A Dismaying Observation

Just recently, I’ve been able to see ghosts. Well, calling them ‘ghosts’ is still kind of a stretch. I’ve been seeing things. Weird, unexplainable things just in and out of the borders of my vision and it has only gotten worse since it began. I didn’t think too much about it at first, until it became serious enough to think about. It started about three months ago. At first, it was just lights and appliances turning on and off on their own, sections of rooms becoming oddly cold, and objects around my house would pivot on their own, sometimes even falling off of tables and counter tops. Like any sane person, I just brushed it off or justified it by the wind or something at first. However, after I could no longer look the other way on the matter, I began to expand the possibly explanations. I had always enjoyed the horror genre; watching scary movies, playing horror survival games, reading creepypasta, so the idea of something supernatural happening came quickly once I had exhausted all reasonable conclusions. I really hate to let my imagination get the better of me, but there is only so much you can try to explain on your own. Eventually, I started to see more. Faces in mirrors that shouldn’t have been there, shadows in my bedroom at night without a source, footsteps creaking just outside my door. It doesn’t happen often though. About once a week now something I can only describe as ‘weird’ will happen. I still can’t tell if it scares me or not. I’ve heard of people who experience the same things that I do, but feel comforted by it all. I guess it would be like having company over all the time, the kind you don’t mind having. It’s a sweet thought, but I just don’t feel like that. The happenings don’t particularly scare me either. I really didn’t know anything about it that I should be scared of. I mean, the idea that dead people come back completely by surprise and that you really never know what it is that brought them back; what their purpose is, whether it is good or bad, is quite nerve racking.

I wanted to know if there was any reason to be scared. Most of which on the matter I looked up online. Almost everything I found pointed to me having nothing to be afraid of; that some spirits just like to hang around without a purpose. I guess I can relate given that’s what I would do at malls and such during my high school years. I was almost completely satisfied, until I realized the question at hand that was never really answered. The one question that I didn’t want to ask, but felt like I should: Can ghosts hurt people? I didn’t want to look at my screen after clicking ‘search’, but I sucked it up and found several instances where people have been cut or burned by forces outside their own. I was really relieved to find that these phenomenon had been explained medically into a collection of various rare disorders and diseases, but it all seemed too easy. I mean, certainly you couldn’t explain everything. I’ve seen special cases where a diagnosis would be given to a patient under minimal clues just to keep the patient at ease or even just because of the doctor’s lack of understanding.

My point is: what if something happened to those people that couldn’t be explained by medical science and they had all been going to the wrong sources? It was a possibility that I was not ready to rule out. The answers to my inquiries sort of faded into an end until I typed in an even more terrifying and important question: Can ghosts kill people? I had hoped that I was heading into more improbable territory with asking if ghosts could be capable of murder when I found my answer. I’m writing this as information that we should all be aware of. Most ghosts, for those able to see them, are harmless, even friendly. There is a small percentage of instances where people have been harmed by the unseen, minor cuts and bruises, at most. Then there is an even smaller percentage inside that group, which answers ‘yes’ to my question. Spirits, ghosts, whatever you call them, not only can kill, but have killed before. While examining search engine after search engine for such cases, I found a list. It was a list of known spirits to have killed several times each and who have been considered to be the most dangerous ghosts that still haunt this world. I’m going to share with you today all the information that I was able to gather on the deadliest among them so that you may avoid becoming one of them.
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There once lived a beautiful young woman during the early 1700s in the heart of the bayou. She had long raven black hair and the brightest green eyes that ensnared any man she gazed upon. This woman made her home out of a southern Louisiana swamp. Her parents had abandoned her in that local swamp at a young age, for strange things started happening around her. Afraid for their own lives, they left her, expecting her to disappear completely. Instead, she lived off of the land and learned her way around that particular ecosystem enough to gain from its resources. She was not only beautiful, but dangerously intelligent as well, despite her never being properly schooled. Fending for herself for so long, she became comforted by living alone. The woman took to collecting whatever she could from explorers or hunters of the area that had left behind their belongings for reasons unknown. She enjoyed learning all she could about normal civilization by what she would find around the swamp, especially books and musical instruments. She loved books. Fiction, non-fiction, she didn’t care. Most of the time, she couldn’t even tell the difference between the two, believing that there was a wonderful, magical world outside of her own. What time of hers what not spent reading, she spent making music with the instruments that she would find abandoned by their former owners within the confines of the swamp. The tambourine was a personal favorite of the young woman, but she also fancied the trumpet and the drum.

One day, the woman came across a single book among her swamp. It was only a book, a much larger one than she had ever seen, but there was no pack, tent, or gear of any sort nearby, as if that was the only thing that someone had left behind. The woman believed that whatever was left in her swamp was rightfully hers and took the book back to her home. For the next several days, all she did was read that one book. It was a spell book, one used by pagans covens of that time, and it was the only object that stays with her still in the afterlife. She had no idea of the matter of witchcraft outside of her swamp or even outside of that one book. What she read from it day after day sang to her very soul. Within weeks, she had read it cover to cover, many times over. She learned many secrets still lost to most today: astral projection, immortality, how to communicate with the dead, more than she could have ever hoped to learn from any other book.

She felt as if nothing was lost to her anymore and all the questions that she didn’t know that she had, had all been answered. She began practicing spells, charms and incantations. She communicated and danced with the ghosts of the swamp on full moons. The trees and animals everywhere she went flourished with health and new life. Though she read of several curses, plagues and blood magic, she had vowed to never practice against any living soul. She loved life and the world around her, as well as respected the space and lives of other people. Not once had she held any anger or resentment against another person for she never had a reason to. She lived alone and practiced her new skills to make her world as magical of a place as she had always read about. The woman was happy.

Several months later, the swamp was continuing to thrive better than any other. It attracted outsiders to venture inside in search for the many resources it would provide them. Eventually, the woman, still learning much about her magical gifts, was found. News about a witch living in the swamp just acres from the woman’s parent’s busy town spread quickly. When the town’s mayor’s wife fell deathly ill, along with much of their livestock, the town raged into a mob and set out to kill the witch they felt was terrorizing their town. The woman was captured during the night of a blood moon and taken back to the town by the angry settlers along with her book of magic. The woman screamed and begged as the men and women of the town tied her up to a post atop a large pile of sticks and dry grass with the book thrown at her feet. Soon after, the woman began to mumble incantations under her breath, confirming to everyone that she was indeed a witch. The men doused her in oil from her head down to the book and lit a match. The woman no longer fought what she knew was coming. She stood still, continuing to speak quietly to herself the words of her book. When the match hit the wood, she was immediately engulfed in bright flame. She screamed in agony, no longer chanting or begging, just screaming. The fire ate away at her flesh, leaving nothing behind but exposed tissue and bubbling blood. Her screams echoed over the cheering of the people and lasted for what seemed like hours. Her death finally came within minutes of the fire. Her entire body had been melted away, leaving behind charred, smoking remains of what was once a human muscular system. All gone, except her book and her head. Though she had died in that fire, her head, displaying an emotion of pure serenity, is said to have remained completely unharmed. Mystified by what they couldn’t explain, they took her book and her head and threw them back into the swamp, deep where they hoped the gators and lakes would rid them of her remains forever.

Many years later, a rich young man bought up the land designating the very spot atop where the woman’s remains lay in unrest, to build his family estate. With an almost endless amount of money behind him, the work on his future home began quickly. The project leveled out the foundation, filled in gaps and tore down trees and excess foliage and began without further inspection of the land. Everyone seemed to welcome the wealthy young man’s choice of location for his mansion, except the once lively, spirited woman that became a part of the house. To this very day, her spirit has haunted the man’s house, bringing misfortune to those who seek her. It is said that her ghost resides in a small room, one you wouldn’t normally see or even think to go into. She continues to scavenge for objects left behind by living guests that may be of use to her. She has long since become tired of any other book than her own, which she keeps with her at all times. Instead, musical instruments have become a favorite of hers. Her body is never seen, but those who see her, see only her head that is said to be sitting on a small, round table in the room she occupies. Her book is supposedly sitting open in front of her so that she may continue to read long into her afterlife. Should you only see her, she will let you pass.

However, there is but a single chair next to the table. If one should sit in this chair, she knows that they are seeking her out, much like the townsfolk who burned her alive, and will give them her full attention. She looks into her victim’s eyes for only a second before her once beautiful, pacified face contorts into one of malice and agonizing hatred. Her eyes widen and sink into her skull. Her mouth opens impossibly wide, stretching back the skin on her face to the point of ripping and tearing, and screams inhumanly loud. Anyone sitting in the chair has just passed the point in which they could have still gotten out alive. Soon, they become increasingly hot; sweating for only precious seconds before their skin begins to blister and boil. Then, the sensation of thousands of years of fire washes over their entire body. The only thing they can do now is rock back and forth in the chair, unable to stand, and scream in the unending agony that once claimed that woman’s life. Your hair would fall out as muscle tissue emerges from underneath your melted skin, soon blackening from an inextinguishable fire. Those that dare her, die shortly after this point, but continue burning until what is left behind becomes dust that soon is blown away, whisked off to wherever the breezy halls take it, never to be seen again.

Number of estimated victims: 4
Name of ghost: Eleanor Leota Toombs aka ‘Madam Leota’

There was once a man, a gentleman of the ages, who lived just outside of his hometown with his adoring wife. He was a man of considerable wealth and aged gracefully long into his golden years. He was a kindly gent who loved people of all sorts. The man was very well known around the nearby town and recognized as a man among men. He would buy from their markets and did what he could to expand the growth of the town. He loved giving back to the community rather than hoarding his financial success to himself. His wife loved him so for that very reason. She had the house and the husband she wanted. All of that seemed to be enough for her, though unlike her husband, she hardly ever left the house.

Everyone was very fond of the man, his wife, and almost just as much, his house. He had the house that everyone around wanted. The man often held parties and gatherings for the people of the town at his house. His wife would cook the most amazing meals using the supplies and ingredients that her husband had once bought from their guests while the man would give tours of the many rooms and corridors of his house. The one room he loved showing off was his portrait room, where he had collected and framed some of the most amazing paintings that he had ever bought from the town’s many artists. After throwing so many gatherings, the man soon became known as the ‘host’ of the town and he wore his new title with pride. Those who asked the man whether it was the massive house or the beautiful wife that made him so happy, to which he would reply, “Neither. It’s just my way”. Giving back to and entertaining their friends made the man and his wife very happy.

Eventually, the man’s wife secluded herself all together inside the house. The man asked why she wouldn’t ever go outside but she would never give him a direct answer. He wondered if she was ill and called a doctor to look at her. Though nothing was certain to the doctor, the man knew for sure that something was wrong. His wife had always been just as outgoing as he was within the walls of their home, but she quickly refused to see or socialize with anyone anymore. Soon, the town started to see less and less of the man, and what they did see was not the cheerful old man they had come to know. His back began to slump while he walked. He was no longer smiling or caring much about the townspeople. Instead, he stayed inside to keep his wife company. At first, he would come out at least once a day. Soon, it became every other day, then once a week, then only a few times a month. Whenever anyone ould ask the man what was wrong or where he had been, he would simply reply “It’s just my way.” As the time went by, his wife grew more and more introverted, no longer talking to even her husband. He started to become less sad, but more angry. Angry at his own helplessness. Angry at the lack of cooperation from his wife. Angry at not being the person he used to be.

She was in pain and wouldn’t say what was wrong. He had no idea how to handle the situation. All he wanted was his life back, where everyone was happy, and she was the cause of that not happening. He asked ‘why’ one last time to his wife who only looked back at him and smiled sweetly. He couldn’t take it anymore. His wife hadn’t shared anything with him for months. He had become more lonely with her than even by himself. He had wanted to help her, but she wouldn’t say what was wrong or tell him what to do. The man snapped, no longer angry at himself, but more so at her. He grabbed her by the throat with both hands and squeezed as hard as he could. He shouted questions uncontrollably, like “How do you want me to fix this?” and “What do you want from me?” He couldn’t control the rage that had built up all this time. He continued to choke her and shake her with every word he screamed in her face. With what little breath she had left, she choked out her final words: “This was your way.”
She had died in his hands and by his hands. He shook off what emotion had led him to murder his wife and cradled her while sobbing. She was past the point of recovery by the time the man could finally collect himself, but people say he held her for days and just wept. He buried her in the family cemetery outside the back of the house. That same day, the man picked a single bottle of his favorite wine and finished it in a matter of minutes. He climbed high into the rafters of his portrait room, where he could be with the figures of the town one last time, and let himself drop. The man who was once loved by his friends and family, was now nothing more than a decoration for the house that had claimed him.

The man’s spirit can still be heard weeping for his dead wife all over what was once his house. Rumor has it that his body still hangs from the ceiling in the portrait room. Those that have found his body would no longer hear the man’s crying. Though not many have ever returned from the man’s house after finding his hanging body, it is said that on a wall in that same room, the words ‘My way’ have been scratched all over the walls, deep into the wood. Though many speculate what exactly it is that leads to the death of those who encounter the man’s ghost, it is believed that the spirit itself does not inflict physical harm onto anyone. Instead, the sight of the man’s body, ghost, and message is said to bring so much despair with it that whoever views them gains the man’s perpetual feeling of dread and hopelessness. Few of the people that have seen these sights reported about them after they had left the house, though most never even leave the man’s house. Eventually, no matter how much they try to fight it, they always die the same way he did: suicide by hanging after having spelled out the words ‘My way’ somewhere within the same room. This single phrase has been seen by many to be the primary indicator of the connection between the man’s victims.

Number of estimated victims: 7
Name of ghost: Edgar Price aka ‘The Host’

During the mid 1800s, a man lived happily as a very much beloved husband and father in a southwestern Mississippi town. The town was one of the largest at the time and very well known for bringing in quite a profit. The man was just well off enough to care for his family and that was all he could ever ask for. He worked day in and day out at a nearby paper mill while his ‘simply angelic’ wife, as he often described her, stayed home and cared for their two daughters and son. The man couldn’t enjoy life more than he was; he was young, healthy, and pulling in more money than he could ask for. However, a dark secret that he kept from his family and business partners emerged into the public. One day, another man came to him while he was working and asked for the money that he owed him and his boss. The man knew perfectly well that he was in several months worth of debt to a local, terrorizing mafia for their help on his financial success. The man had accepted money from one of the most dangerous and infamous loan sharks of his time. The man pleaded for more time, but mercy was long since given to the man.

The loan shark had two of his henchmen beat the man into a bloody submission, breaking his left arm in four places, his right leg in two, and fracturing his skull before pulling out a small bottle of green, fizzy liquid. He poured the substance on the man’s face and the chemical reacted immediately with a sizzling that almost matched the volume of the man’s screams. The corrosive ate away at the skin all over the man’s face and even down to some of his bone. The man was helpless, nothing could wash away what was being done to him, and all he could do was scream. No one came to his aid. No one else even really knew the man for he had only kept to his family when not on the job. His lips peeled back, no longer protecting his teeth and gums. His eyelids disintegrated and his nose melted down to nothing. The loan shark deemed this a warning, for if he did not receive the money he was owed with interest by next month, the same would be done to his family. The man was long since rendered unconscious before the shark and his men had left the scene. When the man awoke, he was still in agonizing pain. He left the site, stumbling this way and that, trying to regain a sense of composure. When he returned home, his family was mortified by what they saw. His children ran screaming and crying from the ‘monster’. His wife got out a kitchen knife and demanded that the man leave. He tried to make the case that he was her husband, but she wouldn’t believe him. He had kept from her and his children that he had received money from the mafia and his wife wouldn’t allow the disfigured man to explain himself. The woman was prepared to kill the man, no matter how much he had pleaded that he was her husband.

Without being able to speak clearly to his wife, there was nothing the man could do but leave. He left his wife and children behind, never seeing them again after that day, only grabbing his coat, his cane, and his hatbox on the way out. He no longer had his money or his home. He could not afford the operation he would need to live as much of a life as he used to have. Concealing his head under his coat and top hat, leaning off of his damaged leg on his cane, with only the hatbox to store his belongings, he made his way down south. Many many miles into his travel, he decided to take up refuge in a house big enough to hide in just until he could figure out what to do next. He didn’t know whether he should protect or warn his family of the impending loan shark or start a new life elsewhere. For the first time in his life, the man was completely lost and had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to be. He managed to break into the house fairly easily. He saw no sign of anyone living there, but expected someone would come along eventually. The man lived many days out in that house. He ate the food that had been stored, slept in the master bedroom, and read many of the owner’s personal collection of books. Eventually, the man heard the owner return and ran to hide. He found a pull down door and ladder leading up to an attic space and decided to hide there to wait for the owner to leave. He spent several hours in that attic, curled up next to a hat rack and cried. The man missed his family and was ashamed at his cowardice. He knew they would share the same gruesome fate as he did and he could do nothing anymore to stop it. He cried and cried until the attic door opened.

The man became dead silent and watched the owner of the house work his way up into the attic. The man panicked. In a blurred rage of defense, the man picked up a piece of broken glass and stabbed the owner in the back of the knee just as he walked past where the man was hiding. The owner fell to the ground screaming as the man continued to stab the owner viciously. The man looked down at the owner bleeding out all over the attic floor as an idea crossed his already twisted mind. The man grabbed the owner by his hair and held his head tight in his fist. He plunged the glass shard deep inside underneath the owner’s jaw. The owner yelled muffled screams and coughed up the blood that poured into his mouth and throat as the man dug the glass shard around the outline of his face, peeling back every square inch of skin attached.
Blood soaked both of their clothes and the owner thrashed about, but was just as helpless as the day the man lost his own face. Carving out the skin around the man’s mouth and eyes were the final touches as the man dropped the glass shard and pushed the frantic owner to the side, gargling his screams through even more thick, dark blood. The man raised the owner’s face up to where his used to be, but on himself. He felt the warm, still bloody side against his exposed muscle and bone. He formed it around his eyes and around his mouth and licked it sealed. The owner scrambled around the floor and found the glass shard. Blindly, he picked it up and crawled as fast as he could to the man, cutting through his throat on the first swing, while the man admired his new look. The owner continued stabbing the man long after he had finally died. The man allowed the owner to extract his vengeance, laughing as the glass shard pierced his skin, for the man was content with death under his new identity.

The spirits of both of these men still haunt that same house, but only that of the man has been known to still take lives. How do we know this? He will appear anywhere in the house, but is especially seen in the attic from the outside. He painfully collects the faces of his victims before he kills them. You will never know when you’re near this ghost, but so long as you’re in that same house, he is never far. Should he choose you, you will feel sharp, stabbing pains all over your body. You may not see him then, but there will be nothing you could do to stay alive at this point. He will continue to stab you until you stop moving altogether. You can only hope that what has been done already will be enough to kill you, for then you will feel every single nerve under the skin in your face being ripped apart.You will feel it peel back and tear as easily as paper. He does it slow and methodically, so that he can savor the effects of the agony he gives to his victims. It is said that the last thing you see if you are able to survive for this long is his long, insidious smile and wide, pure white eyes staring down at you through your own face. He stores all the faces he collects and never has them just out of his arm’s reach. How do we know that it is the same man and not the owner? The entity is known to always be carrying around the only two things he had with him when he came to the house in the first place: his signature cane and hatbox.

Number of estimated victims: 14
Name of ghost: Xavier Randall aka ‘Hatbox’

In 1886, there lived a beautiful woman in the city of Philadelphia. She was adored by all of her friends and family. She excelled through school and had many friends and sweethearts to show for it. She had big, bright blue eyes that would melt your heart in a single gaze. She had round, pouty lips that drove men crazy. Her hair was golden and she took especially well care of it. All throughout school, she had been told that she could make it as a big time actress just off of her looks alone, so when she graduated, she moved out of her parents’ house to try and start an acting career in New York City’s own Broadway. She was more than confident that she would become the next fresh face to capture the world, for all throughout her life everyone told her how gorgeous she was, and what was more dangerous, she knew it. People spoke of the woman as though her looks rivaled that of Cleopatra herself. No matter what she tried in life, she would usually get by on her looks alone. This woman led the easy life and sadly took it all for granted. People would go out of their way to help a woman as beautiful as her any way they could, especially the men. This woman even got so far as to make it into a show on an actual Broadway stage, and soon another and another. Eventually, she was all any of the casting directors could talk about. Every show wanted to see her sing, dance, and showcase her exceptional beauty. Her parents had given her more than enough money to live on her own while working in the Big Apple, even though she was making a decent income. She had long since lost touch with her doting parents, short of her still collecting support money from them, along with all of the friends she once had back home.

Eventually, the woman started seeing New York City and the business she had found herself in as the vicious, shallow snare for what it is. After several years of leading the exciting, fast-paced lifestyle of an actress, the easy life that had spoiled the woman for so long soon became less attentive. Though she was still one of the most beautiful young women to ever grace the stage, she was no longer the only one. What was once handed to her on a silver platter now needed to be worked for and the spoiled woman knew of no such thing as work. The woman demanded things from others, especially those she believed were less attractive than her. She didn’t feel the need to audition for roles as an actress and believed that they should just be offered to her. The older she aged, the less charming her immature rudeness became. People began to pay less and less attention to her. She started getting less work as an actress, leading to her bills coming in more than they went out, and for once she didn’t know what to do.

One day, the woman caught a glimpse of a man in the audience of one of her shows. Seeing live theatre on Broadway was for either the locals or the wealthy. Outside the theatre on the closing night of the last production she ever performed in, she began talking to the man, who could do nothing but dote upon how beautiful and talented she was. The man was from out of town and the couple spent the next couple of days sightseeing, picnicking in Central Park, eating at all the best restaurants, and having the time of their lives. Before the man was about to leave the city to go back home, the woman confessed her love for him and he agreed to take her with him. The woman left everything and everyone she knew back in New York and moved in with this rich, young man. Very soon after, they were married and talks of children were already on the way. The man was so very happy with his new bride that he went out to the best jeweler he could find and bought her the most expensive pearl necklace they had. The woman loved them almost as much as she loved her new life.

However, just months after their wedding, the woman’s husband was in a tragic, fatal accident. The woman reported to the sheriff that her husband had been murdered just after their honeymoon night. When the police arrived on the scene, they found the man’s body alone in a pool of blood. The man’s head had been severed and laid just feet from the crimson soaked stump it was once attached to. The man, along with his head, were both buried in the family graveyard. The woman showed very little concern for her husband and instead proceeded to live off of the money she had inherited from him. The police never suspected that the wife that informed them of the murder would be capable of such a crime and the real murderer was never found. It was concluded that the weapon was a small, sharp, blunt instrument; one that would have had to be swung many times to cut completely through a man’s neck the way they found the victim. Soon after, the woman had everything about her late husband, even a small freshly cleaned hatchet that she had taken out of his tool shed not long before he was found murdered, hidden away within the dark corners of the attic of her new house. The woman lived well with her husband’s money and even took very well care of his home.

After a while, collecting together all of her husband’s belongings grew dull and the woman craved for more excitement. She decided to go out and lure in another wealthy man as her next husband. Soon after, the next man came along and moved into the woman’s home after selling his for quite a profit. The man loved the woman and bought her an even more expensive pearl necklace than her last husband did. Soon after they were married, he too met with a terrible tragedy. After the woman invited her new husband up to the attic, she retrieved her old hatchet and struck the man in the neck. Even after he fell, she continued to strike the man with the hatchet, flinging his blood all over the walls and ceiling. The man could no longer scream through the amount of blood that was seeping out of his mouth as his wife continued to hack away at his throat. After his spine had been disconnected, the man was surely dead, but the woman continued to finish the job, severing the head completely. The woman collected all that her new late husband had left for her and buried him too in the graveyard next to her previous one. Within the span of three years, two more graves had been dug next to theirs.

The woman had just received her fifth and most expensive pearl necklace. She had more money and extravagant riches than she could have ever hoped for. She kept her wedding dress neat and clean, the same one that was handed down to her from her mother and that she had always worn for all of her weddings. Her last husband had already had a child, a grown boy, from his previous wife who had died due to disease. The boy had thought that the marriage between the woman and his father was happening too quickly to be genuine and suspected that the woman was just after his money. The boy went over to her house the day after the man had moved in and looked around for him. After hearing a peculiar sound coming from the attic, he went up to investigate and saw the woman, still wearing her wedding dress, hacking away at the bloody mess that was once his father. The boy went into a furious panic. He tackled the woman and took the hatchet out of her hand. He fought the woman, but it was far too late to save the life of his father. He plunged the blade of the hatchet into her chest claiming that ‘a demon as heartless as her doesn’t deserve one’. He hacked away at her chest, breaking through her rib cage and tearing through the woman’s chest. Blood soaked the woman’s wedding dress as the boy ripped through whatever fabric or muscle stood in his way. He reached into her chest, gained a slippery hold on her slowly beating heart and pulled it violently out of her body.

The boy stood and stared down at what he had done to the woman. He reached down and pulled the wedding ring his father had given to her off of her finger and threw it out of the attic window. He wanted this woman to have had nothing to do with his father. He shoved the woman’s body in a nearby trunk. All that is known is that the woman’s latest husband rests in the family graveyard next the others. As for the woman? Her body was never recovered and still lies in the trunk in the attic. The boy had hidden the woman’s heart somewhere else in the attic, not in the trunk with her. The boy, however, met with his own death in that same room for reasons unknown.

To this day, it is said that the woman searches desperately for her heart so that she may feel love again. Until then, she feels only hatred and the need for the belongings of others. Her spirit has been seen out of the window to the room she died in, still holding the hatchet she had taken so many lives with. You may only find this woman in the attic of her once home. Should you see her spirit, she will come to you as beautiful as she had always been. She will smile back at you the friendliest, most welcoming smile you could ever ask for. She will show off all that she had collected throughout the years and make you feel comforted. This is when you need to immediately turn around and leave. If you should stay, it is said that you will hear the loud, rhythmic thumps of her heart beating somewhere in the room, just out of her grasp. She will lure people in with her beauty, especially men, only to disappear before them completely.

After she has vanished from your sight, she will then reappear to you in a mirror, contorted and grotesque as the tormented soul now has you captured. You will see her beauty fade into the true monster that she had become. You will see her wedding dress dripping blood and feel her cold breath beating down the back of your neck. Cherish it then, because afterward, that’s her next target. The next thing you feel is a sharp, yet blunt strike to your neck. There is nothing you can do now to stop the malevolent entity from breaking through your neck by the force of the hatchet. No matter how hard you fight or where you try to escape to, your head will feel as though it is tearing itself from your body. This is that woman, searching so much for the life that she once had and taking from those which she could never enjoy again.

Number of estimated victims: 22
Name of ghost: Constance Hatchaway

Now, the story of these next three spirits are importantly intertwined and I shall be telling their story as such. They are also the three most deadliest ghosts in the list and in the world to date, so listen closely. During the early 1930s in northern Florida, there lived three brothers. They lived as a very tight knit family and the devastation of the Great Depression only brought them closer. The youngest brother, 24, was lanky, pale, and though he was always very spirited, the boy suffered from a dangerous case of anemia. The middle brother, 27, was the most heavyset of the three. He was known by his family as being the most well read and carried an extensive knowledge of many subjects, specializing in several fields of human sciences. The eldest brother, 30, was, oddly enough, the shortest. He worked closely with their father at a Ford assembly line and carried with him an extensive amount of long, unkempt facial hair. Soon after the crash of the stock market, their father was growing dangerously ill and their finances had been cut severely since losing his job. The family could no longer afford the medical care that their father needed. Their mother didn’t work, though she did now manage all of their money. They had just enough money left to either help their father get the treatment he needed for his sickness or for one of the brothers to go to school.

The three brothers wanted nothing more than to help their father, while the father wanted the brightest one of the three to go to school. The answer was made clear and it was the father’s final wish for the middle son to pursue his dreams of becoming a surgeon. Though they all spent much time grieving over the loss of a father and husband, everyone in the family was supportive to the middle boy, who then wished to work toward a cure to the illness that had claimed his father, on top of helping as many others as he could. Now, what makes this story so subjective is that no one is completely sure of the names of these three brothers. It is most commonly known that the middle son was refereed to as the ‘Traveler’ for he commuted to an out of state school and loved to sight see as a child. He dressed his best for school, donning his father’s coat and bowler hat. School was new and exciting for the middle brother. He loved learning new subjects along with furthering his knowledge of anatomy and medicine.

After two years of extensive medical training, the Traveler took a break and headed back home. The youngest brother had succumbed to a rare illness, one that increased his growth and metabolism almost more than his body could keep up with. He was incredibly tall and skinny. He could not gain a healthy amount of muscle tissue and in most areas of his body his bones could be seen bulging through his skin; his face, ribs, and arms were just some of those areas. His eyes grew big and sunken into his face. His lips grew wider and made his smile much more prominent and haunting. He was fully capable other than a general physical weakness and an occasional shortness of breath. Due to his childish naivety, it was nothing he ever worried about; however, his brothers kept a keen eye on him. Though his name was also forgotten with time, the records refer to him as the ‘Skeleton’ because of his hideous form.

Unfortunately, however, the Traveler ran out of expenses when the school raised its tuition far higher than he could pay, and had to move back home without a proper education. Soon after, the youngest son started to show signs of growing even more sick, the stress had taken its toll on their mother, who had jumped to her death off a local bridge. The brothers were heartbroken and lost. Neither of their parents left them any money to live off of and the job market was nearly nonexistent. The family was then almost out of ideas on what to do for money or necessities. Soon after, while reading up on the end of the prohibition and the war beginning to rage, the eldest son struck upon an idea. The idea was simple: that he and his brothers would become moonshine brewers and runners. It was a good enough idea for them and they figured that they had nothing more to lose on it. They couldn’t believe that times had gotten this desperate, but they were willing to do anything it took to care for each other. Eventually, a problem arose: they had to sell the family Model T and had nothing to run their product with. The eldest son mulled around the desperation of his family before admitting to a drastic solution to their problem, though he was not proud enough about it to share it with his family. He went out one night and took a long walk down a particularly lonely road.

About three hours into his walk, he prepared himself for what he was about to do. The brother held out his thumb and waited for passing cars. Soon after, headlights hit him and a model slowed down to pull up next to the man. The driver was heading home with his wife and two children. The brother wasted no time. He pulled out a revolver and shot the man in the dead center of his face. The wife and children frantically got out of the car as the brother pushed the bloody remains of their loved one onto the dirty road. They collapsed in sobs over the man’s body and disappeared behind the brother in total darkness as he drove off with their model. The brother didn’t answer any of his brothers’ questions about the car and soon they just gave up and accepted what was now theirs. Soon, the eldest brother was bringing in several different cars a night and eventually got to the point where they could fix up one really great car to make their shine runs in. Their shine running business was working out well, but the eldest brother could not hold onto his secret for much longer and told his brothers about where the cars were coming from. The three brothers had long since crossed over into the ‘survival of the fittest’ mindset of poverty and understood that the eldest had to do what he had to do to support them.

The shine running was pulling in just enough extra money to keep food on the table, but they felt that they could do better. Soon after, the other two brothers felt as though they too were ready to make the cross into the work the eldest brother found himself in. The plan was to pose as hitchhikers on the side of roads that didn’t see much traffic. They all had their plans on what they will do once they are out on the road. The Skeleton had a blade ready for his plan and the Traveler, the less violent one, had a syringe filled with a strong anesthesia that he had learned to make while in school. They all spread out and covered different roads.

The eldest son continued with his brute plan, while the Skeleton tried a different approach. He would target cars driving by specifically with couples in them. He held his thumb high and waited for a chance to finally show his big brothers what he could do. Once someone pulled over to pick him up, he would sit behind the driver specifically. After having ridden for several minutes, the Skeleton would pull a small blade out of his coat pocket and slice open the throat of the driver. Fighting to take control of the car, he would pull it over to the side of the road. The passenger would normally run screaming, something about his strategy that he became much more effective with in time and experience. He would catch up to the passenger on foot, hold them down, and carve out their eyes with the knife while still on the side of the road. He would be quick about it so long as to never be seen by anyone else driving by. One by one he would either jam his knife into their sockets and pry their eyes out or skewer them and render them painfully useless. So as to make sure the person never tells anyone of him or his brothers, he would rip out their tongues as well. As messy of a job as he chose to go about it, peeling out his victims’ tongues with his jagged, dull blade would usually be the last thing they would feel before death, a sacrifice the Skeleton was willing to make for his family. He made his brothers proud by collecting many cars this way over the course of many many years.

While the eldest son continued with his terrorizing plan of forcing whole families out of their cars and making them grieve in the middle of nowhere over their lost husband and father, the Traveler was a different sort of operator. He knew he was willing to do anything for the good of his family, but recreational violence was just not a part of his makeup. He too would hitchhike all up and down a lonely stretch of road searching for lone drivers in particular. He carried with him a briefcase that he used through med-school and he had it filled with various anesthetics, acids, and poisons. He knew that he would have better luck trying to subdue one person instead of many. Once someone would pull over to let him in, the Traveler would smile back at them, show his appreciation, and tell them where to go. Along the drive, the Traveler would reach into his brief case and discretely pull out a brightly colored syringe. He would plunge it straight into the driver’s chest and take control of the vehicle. Before the driver would have time to react, they would be completely sedated. The Traveler would push them over to the passenger seat and take control of his new car all the way back to his family’s workshop. At first, the Traveler would just gently push the bodies out of the car somewhere along the road, only hoping that they would awaken before any roadside critters, like snakes, scorpions, or spiders, get to them first. Eventually, he began to think to himself just how robbed he was of his experience in medical school. All that money wasted because the state colleges became too greedy toward their students. It angered him. He had been wronged when all he wanted was to help people. The people in his passenger seats could be all the schooling he needed and that all he really needed was practice to become a doctor.
He started taking the bodies back to the workshop where they stripped down the cars and held off a little room to the side all for himself. His first real victim was like exploring a fantasy land to him. He wanted to know everything there was about the amazing world anatomy and surgical arts that he had only ever read about. He laid the body across a long metal table and stripped it down. He always remembered his first cut. It was a careful one, like slowly opening a Christmas present. He was as giddy as a child as the blood poured onto the table and trickled onto the floor below him. He uncovered and removed everything he could find inside his victims: lungs, kidneys, livers, anything he could touch and remove, he did. He unraveled intestines and liked to poke the particularly ‘squishy’ things. Sometimes the victim would wake screaming, but would always bleed out his life before anyone could come to his rescue. It was so much fun to the Traveler. The more and more often the Traveler brought home victims and the more experience he had with his rusty surgical equipment, the less careful he became in his ‘teachings’. His childlike spirit was very much alive among such a macabre scene of blood and entrails, but so long as he cleaned everything up after he was finished, his family didn’t mind it.

The brothers had been carefully collecting cars from people for several months before the eldest brother was finally caught by the police. Several of the victims he left alive gave away his information to the police. Without giving up the names of his brothers, his ‘accomplices’, he was given life in prison. The other two brothers found work very difficult without their brother. The Skeleton and the Traveler decided to go on one last run to break their brother out of prison and to live the rest of their days down south. The information that I was given doesn’t exactly say how they did it, but the eldest brother was broken out of prison, which, by the way, is how he earned the name he goes by: the Prisoner, and headed south in a stolen car.
They hid out at motel to motel, using fake names, and taking every precaution to cover their tracks as they made their way south toward a small growing city where they could try to start a new life. After several days without food on their run, the stress of their inevitable capture and imprisonment was almost too much for them to handle. They knew that the police were actively looking for the Prisoner and his accomplices, but were willing to go to the ends of the world to avoid being imprisoned and separated from each other. Fueled by pure adrenaline, they rocketed down an empty highway with the police bearing down on their path and wherever they ended up is where they had to hide. After exhausting every resource they had on their final run, the trio abandoned their car on the side of the road and ran until they came across a cemetery.

Knowing that the police would be on the site in a matter of seconds behind them, and not being able to make it all the way to the town just miles outside where they had broken down, the brothers wasted no time in weighing what little options they had and jumped a large gated fence around the cemetery in the backyard of a giant mansion. Inside, they broke into and hid inside of a mausoleum. No one knows for sure what happened to them after that however. There are rumors that suggest that they lived in that stone cage as long as they could before dying of hunger. Others say they had died of fright by what they saw within the mausoleum. The bodies of the brothers were never found and they had never been seen alive since.

I repeat myself for the utmost importance: these three ghosts, the Traveler, Prisoner, and Skeleton, are the three most deadliest ghosts in the world. There is but one road in America that drives by the cemetery in which they spent their last moments. Whether it be day or night, should you just drive by that cemetery you are inviting them, enticing them. They cannot resist the temptation to rid you of what they cannot have. These ghosts are not limited to one particular place like a house; these spirits are much more unpredictable and versatile. If you drive this one road at any time of the day, you will see someone hitchhiking on the side. Whatever you do, do not pick them up. It may be mean to any person who is just honestly looking for a ride, but it is not worth the risk. At this point, the only hope you have is to pass them and look in your rear view mirror. If you still see them in the reflection outside your car, you are safe. If not, it means that they have chosen you as their ride. If this is the case, immediately get out of the car. Pull it over as soon as you can and leave it there forever. If you do not do this, you will become their next victim. Depending on how many people are in your car will depend on which brother you will have riding with you.

Should you be driving with one other person in the car, you will be at the mercy of the Skeleton. If you are driving, you will see whoever is sitting in your passenger seat suddenly look over at you. Even if you don’t look back at them, you know what you will see: blood smeared sockets and an empty jaw fallen lifelessly will be their expression. By the time you recognize it, you will feel a cold release race across your neck. By the time your car crashes, you and your passenger will already be dead. Should you be driving with a family and do not heed the warnings of the hitchhikers, your death will be simple at the hands of the Prisoner: quick, quiet, nothingness will fill your thoughts as your head agape with a tennis ball size hole through the front and back will suddenly slam against the steering wheel and the car rockets into whatever lies in its path, taking out whatever and whoever with it. Should you be driving alone, you might as well have been walking from the start. The Traveler used to be someone with compassion and mercy while he was alive, but once he’s a rider in your car, you find of him much different behaviors. At first, you will become nauseous to the point of wanting to pull over to throw up, but you don’t because you can’t. It will only get worse from there. Your nose will begin to bleed and you will have a gurgling feeling in your stomach. You will begin to cough up blood and your vision will become blurry. You try to pull over, but the Traveler won’t let you. He enjoys traveling with you while practicing his craft. Your chest, back, and stomach will be in an enormous amount of pain for what is inside you is rearranging itself. You will cough up more and more blood each time as you begin to lose muscular control and basic bodily functions. The skin around your chest and abdomen starts to pull and tear. Soon, blood will cover your lap and seat as you see the bleeding, pulsating mess throbbing just under your blood soaked clothes. Don’t worry though. Death isn’t far beyond this point, so you wouldn’t have suffered for too long. Still, I’d rather just get out, leave my car, and walk home.

Number of estimated (collective) victims: 41
Name of ghosts: the Traveler, the Skeleton, the Prisoner aka ‘The Hitchhikers’
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I hope this list will help you somewhere down the line; God forbid you ever come across one of these things. I really try not to let it scare me, but with everything that has been happening, I’d rather be scared than dead. This is certainly not a dare or invitation to test the rumors of these ghosts, whether you believe in them or not. They are dangerous and do not care what your personal beliefs are. Though I did dig a little deeper into these cases and, as dismaying as it is, I need you to consider this observation: all of these cases are based out of southern Louisiana and around a single house, the very same house for each of them, which means that there is only one place you will find any of these spirits.
The attic, the cemetery, the portrait room, it is all connected. There is something about that house or the land that provokes the evil around it. Though I will not say what the place is called to spare you the trip, upon further inspection there is just one short of a thousand different ghosts haunting that place to this day. I am not giving out any more specific details than that which have already been established because no one, especially any of you that have read this through until the end and clearly know of the dangers they present, should be going anywhere near this house. The house has been hidden from the public since the accidents began and just needs to never be visited, looked at, or even passed by ever again. Just remember to be careful. There are many things in this world that we still do not understand and the cost of venturing into the unknown could be your life. I pray for your safety and hope that you may never fall victim to the spirits of the world’s most haunted mansion.

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Credit: TheDivineAuthor (Creepypasta Wiki • Facebook • YouTube)

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