Haunted Museums

30 haunted museums mapped across 22 cities, each with its ghost story, address, and sources.

• Andrew Low HouseMuseum · Savannah, GABuilt in the 1840s at 329 Abercorn Street on Lafayette Square, in Savannah's National Historic Landmark District, the Andrew Low House was home to a young Scottish immigrant who became one of Georgia's wealthiest cotton merchants.
• Audubon House and GardensMuseum · Key West, FLHarbor pilot and master wrecker Captain John H. Geiger built this home between roughly 1846 and 1850, raising a large family here before it was rescued from demolition and opened as a museum in 1960.
• Betsy Ross HouseMuseum · Philadelphia, PAThis small Old City house, built around 1740, is celebrated as the home of upholsterer Betsy Ross, traditionally credited with sewing the first American flag, and now operates as a museum run by Historic Philadelphia.
• Biltmore EstateMuseum · Asheville, NCGeorge Vanderbilt's 250-room chateau, completed in 1895 and now a house museum, has accumulated a body of ghost lore reported on regional tours and in local guides.
• Dahlonega Gold Museum (Old Lumpkin County Courthouse)Museum · Dahlonega, GABuilt in 1836 to settle claim disputes from America's first major gold rush, this brick courthouse — fired from local clay laced with trace gold — is the oldest standing courthouse in Georgia, serving Lumpkin County until 1965 before becoming the Dahlonega Gold Museum.
• Edgar Allan Poe MuseumMuseum · Richmond, VAHoused in the Old Stone House, one of Richmond's oldest structures, the Poe Museum honors the writer who grew up in the city, and its lore runs as gothic as his work.
• Emlen Physick EstateMuseum · Cape May, NJBuilt in 1879 for Dr. Emlen Physick Jr. and designed by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness, this 18-room Stick-style mansion is billed as "Cape May's original haunted house." Now operated as a Victorian house museum by Cape May MAC, it draws steady reports of cold spots, phantom footsteps, doors that open on their own, and disembodied voices.
• Ernest Hemingway Home and MuseumMuseum · Key West, FLThis French Colonial mansion was built in 1851 by marine architect and salvager Asa Tift and became Ernest Hemingway's home from 1931 to 1939, where he wrote some of his best-known work with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.
• Fort East Martello MuseumMuseum · Key West, FLThis 1862 Civil War-era brick fort houses Robert the Doll, arguably America's most famous haunted object.
• Georgia Museum of Agriculture (Agrirama)Museum · Tifton, GAOpened on July 4, 1976 and long known as the Agrirama, this 95-acre living-history village gathers wiregrass-era farmhouses, a turpentine still, a gristmill, and a working sawmill rescued from across South Georgia and rebuilt as a single 1800s settlement.
• Isaiah Davenport HouseMuseum · Savannah, GABuilt in 1820 on the northwest corner of Columbia Square, the Isaiah Davenport House is a Federal-style brick residence raised by its namesake, a New England master builder, as both a family home and a showcase of his craft.
• Jerome State Historic Park (Douglas Mansion)Museum · Jerome, AZMining magnate James S. "Rawhide Jimmy" Douglas built this hilltop mansion in 1916 above his Little Daisy Mine, designing it to double as a hotel for visiting mining investors and officials.
• John Mark Verdier HouseMuseum · Beaufort, SCThis Federal-style mansion was built around 1804 by John Mark Verdier, a wealthy French Huguenot merchant, and it hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during his 1825 Southern tour before Union forces seized it as headquarters for General Rufus Saxton when they occupied Beaufort in the 1860s.
• Juliette Gordon Low BirthplaceMuseum · Savannah, GABuilt in 1820 for James Moore Wayne, then mayor of Savannah, this Regency townhouse at 10 East Oglethorpe Avenue is where Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was born in 1860.
• Margaret Mitchell HouseMuseum · Atlanta, GAThe brick Tudor on Crescent Avenue was the Crescent Apartments when Margaret Mitchell and her husband took a cramped ground-floor unit she dubbed "The Dump," and there, between 1925 and 1932, she wrote most of Gone with the Wind.
• Marietta/Cobb Museum of ArtMuseum · Marietta, GAA block off Marietta Square, the museum fills a Greek Revival building raised in 1909 as the town's post office, a role it kept until 1963 before becoming the Cobb County library and, in 1990, a fine arts museum.
• National Civil War Naval Museum at Port ColumbusMuseum · Columbus, GABuilt along the Chattahoochee River, the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus houses the salvaged hulls of Confederate warships, including the CSS Jackson and the gunboat CSS Chattahoochee, alongside flags, weapons, and the uniforms of sailors who died at sea.
• New Orleans Pharmacy MuseumMuseum · New Orleans, LABuilt in 1823 as the apothecary and home of Louis J. Dufilho Jr., America's first licensed pharmacist, the Creole townhouse on Chartres Street has operated as the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum since 1950, its shelves still lined with belladonna, opium, and old surgical tools.
• Old Governor's MansionMuseum · Milledgeville, GACompleted in 1839, this Greek Revival mansion served as Georgia's executive residence through the antebellum years and the Civil War, its kitchens run for decades by free and enslaved staff before the capital moved to Atlanta and the house passed to Georgia College.
• Owens-Thomas HouseMuseum · Savannah, GAAn architectural jewel of Regency Savannah, the Owens-Thomas House was completed in 1819 to the designs of English architect William Jay, who built it for shipping merchant Richard Richardson in the neoclassical English Regency style.
• Rosedown Plantation State Historic SiteMuseum · St. Francisville, LADaniel and Martha Turnbull built Rosedown's main house in 1834-35, surrounding it with formal gardens Martha modeled on the great gardens of France and Italy.
• Southeastern Railway MuseumMuseum · Duluth, GAGeorgia's official transportation history museum spreads across a Duluth rail yard, and among its ninety-plus pieces of rolling stock rests the Pullman private car "Superb," built in 1911 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
• Spanish Governor's PalaceMuseum · San Antonio, TXThis 1749 adobe-and-limestone building, the only surviving example of an aristocratic Spanish colonial residence in Texas and a National Historic Landmark, served as the residence and offices of the captain of the Presidio San Antonio de Bexar.
• Spanish Military Hospital MuseumMuseum · St. Augustine, FLReconstructed in 1966 on its original foundations, the Spanish Military Hospital recreates a ward from St. Augustine's Second Spanish Period (1784-1821), when wounded and fever-stricken soldiers were treated here before the building closed around 1823.
• Telfair AcademyMuseum · Savannah, GAThe Telfair Academy began as an English Regency mansion at 121 Barnard Street, designed by architect William Jay and completed in 1818 for the prominent Telfair family of Savannah.
• The Bryan MuseumMuseum · Galveston, TXThe Bryan Museum occupies the former Galveston Orphans' Home, built in 1895, damaged in the 1900 Storm, and rebuilt to reopen in 1902, sheltering orphaned children for nearly a century.
• The Oldest Drug StoreMuseum · St. Augustine, FLOn the corner of Orange and Cordova streets, the Oldest Drug Store stands on ground that old town maps mark as a Native American village — a Tolomato mission settlement later absorbed into the Spanish colonial city, its people displaced.
• The Rice Museum (Old Market & Kaminski Building)Museum · Georgetown, SCGeorgetown's Rice Museum occupies two 1842 landmarks downtown: the clock-towered Old Market and the adjacent Kaminski Hardware Building, which later held a hardware store and now houses the Prevost art gallery.
• Thomas Wolfe Memorial (Old Kentucky Home)Museum · Asheville, NCThis rambling Victorian boarding house, now a North Carolina State Historic Site, was run by Julia Wolfe, mother of novelist Thomas Wolfe, who immortalized it as 'Dixieland' in his 1929 novel 'Look Homeward, Angel.' During the 1918 influenza epidemic, Thomas's older brother Ben died of the flu in an upstairs bedroom at age 26, a loss central to the novel; visitors often pause outside that room and report a chill or faint footsteps in the upper hallway.
• Tombstone Courthouse State Historic ParkMuseum · Tombstone, AZBuilt of red brick in 1882 in a Victorian style, the Cochise County Courthouse served justice for decades before becoming a state historic park and museum.