Outdoor Hauntings

Buildings are haunted and they contain the wandering spirits of the dead, perhaps just their memories, or, if you are very open-minded, perhaps the occupants of another dimension or parallel realm.

Although the outdoors can be daunting as an investigator due to the environmental factors like wind, dust, noise and such, these hauntings do register to the observers who are outdoors at just the right moment, in just the right place, so there is no reason to just look for ghosts inside dusty old buildings. 

The kinds of hauntings you can find outdoors are limitless; battlefields, sites of accidents, railroad tracks, bridges, forests, mesas, arroyos....

Let's have a look at some examples - 

Forest Clearing 

(Hoia-Baciu, Romania)

Another fantastic episode of "Destination Truth" covered this strange circular clearing in the woods of Romania where one of the crew members was tossed and his arm scratched up. They found no logical reason why there were no trees in this one circle in the forest. Strange lights were seen within the trees and women's voices. The man thrown said it felt like some kind of force swooped down and hit him full blast, sending him sprawling. He had scratches on his arm that was covered by a sleeve. Another crew member got sick to his stomach. These were things reported there before. In fact, it was such a great location, DT is going back there next season--yahoo! Hopefully this time, they won't fly in a plane that loses its roof as they are landing.

Bachelor's Grove Cemetery 

(Illinois)

This quaint countryside cemetery was actually once a favorite place for families to visit with the pond and the quiet beauty. Much is reported but not supported about colored lights, a phantom car, ghosts. Many tall tales of the history of this site and what happened there were passed down like urban legends and have since been disputed by historians. Whether or not this cemetery is haunted, it's certainly accepted as haunted by the tales that are perpetuated.

"Doll Island" 

Mexico

This location was the home of a man who felt that a girl who drowned in the canal near his land haunted the place. He placed dolls around to appease her and, over the decades, more and more dolls were added until the entire island was decorated with them. This was also a location for "Destination Truth." It was chilling and spine-tingling. I would love to do this to a backyard. It's hard to tell if there is genuine haunting here, as the land is privately owned, but DT's episode had some interesting stuff happening.

Crybaby Bridges

There are lots of bridges attributed with the haunting of a child that cries and so it has become a cultural figure in the mythos of lots of communities. A child is thrown, drowns, or jumps and his or her spirit continues to haunt the area of the bridge where people see and hear him/her.

Railroad Lights

This lingering haunting story involves many places and many legends. Some legends report a car in neutral going uphill over tracks, others involve strange lights along the track associated with natives or railroad workers trying to warn of oncoming trains. These are most often seen in woods and the lights called "spooklights" when they are, in fact, over railroad tracks. 

Battlefields

It goes without saying, our battlefields are an obvious source of outdoor hauntings. The bloodletting on the battlefields did not seem to stop the agony and the torture. Gettysburg is perhaps the most famously haunted one, but there are many others from the Revolutionary War period, War of 1812, and many western fort attacks and confrontations. The things most often reported are sounds of cannons or shots, apparitions of soldiers, and screams. 

Hitchhiking Ghosts

The ghost that is along the roadside. You either pass them because they look "wrong" or you stop and offer a ride. But, then, they disappear. This scenario plays out in lost of towns around America, but nowhere as infamous as Resurrection Mary in Illinois is perhaps one of the best known cases of decades since the 1930s having people witness her in a party dress along the roadside or jumping on car's running boards, hitching rides, and being asked to be driven to the graveyard. 

La llarona

The La Llarona legend was born in Mexico but it traversed its way into the culture of the Southwest. The story changes depending who tells it, either a woman lost her children in a fast running arroyo (wash) or she drowned them to appease her lover who didn't want children but who rebuked her for the heinous crime. She wanders the washes in the desert and cries out in search of her children. 

In my books, "Growing Up With Ghosts" and "Vacationing With Ghosts" I revealed what it is like to experience outdoor hauntings.