Southern Ghost Stories

Along the dark, winding waters below New Orleans, generations of Mississippi riverboat captains warned their crews never to tie up near Cypress Bend after sunset, where a ruined, moss-draped plantation house stood rotting along the shoreline. In this haunting episode of Southern Ghost Stories , Allen Sircy shares the legendary river lore of First Mate Jim Bryson, a hardened riverman whose hair tur...

In the fall of 1941, seventy-three-year-old retired railroader Philip Peters began hearing strange noises in his house and noticing food vanishing from his Denver home, leading him to wonder if the quiet old house had a ghost—never suspecting that a gaunt, desperate drifter was secretly living inside a cramped cubbyhole right above his ceiling. When an unexpected kitchen encounter ended in Peters’...

In January 1870, ten thousand spectators packed the streets of Louisville, Kentucky, to watch the public hanging of William Kriel—a violent butcher who had murdered his ailing wife in front of her mother and somehow survived pumping multiple bullets into his own skull during a botched suicide attempt. Yet, the drop of the gallows trap proved to be only the opening chapter of Kentucky’s most shocki...

At 533 Beale Street in Memphis stands the Hunt-Phelan House, an antebellum red-brick mansion that has weathered nearly two centuries of turbulent history—serving as a Confederate headquarters, Ulysses S. Grant’s Union command post, a Civil War hospital where thousands suffered, and one of the city's earliest schools for newly freed African Americans. Yet beneath its storied walls and legendary esc...

In this special From the Vault episode of Southern Ghost Stories , Allen Sircy takes you inside New Orleans’ opulent Le Pavillon Hotel, a historic landmark famous for its crystal chandeliers, late-night peanut butter and jelly tradition—and a staggering population of restless spirits. While management prefers to keep the hauntings quiet, guests and staff alike tell a far more active story: phantom...

In August 1879, a bloody love triangle in Perry County, Pennsylvania, ended when outlaw Samuel Albright gunned down his romantic rival, William Miller, before vanishing into the rugged wilderness along the Juniata River. Eleven days into the massive manhunt, two locals exploring the dark, damp recesses of the legendary Girty’s Cave stumbled upon a horrifying sight: a badly decomposed corpse wedged...

In December 1897, Pike County, Pennsylvania, carried out its very first hanging behind the Milford courthouse, sending German immigrant Herman Paul Schultz to the gallows for the gunshot murder of his estranged wife, Lizzie. Yet the hanging itself was only the prelude to a far stranger nightmare: Schultz’s dying request to be buried alongside his wife’s severed skull was ignored, his body was sold...

In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories , host Allen Sircy delves into the chilling true story behind his new book, Arsenic Anna , uncovering the rise and fall of Depression-era Cincinnati’s most notorious serial poisoner, Anna Marie Hahn. Driven by crushing gambling debts and sheer desperation, Anna charmed, swindled, and poisoned a succession of vulnerable, elderly men with lethal doses of ars...

Deep in the shadow of Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, where thick woods and steep ridges swallow sound, an unsettling cry shattered the winter silence of 1903. In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories  for Tennessee Tales Tuesday, Allen Sircy tracks the chilling legend of "Whistling Jack"—a sleek, shadowy predator larger than any hound, with burning red eyes and an unnatural, whistling exhalation...

We’re unlocking the archives for this special "From the Vault" episode to revisit one of New Orleans’ most storied and haunted landmarks: the Omni Royal Orleans. Standing on ground once occupied by the antebellum St. Louis Exchange Hotel—marked by devastating fires, war, and the grim reality of slave auctions beneath its grand rotunda—this French Quarter icon carries centuries of restless energy....

On November 14, 1885, the Cook County Jail executed three men for the infamous Chicago trunk murder of Filippo Caruso, but only one would ignite one of the most chilling premature burial legends in American history. In this episode of  Southern Ghost Stories , Allen Sircy examines the botched hanging of Giovanni Azari, whose neck failed to break when the scaffold trap dropped, leaving him to slowl...

On Election Night in 1876, while the nation was gripped by a razor-thin presidential race, a gang of Chicago counterfeiters crept into Oak Ridge Cemetery on an audacious mission: break into the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, haul his 500-pound coffin into a wagon, and trade the martyred president’s corpse for $200,000 in gold and the release of their master engraver from federal prison. Infiltrated by a...

At the turn of the twentieth century, Charles C. Breuer was one of Cincinnati’s wealthiest real estate moguls, but an explosive family feud over his scandalous marriage to a much younger housekeeper unraveled his empire into an escalating nightmare of lawsuits, madness, and a botched dynamite plot to blow up his own building. Declared insane after years of bitter courtroom warfare with his teenage...

Today on Tennessee Tales Tuseday, the Center for the Arts in downtown Murfreesboro is a vibrant hub of theater, music, and community creativity—but beneath its stage lights and behind its walls lies over two centuries of layered, eerie history. Long before actors took the stage, the 110 West College Street property served as a Civil War-era carpentry shop that built coffins during the bloody Battl...

In this "From the Vault" episode, journey to Louisville, Kentucky’s historic Crescent Hill neighborhood to uncover the storied past of the Peterson-Dumesnil House. Built in 1869 as an elegant Italianate summer villa for wealthy tobacco merchant and Mexican-American War veteran Joseph Peterson, the grand estate survived Civil War trade disruptions, decades of transitions, and near ruin before being...

Commissioned during the height of World War II, the 44,000-ton battleship USS Alabama (BB-60)—affectionately known as "The Lucky A"—braved enemy fire, fierce typhoons, and the deadliest naval campaigns of the Pacific Theater while earning nine battle stars. But even the luckiest ships carry deep scars; in February 1944, a catastrophic turret explosion claimed the lives of five young sailors deep w...

Established in 1822, Huntsville, Alabama’s historic Maple Hill Cemetery spans over one hundred acres filled with governors, pioneers, Confederate soldiers, and thousands of forgotten, unmarked graves. But beyond its grand monuments and solemn history lie two of the South’s most chilling spectral legends: the tragic story of nineteen-year-old Mary Chambers Bibb, who was accidentally poisoned on the...

The Great Lakes hold thousands of shipwrecks beneath their deceptively tranquil waters, but few legends refuse to rest quite like the doomed lumber schooner Erie Board of Trade . In this chilling episode, Allen Sircy uncovers the tragic tale of Scotty, a dependable sailor who plummeted sixty feet to his death from a weathered boatswain's chair during routine repairs on Lake Huron. Long after his b...

We are going back to New Year’s Eve in 1872 for Tennessee Tales Tuesday. On that night hundreds gathered along Lincoln Street in downtown Tullahoma, Tennessee, to watch traveling aerialists Peter and Nina Conway attempt a death-defying high-wire walk suspended forty feet in the air with no safety nets. While Peter made the crossing safely, a sudden, violent gust of wind caught Nina just twenty fee...

Behind the elegant façade of one of New Orleans’ most infamous homes lies a story of wealth, cruelty, mystery, and horror. In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories, we journey into the dark history of the LaLaurie Mansion and its notorious mistress, Madame Delphine LaLaurie, whose carefully cultivated place in New Orleans society came crashing down after an 1834 fire exposed horrifying conditions...

Philadelphia is celebrated worldwide as the Cradle of Liberty, but beneath the manicured lawns and historic monuments of Washington Square lies one of the largest forgotten burial grounds in American history. Long before it honored fallen patriots, the six-acre site served as a grim potter's field, later crammed with mass trenches holding over two thousand unidentified Revolutionary War soldiers,...

Halloween is getting closer, and I have three new books coming just in time for the spooky season! In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories, I’m giving you a preview of Arsenic Anna , the true story of Anna Hahn, a German immigrant and Cincinnati caregiver whose patients had an alarming habit of dying under mysterious circumstances before she became the first woman executed by the State of Ohio....

In January 1903, former Missoula laundry operator Louis H. Mott’s spiral into alcoholism and addiction ended in brutal violence when he murdered his wife, Leah, as she attempted to flee down a back stairway. Convicted of first-degree murder and facing the gallows, Mott underwent a quiet transformation in his cell—culminating in an extraordinary death-row claim that he would scientifically prove li...

Long before glass-walled skyscrapers and rooftop bars dominated the skyline, the 30-story Life & Casualty Tower stood as Nashville's premier architectural wonder—and the Southeastern United States' tallest commercial building upon its 1957 opening. Famous for its towering observation deck and iconic neon letters that once signaled the local weather forecast, the L&C Tower holds a far darke...

Today we are heading to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to explore the hidden history and shadowy legends of the antebellum Childress-Ray House. Built in 1847, this unassuming Greek Revival home was once owned by Major John Whitsett Childress, brother-in-law to President James K. Polk. Beyond its presidential ties, the property conceals a surprisingly dark and layered past, from its days as a 19th-centur...