjoys tracking dirty footprints throughout a house. All Usutuki Warashi date back to when the practice of
kuchiberashi was normal in Japan. Families with too many children would sacrifice a newborn child during times of famine and hardship so the rest of the family would survive. The child’s body would then be buried under the house because the family could not afford a funeral.
Usutuki Warashi brings no luck to the household it haunts, instead it spreads uneasiness. It is generally harmless even if it does make everyone miserable.
Canberra, Australia, has a local ghost known as the Burning Airman. The story starts in 1940 when a Lockheed Hudson II bomber spiraled out of control and crashed into the forest near Canberra. There were six people on board and every one of them died in the accident.
A few years after the incident local residents started reporting strange things in the woods. Many people claimed to have seen unearthly lights near the old crash site, while others said that they heard the sound of an incoming plane when there were no planes in the sky.
The first sighting of the Burning Airman happened shortly after these early strange occurrences. One night a teenage girl ran screaming from the forest, claiming that she was being followed by an airman who was covered in flames. It followed her to the edge of the forest before disappearing. Ever since then there have been dozens of stories of people having terrifying encounters with the Burning Airman, and many people who have seen him refuse to go into the forest again.
In 1938, in Pulaski County, Kentucky, Carl Pruitt came home from a day’s’ work to find his wife in bed with another man. He flew into a rage and in his anger he grabbed a chain and strangled his wife to death while her lover fled the scene. When he came to his senses Carl could not live with what he had done so he committed suicide moments later.
His wife’s family never forgive Pruitt for her murder so he was buried in a cemetery in a different cemetery from his wife. This is when things started to get strange. Visitors to the cemetery that saw Pruitt’s grave noticed some discolouration on the gravestone that looked liked a group of circled linked together. It looked like a chain was resting on the headstone. A group of young boys decided to ride their bikes to the cemetery to look at the famous headstone chain. One boy decided to impress the others by throwing rocks at Pruitt’s gravestone and chipped it. Later, when the boy was riding home he fell from his bike and in a freak accident the bike chain came off, wrapped around his neck and strangled him. The boy’s mother blamed the gravestone for her son’s death so she took an ax to the cemetery and hit the grave several times. The next day, while she was hanging out the laundry, the clothesline caught around her neck and she was strangled to death.
A few months later, a farmer was riding in a horse drawn cart with his family past the graveyard when he decided to shoot at Pruitt’s gravestone for fun. The gunfire spooked the horses, causing them to bolt. The family managed to jump from the wagon but the farmer was thrown from the carriage and one of the horses’ reins wrapped around his neck, strangling him. After that death most people stayed away from Pruitt’s grave, until the 1940s when a man went into the cemetery and decided to smash the cursed gravestone with a hammer. People nearby quickly reported screaming coming from the graveyard and when they went to investigate they found the man dead at the cemetery gates with the gate chain wrapped around his neck.
That was the final death attributed to the Carl Pruitt curse as the locals decided to remove the gravestone entirely and leave the grave unmarked. It is an odd urban legend, but the story has been investigated and all of the victim’s death certificates have been found confirming their causes of death. So was there a curse or just a series of strange accidents plaguing 1930s Kentucky?
A rabbi in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, has been left shaken after seeing a moving ball of light on the security footage of his synagogue. Many believe the ball is a ghost since the land the synagogue is built upon was used by the Nazis during World War II as a place to round up Jewish civilians before sending them to concentration camps. Others believe it might be some sort of UFO.
Over the last few months, Macquarie Fields Station in Sydney, Australia, has been plagued by reports of a ghost. People who have been in the station late at night have claimed to have heard the sound of faint crying echoing around the platforms. Normally the sobs sound quiet at first but soon become much louder and turn into horrific screams. Some people have even reported seeing the apparition of a teenage girl with blood covering her chest wandering the station moaning and sobbing. She has also been seen sitting in the middle of station staring at people or screaming in terror.
The identity of the girl is currently unknown. Some believe that she is the spirit of a young woman named Emily Gengson who was struck by a train and killed at the station in 1906. Being hit by a train would not explain the girl’s bloody chest injuries and the haunting only started in April this year, so her name and why she is haunting the station is still a mystery.
