21 haunted places in New York State that are truly scary

Palmyra boasts not one but two historical hauntings a few doors from each other. Visitors and staff of the Phelps General Store, frozen in time from when the store closed in 1940, and its upstairs residences, have reported vanishing cats and even full-body apparitions during overnight stays. A few doors down, the Palmyra Historical Museum has also seen its share of spooks. In 1964, six children and a young mother perished in a fire at this former three-residence property. Over the years, museumgoers have reported the smell of ash lingering in the basement, toys flying off the shelves, and the sensation of having one’s clothes or hair tugged.

Whether or not you believe the book or the franchise of horror films it inspired, there is no doubt that some scary, real-life stuff happened in this otherwise charming-looking Dutch Colonial–style abode at 112 Ocean Avenue. In the early ‘70s, a young man murdered his parents and four siblings in the house. When another family bought the house after the murders, they reported witnessing all sorts of creepy smells and feelings and had unexplainable, ominous visions. The fam moved out just 28 days later. Although no new hauntings have been reported, the history is still enough to keep you up at night. Locals reportedly don’t like the attention the house brings to the town, so be respectful if you drive by. It is still a private residence, so don't be that person who takes a photo in front of the abode. Seriously. Just don't.

It’s hard to imagine that patients confined to cramped quarters with filthy living conditions would ever be considered state-of-the-art, but the former New York State Lunatic Asylum was when it opened in 1843. Here, doctors invented the Utica Crib, an inhuman, long, shallow cage where they kept agitated people to calm them down or to punish misbehaving residents. Though it closed in 1973, Old Main (the local nickname for it) still stands. Some people claim they’ve seen faces looking out the window and heard screams coming from the abandoned building. Today, it’s off-limits to the public, except for sporadic ghost tours.

For a half-century, this Art Deco number was a bustling transportation hub. But although the last train departed in 1979, reports of moving apparitions and the feeling of being watched suggest that BCT remains plenty active. The building is currently undergoing exterior renovation, allowing ghosts to gallivant freely inside. However, when people have gained access to the old 1925 concourse, they’ve heard voices and even encountered a woman named Rose at baggage claim.

If you’ve ever longed to explore a decaying asylum with just a flashlight and an EVP recorder, consider your prayers answered. These rooms are arrayed with hospital beds, ratty dolls, and old medical equipment, all amplifying the eerie atmosphere. Make sure to visit the second floor of the east wing to see if the Shadow People Hallway lives up to its ominous name. (Fun fact: Appropriately, the former poor house was a shooting location for American Horror Story: Asylum.)

Want to hear the scandalous stories that cemetery residents wish they could have taken to their graves? Of course you do. At night, take a lamp-lit tour through town tales of murder-suicide, corruption, extortion, and insanity. The stories are so terrifying they will leave you shaking among the tombstones. A handful of famous bodies lie beneath the soil, including “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” writer himself, Washington Irving. If darkness is not your old friend, take a daytime cemetery tour instead.

Once part of a large estate for the president of the Singer Sewing Company, this Victorian bed-and-breakfast has frightened more than a few greenhorns. Private ghost hunters and guests alike have sworn to seeing a woman pacing the halls and to hearing unexplained noises, footsteps, and music from an unseen piano. Can’t bear the thought of an overnight stay? The mansion’s fall murder-mystery dinners serve suspense without as many spooks. Or, if you want to go all in, there’s a paranormal investigation package that offers access to professional ghost-hunting equipment and a professionally filmed and edited video of the experience.

A grandiose hotel on a private island overlooking Lake George sounds like the perfect place for some rest and relaxation—or eternal rest, for some guests. The gorgeous 19th-century Victorian resort, has many recurring ghosts like Walter, wearing a three-piece suit and frequently seen in an elevator, and Lillian, who watches the boats on the lake. But the Sagamore’s most notorious ghost is likely to be found playing outdoors. About 70 years ago, a small boy who sold lost golf balls back to pro shop customers was hit by a car during his search. If you listen very closely, you can still hear him giggling.

It’s no wonder that this spot, once a church and a funeral home, is now an institution dedicated to all things supernatural. According to staffers, paranormal investigators (including the Ghost Hunters team) have captured voices, shadows, orbs of light, and other evidence of lingering spirits. Keep your eyes peeled for the specter of military vet Edgar Zernicke, whose ashes went unclaimed in the basement for decades. The museum offers day tours and overnight hunts.

Don’t let the architectural splendor of this 119-year-old building fool you: Ghoulish reports describe flickering lights and shadowy figures, clocks mysteriously rewinding by eight minutes, and a dutiful night watchman who still makes his rounds well after expiring in the structure’s 1911 fire. The building is open 7am–7pm during the week (see if you can spot the hidden devil carved into the wall by a disgruntled stonecutter) and special “Capitol Hauntings” tours take place in the fall.

Hotels seem to lure many ghosts in for an extended stay, and this inn in Nichols is no different. Back in the day, railroad travelers rested their heads here. Some of them never left. Guests have reported feeling someone sitting on their bed or pulling their sheets off. Another visitor claimed he was pinned down in his sleep. Over in the Fainting Room, two apparitions can be heard enjoying tea time, while a boy ghost wanders the building, looking for fun. Come for the ghosts; stay for the goats.

The ghost of Abraham Lincoln has been known to haunt Loudon Cottage, although the President never actually set foot inside while he was alive. The cottage once belonged to Clara Harris, a guest of Lincoln’s on that notorious night at Ford’s Theater. When Lincoln was shot, the blood-stained Harris’s dress, which she brought back to Loudonville and kept in her closet. Harris claimed that Lincoln’s ghost came to her room, sitting in a rocking chair and staring at the closet. He’s been seen several times since then.

In 1757, Fort William Henry was lost when thousands of French soldiers attacked and destroyed the military stronghold during the French and Indian War. Though the Fort William Henry Museum is actually a replica built in the 1950s of the original British stronghold off Lake George, that hasn’t stopped the spirits of the soldiers from returning. Today, you can take a ghost tour, and guests have reported feeling their hair pulled and hearing whisperings like “Hurry up” while shadow people appear in visitors’ photos.

It might seem like a treat to visit this grand former movie palace that brought a cosmopolitan glamor to the city back in the 1920s, but the century-old beauty comes with a price: ghosts. There are a few known entities who haunt the Landmark Theater, including Oscar, an old stagehand who might make the lights flicker and Clarissa, an actress who supposedly died falling from the balcony. Clarissa has been reported to carry lilacs and frighten rock bands smoking in the backstage tunnels.

The Dandys only lived in this house for four years before fleeing from what they said was paranormal activity. The family reported unexplained burns on their skin, the sound of chanting in the woods and a phantom car running people off the road. Things were bad enough that a friar from nearby St. Bonaventure University came to perform a structural exorcism, which ultimately proved unsuccessful. Today, the current owners regularly host ghost tours and overnight investigations and even have a livestream so you can catch sight of a spirit from home.

This small cemetery in Western New York is populated with the settlers of this rural town. But its most famous resident is a little more…spectral. According to legend, local doctor Albert Speaker’s questionable practices resulted in the deaths of many women and their unborn children, who are supposedly buried in the cemetery. Locals claim that Speaker haunts the graveyard, accompanied by the sound of crying babies near the cemetery’s pond, urging visitors to leave. Some have reported apparitions of black dogs with red eyes, a lady in white and even baby handprints on their windshields.

Sure, cemeteries are expected to have their share of creepy happenings, but few can lay claim to the same frightening legends of this graveyard. Tucked away on a small street off Sawmill Rd/89 that leads to an abandoned dirt road, this spot is not only the final resting grounds for many children but also (according to lore), it was the place where a 7-year-old mentally disabled girl was stoned to death by her own village. Many 19th-century gravestones have been tipped over or destroyed, and the shadowy spirits are not happy about it. Oh, and the wooded seclusion makes it seem all the more likely that no one will hear you scream.

Trips to this luxurious, vino-boastin’ hotel in the Finger Lakes wine country may involve more than one type of spirit. At the late-1800s Romanesque Revival structure, which over the decades has been a casino, a supper club, and a Prohibition-era speakeasy, patrons have claimed to glimpse a forlorn woman in white who stands silently on the front lawn. According to legend, she was an Italian opera singer named Isabella who decamped to the castle with her lover, only to meet her demise when one of its tunnels collapsed on top of her.

Keeping watch over Lake Erie is Dunkirk Lighthouse, steeped in the history of the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Some nights, music can be heard playing in the lighthouse and the adjoining house. Voices and mysteriously opening doors can also scare off visitors. Perhaps the spookiest story from Dunkirk is that of a lake rescue gone wrong. Two children and their rescuer drowned, and their spirits never left the nearby lighthouse. The building is host to multiple paranormal investigations every year—one of them found a lighthouse keeping Peter Dempsey, whose face turned up in a ghost hunter’s photograph.

In 1817, George Clarke began the nearly two-decade process of building what was then the largest private residence in the U.S.—but he died within a year of its completion. However, some believe that even death hasn’t kept Clarke from enjoying his dream house. More than 150 years of paranormal experiences have been documented, including apparitions, footsteps, knocking, distant music and sheets being pulled off beds. If that’s not eerie enough, the property also features a detached family crypt, which you can experience for yourself during candlelit ghost tours of the grounds on Friday and Saturday nights.

Surely you wouldn’t find a prisoner of war camp in little old New York State, right? Wrong. The Elmira Civil War Prison Camp held 12,100 Confederate soldiers from 1864 to 1865, and during that time, nearly 25 percent of them died from malnutrition, exposure to brutal winter elements, and disease caused by unsanitary conditions. The 3,970 dead were buried in mass graves before eventually being moved to Woodlawn National Cemetery. But some of their spirits remain. Homes residing on the old site are host to Civil War soldiers and Elmirans have experienced their presence when visiting the nearby Chemung River.