History Goes Bump: Ghost Tours For The Mind

Gold brought people to Ararat, but what it would be known for is its asylums. The Aradale Asylum would be home for the mentally ill for over a century and would feature conditions and treatments similar to other asylums around the world, most of which were not good. This misunderstanding and mistreatment of the mentally ill lends itself to the negative energy that sometimes feeds paranormal activi...

Jackson Square is a magnet for visitors to New Orleans. Centuries of history are represented in the square and this history includes shipping, trade, artists colony, pirates, war and executions. The beautiful St. Louis Cathedral is a popular subject for photographers and Cafe du Monde is a must stop for some world famous beignets. New Orleans is considered one of the most haunted cities in the wor...

We first featured The Queen Mary all the way back on episode 13 in November of 2014. I had the opportunity to visit this magnificent ship recently (January 2019) and so on this episode, we revisit the history and hauntings and share our own experiences from visiting the ship. Construction on the liner began in 1930 under John Brown & Company and was named for King George V's wife Queen Mary. It wo...

Rome is a city that is believed to have had some kind of human existence within it for at least 10,000 years. This city would rise from a place of little stature to one of the greatest empires ever to exist. Amazing structures would be built under that empire. The Colosseum in Rome, Italy was an architectural marvel, but also a place of immense human and animal suffering. People would come from al...

The Hampton Inn and Suites in Birmingham is an upscale hotel with a long history. This is the former Tutwiler Hotel and the former Ridgely Apartments. This was not the original Tutwiler Hotel. That one was built in 1914 on a different spot and eventually demolished in 1974. The Tutwiler was built in a grandiose style to attract the steel industry to come to town for conventions. This worked and Bi...

The House of the Seven Gables is a gothic novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne featuring a real home in Salem, Massachusetts that he knew well. The story has ghosts as some of the characters and that seems true to life as well since there are many people who claim that the home is haunted. Join me as we explore the beliefs of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the history and hauntings of The House of the Se...

The Battlefield of Culloden is under the care of the National Trust for Scotland and can be found in the Scottish village of Culloden. Culloden Village is an ancient town with buildings dating back to the 1600s, one of which is Culloden House that is today a hotel. The battlefield was the scene of the Battle of Culloden that would be the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. This bat...

Pennhurst State School and Hospital is sometimes referred to as Pennhurst Asylum. This is a location deemed to be one of the most haunted and with its history, there is no wonder. Decades of abuse and experimentation were perpetuated on children who for all intents and purposes were left abandoned to a system with no moral compass. An expose in the 1960s shined some light on the situation, but it...

Old jails just seem to be crawling with spirits as we have come to find from the several jails covered on this podcast. No matter the country, region or city and no matter the size, prisons hold spirits. One incredibly haunted jail can be found in Iowa. Council Bluffs was known as the Great Railroad Center of the Northwest. Before that time, it was a hub for trade between Native American tribes an...

As I continue to roll out these new episodes in the Haunted Cemeteries Series, it never ceases to amaze me just how wrong I was in thinking that there were very few haunted cemeteries. After all, I surmised that spirits would want to be among the living with all of their energy and not hanging out with the dead. I tend toward believing that most graveyard ghosts are residual and perhaps that is wh...

Visiting the Great Wall of China is a bucket list item for many people. This man-made structure runs west to east across northern China for 13,171 miles. Construction began with the First Emperor of China over two thousand years ago. Building would continue for centuries with most of the work being done during the Ming Dynasty and actually, most of the original wall no longer exists. Thousands of...

Vicksburg is one of those Civil War era cities that I long to visit because I love antebellum mansions. The Greek Revival architecture and magnolia trees take me back to an earlier time with hoop skirts embellished with ribbons and elegant carriages riding in the streets, but it was also a dark time of slavery and division in the United States that would lead to the outbreak of the Civil War. Vick...

The annual HGB Halloween Special is here featuring paranormal experiences by fellow listeners. We have many spine-tingling tales that will cause the casual skeptic to take notice. And since this is a history podcast, you just know we needed to add in a little bit of that. So we talk about the history of haunted house attractions. I'm joined on this episode by our Spooktacular Crew Admin, Kelly! Ch...

Roadside apparitions have been witnessed by thousands of motorists and there seems to be a legend of a hitchhiking ghost in every state in America. Many countries around the world have these hitchhiking ghost tales as well. These tales are haunting and tragic. They usually involve a young woman standing on the side of the road, appearing to be in distress or in need of a ride and after being notic...

The site where the Ferry Plantation House stands in Virginia Beach was once the scene of a trial for a woman accused of practicing witchcraft. That woman was Grace Sherwood and it would be her neighbors that claimed she was a witch who had bewitched their land and animals. She underwent the test of ducking to see if she was, indeed, a witch. Over the years, several houses stood on the site, fallin...

In the late 18th century, two bridges were built in Edinburgh to help the city to expand over the hills that were part of the area, the North Bridge and the South Bridge. The South Bridge linked the Old Town's High Street with the University buildings on the south side of the city and housed a number of chambers that were first used for businesses and later became a seedy part of the city. These c...

The Iron Island Museum is said to be the perfect spooky spot for anyone in western New York to enjoy a little Halloween fun. For those of us who celebrate Halloween year round, this museum is the perfect spot for a ghostly encounter. The tales of experiences are numerous and this location has been featured in multiple paranormal television shows. The museum showcases the charming and proud history...

The History Goes Bump Podcast celebrates its four year anniversary today! We've explored a couple hundred haunted locations, looked at the lives and afterlives of several famous people, marveled at legends, shared road trips and hosted specials. And there is so much more to come! On this anniversary special, we share the two runner-ups and three winners in our flash fiction contest, thank a bunch...

The former Benjamin Schenck Mansion in Vevay, Indiana is today known as the Schenck Mansion Bed & Breakfast Inn. The two story Second Empire-style mansion has over 8,000 square feet of living space and is furnished with antique and reproduction furniture. The home was built over 144 years ago and has had multiple owners and served a variety of purposes. Today, it not only welcomes guests, but repu...

Flagstaff, Arizona has its roots in the railway and its growth in the timber industry. The flourishing town became a hotspot for tourism with the Grand Canyon just up the road. This meant hotels were needed and two that remain today are the Hotel Weatherford and the Hotel Monte Vista. They not only have a history, but they also have a reputation for being haunted. Another building with ghost stori...

Many consider the town of Goldfield in Nevada to be a ghosttown and with a population hovering around 200, it really does seem to be that way. This was once a boom town though and for several decades millions of dollars in gold was mined here. During that boom, The Goldfield Hotel was built. This building is one of the few to have survived fire and time. Today, the only guests that stay here are t...

Cemeteries are not really a place I would seek to investigate when looking for ghosts. After years of hearing stories of paranormal experiences in graveyards, it would seem that a fraction of the cemeteries located around the world, really may harbor more than just the bones of the dead. Perhaps some do stay there in spirit. Is it because they are trapped by some kind of energy? Are these spirits...

One of the most recognizable buildings in Cincinnati is its music hall. This location dates back to the late 1800s, but the site itself has been home to other uses that include an asylum, an orphanage, a potter's field and there were other nearby cemeteries from which the bodies were not removed. All of which add their own reasons for paranormal experiences. Top this off with a world class music v...

Belle Grove Plantation is an estate and plantation house dating back into the 18th century that has witnessed over 300 years of history that includes colonization, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and is famously known as the birthplace of President James Madison. The pursuit of John Wilkes Booth also touched the grounds of this beautiful property. This is one of the best preserved 18th century ho...

Denmark is a land that has had people living on it since the Last Ice Age. This gives it an ancient history and while it is not considered a powerful nation today, it once ruled much of Europe with an iron fist. This history contains stories of wars, revolutions, political intrigue, religious conflict, Vikings and one of the oldest monarchies. The Danes are believed to have been in Denmark since 5...