America's infamous haunted houses still scare up old stories

Some of America's most famous places that are allegedly haunted have been in the news lately.

Q. A few months ago, you wrote that the infamous “Amityville House” in New York was for sale for $1.15 million. Did anyone buy it?

A. Yes. The five-bedroom lakefront home on New York's Long Island, where Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed both of his sleeping parents and four siblings in 1974, was sold for $950,000 several weeks ago.

With Halloween here, it's time for my annual column that answers questions about allegedly haunted places.

The Amityville House, of course, is known as the home where the teenage DeFeo went on his renowned killing spree after claiming he was urged to commit the murders of his six family members by disembodied voices.

The really strange stuff, though, supposedly happened when the next owners moved in. They fled the property just 28 days later, after reporting startling paranormal activities that included beatings by unseen hands, walls that inexplicably oozed with green slime, and occasional visits from a demonlike pig that could grow as large as the house itself.

The resulting movie about their alleged ordeal, “The Amityville Horror,” was released in 1979 and is still considered one of the scariest motion pictures in history.

Subsequent owners have remodeled the property several times through the years, so it looks little like it did when the murders and alleged hauntings occurred in the 1970s. None of those owners has reported any major events that experts would consider paranormal in nature.

Q. What do experts consider the “most haunted” house in America?

A. That unofficial title would probably go to The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, La., a former slave farm that is now operated as a bed-and-breakfast. By some accounts, the rambling estate has been the site of at least 10 murders or other untimely deaths since it was built in 1796.

One frequent visitor from the past is said to be the spirit of a young slave named “Chloe,” who supposedly had her ear cut off by the builder's son-in-law after she was caught eavesdropping. Chloe got some temporary revenge by serving the assailant's two daughters a cake spiked with poisonous oleander, but was soon hanged for the murders.

Several photographs and even videos have been shot through the years that appear to show Chloe's spirit wandering about the estate's beautiful garden, while a number of witnesses swear they have seen the ghosts of the two poisoned girls happily playing on the veranda.

Another frequent visitor is said to be the ghost of William Winter, an attorney who was shot by an unknown assailant as he stood on the front porch in 1871. Winter staggered back inside and made it up the first 17 steps leading to the estate's second floor before he collapsed and died: His shadowy apparition is still seen struggling up those same 17 steps today, only to vanish into thin air.

Ghosts from the slave graveyard that's located on the estate are often said to show up for work. And fabled psychic Jane Roberts, who investigated Myrtles Plantation before her own death in 1984, said walking into its parlor was like “walking into a cocktail party of departed spirits.”

Q. Some time ago, you wrote a customer at singer Bobby Mackey's nightclub in Kentucky sued Mackey after the customer was supposedly roughed up by a ghost who is said to haunt the place. How did the lawsuit turn out?

A. It was dismissed, in part because Mackey's attorney argued that it would be rather difficult to get the allegedly unruly spirit to appear and testify in court.

Mackey's nightclub in Wilder, Ky., is said to be haunted by several spirits, including a headless woman who, records show, was decapitated by two men some say they were devil worshippers in 1896. The ghost who allegedly beat up the modern-day patron is believed to have been one the woman's killers, both of whom were caught and hanged.

According to the lawsuit, the ghostly apparition, wearing a cowboy hat and a noose still around its neck, accosted the patron in the men's bathroom, punched him, threw him to the ground and kicked him. The customer sued Mackey for damages and demanded the singer post signs around the nightclub warning of the malevolent spirit's presence.

In successfully asking for the dismissal, the singer's attorney wrote some prose of his own. To wit:

Souls departed [but] eschewing reposeProve difficult for us lawyers to deposeAnd the Sheriff will greet with crude demeanorMy request to serve a spook's subpoena.