Color
Symbolism
Black
death, night, witches, black cats, bats, vampires
Orange
pumpkins, jack o' lanterns, Autumn, the turning leaves, fire
Purple
night, the supernatural, mysticism
Green
goblins, monsters
Red
blood, fire, evil
The Top 4 Haunted Places in America
The Winchester Mystery House
In 1881, Sarah Winchester, the widow of famous gun maker Oliver Winchester, became convinced that she needed protection from the evil spirits of all the people killed by Winchester rifles. A psychic advised her to continually add rooms to her San Jose, California, mansion to confuse any ghosts that may try to find her. (It's not clear why ghosts, which can supposedly move through walls, would be confused by the rooms, but it apparently made sense to Winchester.) She did so for nearly forty years, adding more than 100 rooms and staircases, until her death in 1922. After Sarah's death, her own ghost was said to haunt the halls of her mazelike mansion. Today the building remains a popular tourist attraction, a bizarre monument to superstition and paranoia.
In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo murdered his entire family, shooting them all with a .35 Marlin Rifle. According to DeFeo he was being controlled by evil spirits and heard voices. He was sentenced to six life sentences. A year later Kathy and George Lutz moved in. They moved out after a month. They made incredible claims of black ooze coming from toilets, doors blown off hinges, unexplained teeth marks, a pit to hell in the basement, and of course the bleeding walls. It was a little too sensational for most people to believe.
But there were some remarkable things that did have some truth. Goerge Lutz did look very much like Ronald DeFeo. So much it is literally scary. The stories that the Lutz's told sounded like previous cases of demonic possession, but many claimed they were just rumors.
The stories spawned numerous books, movies, and a cult following. There are stories about the property being built on Indian Burial grounds, an Indian sanitarium, or even a supposed witch living on the property from Salem Massachusetts. None of the claims have been proven.
Recently the house has been occupied by new owners, they have reported nothing unusual.
Alcatraz
The San Francisco Bay's resident rock, and perhaps the most famous prison island in the world, Alcatraz has captured the public's imagination in many films and books. The prison, a cold, dank hellhole, saw many murders, riots, and suicides during its 29 years of service. Along the way it spawned tales of inexplicable sounds, cell doors closing on their own, disembodied screams, and scary apparitions
The Fox Sisters Cabin
Though less well-known than the other haunted places, the Fox Sisters cottage is perhaps the most important haunted house of all, since the phenomena here in many ways set the standard for later hauntings and even launched a religion. In 1848 Hydesville, western New York, two young sisters named Maggie and Katie Fox began supposedly communicating with the ghost of a murdered peddler. The sisters, in a sort of crude seance, would ask questions of the spirit, who would answer back with mysterious knocks or raps. Many people, including their mother, were amazed at what seemed to be genuine contact with the dead. Both sisters eventually admitted that they had actually faked the sounds - there had been no murdered peddler, it had all been a prank. The women even demonstrated how they had done it. But by then the belief had taken on a life of its own as a religion called Spiritualism, which is still practiced today.