Americans love ghost stories. We may loath to admit it, but many of us secretly believe that haunted tales of things that go bump in the night are every bit as true as the more mundane facts of life, such as “the sky is blue.” We choose to believe them because they are fun and we enjoy feeling a little spooked from time to time, even though the better part of our judgment knows they cannot possibly be real. What weirdo actually thinks that the scratching noises and muted thumps coming from their attic are being produced by the trapped spirit of a young child who tragically died of tuberculosis in the 18th century, and not a squirrel? However misplaced it is thrilling to believe for a split second that your house is haunted, before you and your wife trudge upstairs armed with brooms and a bucket.
Especially around Halloween, we love horror movies and kitschy haunted tours, whether we are grown adults of 45 or children in kindergarten. There’s the Whaley House in San Diego, California, which was built on a former gallows site. Visitors say they felt “cold spots,” heard footsteps, and saw apparitions of the family that lived there. Or, the Stanley Hotel, in Estes Park, Colorado, which inspired Stephen King’s novel and later Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation, The Shining. Guests who stayed in room 217 reported hearing children playing and creepy piano music. The retired British ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, now docked in Long Beach, California, is known to have a haunted engine room and indoor pool; 49 people reportedly died on the ship throughout its service.
Though perhaps the most haunted place in America is neither a hotel nor a plantation, neither an abandoned insane asylum nor a cobble-stone alleyway hidden on a side street in an old New England city. It might well be an entire landscape, nearly 400 square miles of gorgeous and breathtaking but eerie and otherworldly terrain, in the heart of our country – a place where dinosaurs once roamed, where bison still roam, and where an infamous massacre left hundreds of women and children dead.