Hunting Island is a beautiful coastal park located about 15 miles east of Beaufort, SC. The park has many attractions, including a 138-year-old lighthouse, and like nearly all lighthouses around the world, the Hunting Island light has a reputation for being haunted.
Frogmore, South Carolina is home to the Land’s End Light, a mysterious, glowing orb that has frightened residents for generations. Here’s the story behind this infamous illumination.
Though ghost hunters flock to graveyards and crumbling old mansions, not all spirits haunt these traditional locales. In fact, many stories emerge from some of the least interesting places on Earth: parking lots. The Web is full of tales of haunted car parks and ghostly garages, including a few that made international headlines. Here are five of them.
Puckett’s Wrecker Services, Oklahoma City, OK
In 2002, Oklahoma City resident Tracy Martin died from injuries suffered in a motor vehicle accident. Eighteen days after her death, a staff member at Puckett’s Wrecker Services saw a transparent white figure floating on the business’s security monitor. The folks at Puckett’s say the figure was Tracy searching for her red truck, which the business had recently moved. The story made international headlines and was featured in an episode of My Ghost Story.
Meeting Street Parking Garage, Charleston, SC
Construction projects in downtown Charleston often turn up bones and old graves. However, when the city built a parking garage atop a Quaker graveyard, they also found a few spirits. Weird happenings at the garage include random cold spots, shadowy figures, and an odd amount of dead batteries. The garage is a common stop for Charleston ghost tour companies who claim spirits of the deceased enjoy following tourists to their car. Note: I used this garage several times when I lived in Charleston, and the only trouble I had was an oblivious motorist who backed into my car and drove off. Maybe a ghost made her do it?
Yahoo Voices, Trip Advisor
Nationwide Arena Parking Garage, Columbus, OH
The Ohio State Penitentiary stood for 160 years before authorities tore it down to build a parking garage for the Nationwide Arena. Hundreds of people died at the old jail, including 322 inmates who perished in a 1930 fire. Now, weird events plague the modern garage, including strange orbs, the smell of smoke, unexplained screams, and the sound of phantom flames.
Prairie Ghosts, Paranormal Love to Know
Greenwood Mall, Bowling Green, KY
According to local legend, a man parked his van at the Greenwood Mall parking lot and then died inside the vehicle. No one knew who the man was or where he came from. When police removed the van, it left behind a large grease stain that has yet to fade and is apparently impossible to remove. Now, shoppers who park their vehicle in the mystery man’s spot and leave it overnight will return to a man sprawled motionless in the passenger seat. If the startled vehicle owner phones the police, “the Sleeper” will be gone before authorities arrive. Folks also whisper about a murder that allegedly occurred in the lot, but like many ghost legends, the story is difficult to prove.
Forgotten USA, Ghosts Wikia
Unknown Parking Garage, Japan
This ghost video is popular among paranormal enthusiasts, but I don’t know much about it other than it came from Japan. Here’s a quote GhostStudy.com posted:
“I got this movie clip from my friend who works as a chief security guard at a Japanese company. He brought the tape over to show me something unusual. Afterwards, he converted it onto avi format with his computer. I don’t know if it’s a camera distortion or a real ghost, but it’s very interesting!”
Fake or not, I think the video is super creepy. Of course, Japan has the freakiest ghosts.
Don’t assume ghosts only haunt old buildings or dilapidated graveyards. After all, who knows what secrets lie buried beneath the concrete layers of your local parking lot.
Know of a haunted parking lot? Share your tip or story here or email ghostsghoul@gmail.com.
Standing atop the former site of the Mansion House Hotel, is The Westin-Poinsett in downtown Greenville, SC. Once home to the likes of John C. Calhoun and other Southern aristocracy, the Poinsett now plays host to a new set of affluent social callers. However, it seems not all of the current boarders are of this world.
Built in the mid 1920s during a heyday for textiles in the upstate, the Poinsett was once the twelve-storied jewel of the city. But in time, changes and hardship came to the area, and around 1980 the hotel became a nursing home filled with the elderly poor of Greenville. It remained that way until conditions forced its closure a handful of years later. Until the building’s most recent renovation, a little more than a decade ago, the hotel sat barren, attracting the homeless who sporadically filled its rooms with bottles and waste. Although closed off to the public, one could sneak into the abandoned building and see the deplorable conditions in which the vagrants lived, and often died. Amongst the quiet, unlit rooms other, more eternal, tenants took up residence.
In 1997, developers purchased the abandoned property and began extensive renovations. The Westin-Poinsett opened soon after. Today, guests report catching a fleeting glance of an elderly man who suddenly appears in their room and then vanishes just as quickly. Another business traveler saw an indiscernible figure that remained in a third story window a full five minutes before dissipating into thin air. The spirit appeared to remove his black coat before dissolving, leaving the man too petrified and perplexed to move. Perhaps the mysterious figure was one of the seniors or vagrants who’d come to meet their maker under the hotel’s roof. Or maybe it was an older soul, one who lived before the hotel’s construction and remodeling of the hotel, a spirit who remained to see a transformation from the world he’d once known.
Visitors can find both kinds of spirits at Greenville’s Westin-Poinsett Hotel, and guests never truly drink alone.
