189 haunted destinations cataloged across North Carolina, spanning 70 counties. The collection features museum, haunted house, and outdoor — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Buxton, NC
The current Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was completed in 1870 and stands 198 feet tall, making it one of the tallest brick lighthouses in the world. The Outer Banks coast it guards is historically called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. The earlier 1803 lighthouse on the same site was associated by tradition with the 1812 disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston, daughter of former Vice President Aaron Burr.
Wilkesboro, NC
The Old Wilkes Jail in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, was built in 1859 and served as the Wilkes County jail until 1915. One of the best-preserved nineteenth-century jails in the state, it held Tom Dula, the folk-ballad outlaw, ahead of his trial for the 1866 murder of Laura Foster. Restored in the 1960s-70s, it operates today as part of the Wilkes Heritage Museum.
Asheville, NC
The Grove Park Inn opened on July 12, 1913, built in just under a year by St. Louis pharmaceutical magnate Edwin Wiley Grove and his son-in-law Fred Loring Seely. The Arts and Crafts resort is faced with native granite hauled from Sunset Mountain.
Kure Beach, NC
Fort Fisher was the largest earthwork fortification of the Civil War, built by the Confederacy beginning in 1861 to protect blockade-running traffic into the port of Wilmington. After a failed Christmas Eve 1864 assault, a combined Union land and naval bombardment captured the fort in January 1865. Fort Fisher's fall closed the last open Confederate seaport.
Greensboro, NC
The Carolina Theatre in Greensboro, North Carolina, opened on Halloween night 1927 as a vaudeville and silent-movie palace. Designed in a lavish 1920s architectural style with chandeliers, ornate plaster, and a balcony auditorium, it hosted Ethel Barrymore, Bob Hope, and Elvis Presley during its operating decades. A 1981 arson fire killed the woman who set it; the theatre was subsequently restored.
Wilmington, NC
Thalian Hall at 310 Chestnut Street in Wilmington, North Carolina opened on October 12, 1858 as the combined east wing of Wilmington City Hall and a public theater. Designed by John Montague Trimble, the leading 19th-century American theater architect, it is the only surviving Trimble theater and one of the oldest continuously operating performing-arts venues in the United States.
Asheville, NC
The Basilica of St. Lawrence is a Spanish Renaissance Revival Catholic church completed in 1909, designed by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino with R.S. Smith. Its 58-by-82-foot freestanding tile dome is reported as the largest of its kind in North America. Pope John Paul II elevated the church to minor basilica status in 1993.
Asheville, NC
Barley's Taproom occupies a 1920s commercial building on Biltmore Avenue, originally constructed as the Wright Building / Albert-Brown Appliance store. The wider block sits in the historic core of downtown Asheville near the site of the 1906 Will Harris mass shooting, an event that left five people dead — two police officers and three Black civilians — and remains one of the city's most consequential incidents of early-20th-century racial violence.
Asheville, NC
Chicken Alley is a short downtown Asheville passageway between North Lexington Avenue and Carolina Lane, near Woodfin Street. The alley is named for the chicken-processing plant operated by Sam and Argie Young that once stood there, and is now defined by Molly Must's 2011 rooster mural.
Asheville, NC
The Flatiron Building is a nine-story, 52,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts office building at the corner of Battery Park Avenue and Wall Street, completed in 1926 by architect Albert C. Wirth for developer L.B. Jackson as part of E.W. Grove's Battery Park Hill redevelopment. It opened on May 15, 2024 as the 71-room Flat Iron Hotel after a multi-year restoration.
Asheville, NC
Ghost City Tours is a multi-city ghost-walk operator running nightly walking tours in Asheville since 2012. The Asheville program consists of two distinct products: the all-ages Ghosts of Asheville Tour and the 16+ Silence Between the Pines Ghost Tour. As of this listing, the operator has not published a haunted-locations directory or specific route stops for Asheville.
Asheville, NC
Helen's Bridge is a quarried-stone arch bridge built in 1909 on Beaucatcher Mountain to provide carriage access to the Zealandia Mansion. The bridge appears as a landmark in Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel. It is one of Asheville's best-known ghost-tour stops, though no documentary evidence supports the central Helen legend.
Asheville, NC
Highland Hospital was a private psychiatric hospital in Asheville's Montford district founded in 1904 by Dr. Robert S. Carroll. On the night of March 10-11, 1948, a fire in the Central Building's diet kitchen killed nine women, including the writer and artist Zelda Fitzgerald. Highland Hall, Rumbough House, and Homewood Castle still stand on Zillicoa Street.
Asheville, NC
The Jackson Building is a 15-story, 140-foot neo-Gothic skyscraper completed in 1924 on Pack Square, the first skyscraper in Western North Carolina. Developer Lynwood B. Jackson commissioned architect Ronald Greene to design it on a 27-by-60-foot lot previously occupied by Thomas Wolfe's father's tombstone business.
Asheville, NC
The Battery Park Hotel is a 14-story brick Renaissance Revival hotel completed in 1924 in downtown Asheville. Built by tonic magnate Edwin W. Grove on the leveled site of an earlier 1886 Queen Anne hotel of the same name, the building closed as a hotel in 1972 and was converted into senior apartments, which it remains today.
Asheville, NC
Pack's Tavern occupies the Hayes and Hopson Building, built in 1907 as a lumber supply warehouse behind Pack Square. During Prohibition (1920-1933), the basement was a major moonshine distribution hub linked by an underground tunnel under Eagle Street. The building became Pack's Tavern in 2010.
Asheville, NC
Riverside Cemetery was founded on August 4, 1885 by the Asheville Cemetery Company as a garden-style burial ground in the Montford neighborhood. The 87-acre site contains more than 13,000 burials including writers Thomas Wolfe and O. Henry, and sits near the location of the 1865 Battle of Asheville. The City of Asheville has owned and operated the cemetery since 1952.
Asheville, NC
Colonel Daniel Reynolds built this 'double-pile' brick home on a knoll of Reynolds Mountain in 1847 on roughly 1,500 acres given to his wife Susan Adelia Baird by her father Israel Baird. The house remained in the Reynolds family until 1972, when it became a bed-and-breakfast. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1984 and is one of fewer than ten surviving pre-Civil War brick houses in Western North Carolina.
Asheville, NC
The Smith-McDowell House is a c.1840 brick Greek Revival mansion in Asheville — the oldest surviving brick structure in Buncombe County — built by James McConnell Smith, one of the county's largest enslavers. The house was added to the National Register in 1975 and now operates as the Asheville Museum of History under the Western North Carolina Historical Association.
Asheville, NC
The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and constructed between 1889 and 1895 for George Washington Vanderbilt II. At 178,926 square feet with 250 rooms, it remains the largest privately owned house in the United States. Vanderbilt died unexpectedly in 1914 from complications following an appendectomy; the estate has been open to the public since 1930 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
Asheville, NC
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial is the 29-room Queen Anne boardinghouse 'Old Kentucky Home,' purchased in 1906 by Julia Wolfe and immortalized as 'Dixieland' in her son Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel. The house was built in 1883 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.
Asheville, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Asheville program under the local brand Asheville Terrors (also marketed as Asheville Ghosts), running a nightly downtown walking tour plus two haunted pub crawl editions. The flagship route covers the Jackson Building, the Battery Park Hotel, and the Flatiron Building.
Charlotte, NC
The building at 401 West 9th Street was built in 1897 as the Crowell-Berryhill Store, a fixture corner-store in Charlotte's Fourth Ward in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ernest Wiley Berryhill, who passed away in 1931, operated the store as one of the partners. Alexander Michael's Restaurant opened in the building in January 1983 and continues to operate as a neighborhood tavern.
Charlotte, NC
The Bootlegger House is an 1894 Queen Anne / Eastlake cottage originally built in Charlotte's Brooklyn (now Second Ward) neighborhood. When Brooklyn was demolished by urban renewal in the 1970s, Michael Trent purchased the house for $50 and paid to have it moved to its current Fourth Ward location at 400 N Poplar Street. The home is named for hidden compartments under the foyer stairs reportedly used during Prohibition.
Charlotte, NC
The Carolina Theatre at 230 North Tryon Street opened in 1927 as a movie and vaudeville palace and closed in 1978 after decades of decline. Foundation For The Carolinas led a roughly $90 million restoration campaign beginning in 2017, and the 906-seat theatre reopened in March 2025 after nearly fifty years dark, anchored to a new mixed-use development that includes the Foundation's headquarters.
Charlotte, NC
Charlotte NC Tours is a locally based, multi-format tour operator running Segway, Rydable-scooter, and walking tours through Uptown Charlotte, including three separately ticketed ghost-themed products covering the Historic Fourth Ward, Historic First Ward, and downtown Tryon Street.
Charlotte, NC
Built in 1915 in Charlotte's Myers Park neighborhood, the house was purchased and tripled in size in 1919 by tobacco and energy magnate James Buchanan Duke, who conceived The Duke Endowment there. Later owned by the Cannon family, who renamed it White Oaks, it has operated as a nonprofit historic inn since 1998.
Charlotte, NC
The Dunhill Hotel opened in 1929 at 237 North Tryon Street as Mayfair Manor, a 10-story Louis Asbury Sr.-designed apartment-hotel. The building sat abandoned after 1981 and was acquired by Dunhill Development for a 1988 renovation; during that work human remains were discovered in the elevator shaft. The remains were identified by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police in May 2023 as Oliver 'Doc' Mundy, a WWII veteran from Mooresville. The Dunhill operates today as a 60-room boutique hotel on the National Register and Historic Hotels of America rosters.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCharlotte, NC
Elmwood / Pinewood Cemetery is a 72-acre historic municipal cemetery in Uptown Charlotte, established in 1853 to serve the growing city. The grounds operated as two segregated burial grounds — Elmwood for white burials and Pinewood for Black burials — with a fence separating them through the early 20th century. City Councilman Fred Alexander led the campaign that culminated in the fence's removal in January 1969.
Charlotte, NC
Historic Rosedale is an 1815 Federal-style 15-room plantation home on the remaining nine acres of the original 900-acre Caldwell-Davidson family property. The site operates today as a house museum and event venue with regular interpretive programming and partnerships with the Charlotte Area Paranormal Society.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCharlotte, NC
McAlpine Creek Greenway, opened in 1978 as North Carolina's first Piedmont public greenway, follows a creek corridor near Charlotte's Independence Boulevard. The trail passes the ruins of the Lucas Family Grist Mill, constructed in the early 1900s on the foundations of a mill operating as early as 1820.
Charlotte, NC
The Liddell-McNinch House was commissioned in 1892 by businessman Vinton Liddell in Charlotte's Fourth Ward and is one of the finest surviving Queen Anne / Shingle-style residences in North Carolina. Charlotte Mayor Samuel S. McNinch later acquired and lived in the home, which hosted President William Howard Taft on May 20, 1909. The house has operated as the McNinch House Restaurant since 1989 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Charlotte, NC
Nightly Spirits is a multi-city ghost-tour and haunted-pub-crawl operator running public and private programs in about 20 U.S. cities. Charlotte is described by the operator as one of its original locations. The company has been recognized as a top-rated U.S. ghost tour by USA Today in multiple years and covered by the Charlotte Observer.
Charlotte, NC
Charlotte Fire Station No. 4 was built in the 1925 era and served as an active firehouse for decades. On April 1, 1934, firefighter Pruett L. Black was killed when he fell roughly 14 feet headfirst through the second-floor pole opening while responding to an alarm. The building later housed the Charlotte Firefighters Museum from 2002 to 2009 and is now an adaptive-reuse commercial property.
Charlotte, NC
Old Settlers' Cemetery served as Charlotte's first municipal burial ground from about 1776 until 1884. It holds the graves of Revolutionary War and Civil War dead, Charlotte's founding father Colonel Thomas Polk, and North Carolina Governor Nathaniel Alexander. The City of Charlotte continues to administer the grounds today.
Charlotte, NC
Queen City Ghosts, also marketed as Charlotte Ghost Tours, is a locally focused walking-tour company running a nightly one-hour ghost tour of Uptown Charlotte, meeting at The Dunhill Hotel.
Charlotte, NC
Rí Rá Irish Pub Charlotte opened on March 14, 1997 at 208 North Tryon Street in what local sources describe as the second-oldest original building in Uptown Charlotte. The building previously served as a bank and a textile factory. The pub survived a major fire in 2009 and is part of the larger Rí Rá Irish Pub group, designed with a Victorian bar restored from a Dublin barracks and a statue of St. Patrick from the mid-1800s.
Charlotte, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Charlotte program under the consumer brand "Queen City Ghosts," a nightly candlelight walking tour of uptown Charlotte's Barringer Hotel, McNinch House, Old Settlers' Cemetery, and Carolina Theatre, part of the company's multi-city chain of city-branded ghost tours.
Wilmington, NC
The Bellamy Mansion at 503 Market Street in Wilmington, North Carolina was constructed between 1859 and 1861 for Dr. John D. Bellamy and his family. The 22-room Italianate mansion was built largely by enslaved and freed Black artisans. Union forces occupied the home in early 1865, and two Bellamy daughters — Eliza and Ellen — lived in the house until their deaths, with Ellen remaining until 1946.
Wilmington, NC
The Burgwin-Wright House at 224 Market Street in Wilmington, North Carolina was built in 1770 for merchant, planter, and government official John Burgwin atop the ballast-stone foundations of Wilmington's former town jail (1744-1768). It is the only Wilmington structure from the colonial era open to the public and is preserved as a house museum by the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of North Carolina.
Wilmington, NC
The Cotton Exchange at 321 North Front Street in Wilmington, North Carolina is a downtown commercial complex of eight restored 19th-century buildings — many of them associated with the cotton trade that defined the city's commerce in the late 1800s — that have been adaptively reused since the 1970s as a unified shopping and dining district housing about 30 tenants.
Wilmington, NC
The Latimer House at 126 South Third Street in Wilmington, North Carolina was completed in 1852 for merchant Zebulon Latimer and his family. The four-story, 10,000-square-foot Italianate home was acquired by the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in 1963 and serves as its headquarters and as a house museum. The property includes preserved outbuildings associated with the people Latimer enslaved.
Wilmington, NC
Michael's on the Waterfront occupies a 19th-century building at 5 South Water Street in Wilmington, North Carolina, on the city's downtown waterfront. According to local tour operators and the Wilmington tourism board, the building's earlier life included use as the Blue Post Bar, identified in waterfront folklore as a 19th-century brothel and drinking establishment.
Wilmington, NC
The main branch of the New Hanover County Public Library at 201 Chestnut Street in Wilmington, North Carolina opened in March 1981 in a converted former Belk-Beery department store at the corner of Third and Chestnut Streets. The library houses the North Carolina Room, the county's principal local-history and genealogy collection.
Wilmington, NC
The Orton Billiards and Pool Room at 133 North Front Street in Wilmington, North Carolina occupies the surviving basement of the Orton Hotel (built 1886), which burned in a 1949 fire that killed at least two guests. The pool room added in 1888 has operated continuously since and is recognized as the oldest continuously operating pool room in the United States.
Wilmington, NC
Poplar Grove Plantation north of Wilmington, North Carolina began when James Foy purchased the land in 1795. His grandson Joseph Mumford Foy rebuilt the manor house circa 1849 after the original homestead burned, and under his stewardship the plantation became one of North Carolina's earliest large-scale peanut farms, encompassing over 2,000 acres with 59 enslaved workers by 1860. The manor was restored in 1980 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Wilmington, NC
The Price-Gause House at 514 Market Street in Wilmington, North Carolina was built in 1843 by Dr. William Price on a parcel historically known as Gallows Hill — a site at which public hangings occurred during the colonial and early-republic eras, with many unclaimed bodies reportedly buried on the property. The house currently functions as private commercial offices and is not open to the public.
Wilmington, NC
The Wilmington Railroad Museum at 505 Nutt Street in Wilmington, North Carolina has operated since 1979 in a late-1800s warehouse preserving the history of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, headquartered in Wilmington from 1840 until its move to Jacksonville in 1960. The building is part of Wilmington's broader downtown waterfront railroad heritage corridor.
Wilmington, NC
St. James Episcopal Church at 25 South Third Street in Wilmington, North Carolina is a Gothic Revival parish church whose current building was completed in 1840 for a congregation chartered in 1729. The adjacent graveyard is the oldest cemetery in Wilmington and remained the primary downtown burying ground until Oakdale Cemetery opened in 1855.
Wilmington, NC
US Ghost Adventures runs a nightly, all-ages downtown Wilmington walking tour under the brand Wilmington Ghosts, meeting at Historic Thalian Hall and covering the Cotton Exchange and Riverwalk, plus a separate 21+ haunted pub crawl.
Wilmington, NC
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) was commissioned in April 1941 and served throughout the Pacific War, earning 15 battle stars — more than any other American battleship. When the Navy scheduled her for scrapping in 1960, North Carolina citizens launched a successful campaign to preserve the ship. She has been moored on the Cape Fear River in Wilmington as a memorial and museum since October 1961.
Wilmington, NC
USS North Carolina (BB-55) is the lead ship of the North Carolina-class fast battleships, commissioned in April 1941. The battleship served throughout the Pacific campaign of World War II and earned fifteen battle stars, more than any other American battleship. North Carolina was decommissioned in 1947 and opened as a memorial museum ship in Wilmington in October 1961.
Raleigh, NC
The Andrew Johnson Birthplace is a small late-18th-century gambrel-roof outbuilding, originally a kitchen behind Casso's Inn in downtown Raleigh, where 17th U.S. president Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808 to farmers Jacob and Mary 'Polly' Johnson. The Johnsons lived in the building while working at Casso's Inn. The structure has since been relocated to Mordecai Historic Park, where it is preserved as a museum exhibit alongside the Mordecai House.
Raleigh, NC
Death & Taxes operates inside a 1907 commercial building at 105 West Hargett Street in downtown Raleigh. Per the Ghost Guild's Executive Director Nelson Nauss and ABC11's local coverage, the building's documented earlier uses include a coffin house — with bodies reportedly stacked in the basement during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic — a morgue, and a bank. The Death & Taxes restaurant, opened by Chef Ashley Christensen, occupies the ground floor.
Raleigh, NC
North Carolina's first state psychiatric hospital opened in 1856, championed by reformer Dorothea Dix. The campus eventually expanded to 282 buildings on more than 300 acres before closing in 2012. Approximately 900 patients are buried in the on-site cemetery — many in numbered graves, the last burial in 1970. The City of Raleigh now operates the grounds as Dix Park.
Raleigh, NC
Haywood Hall is a two-story Federal-style frame dwelling built in 1799 for John Haywood, North Carolina's state treasurer for forty years. The Haywood family occupied the house continuously until 1977, when it was bequeathed to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of North Carolina (NSCDA-NC) and opened as a house museum. It is the oldest dwelling still on its original foundation within Raleigh's original city limits, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and is an NSCDA-accredited museum.
Raleigh, NC
The Heck-Andrews House was completed in 1870 for Confederate Colonel Jonathan McGee Heck and his wife Mattie, who raised thirteen children there. It was one of the first major homes built in Raleigh after the Civil War, and one of North Carolina's earliest substantial Second Empire-style mansions. The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and today serves as office space for the North Carolina Association of Realtors.
Raleigh, NC
Historic Oakwood Cemetery was founded in 1869 in Raleigh on land donated by Henry Mordecai from the former Mordecai plantation. It grew out of the 1867 Confederate Cemetery, established after a federal agent ordered Confederate dead removed from Raleigh's national cemetery; more than 500 bodies were exhumed and reburied on Mordecai land within three days. Today the 102-acre nonprofit cemetery contains roughly 1,388 Confederate graves and the burials of governors, senators, chief justices, and Raleigh's first mayor.
Raleigh, NC
Built in 1785 by Joel Lane for his son Henry, the Mordecai House is the oldest house in Raleigh still on its original foundation. The home takes its name from Moses Mordecai, who married into the Lane family and whose descendants occupied the house for five generations until 1967. At its height the property was the center of a roughly 5,000-acre plantation, one of the largest in Wake County, worked by enslaved laborers.
Raleigh, NC
The North Carolina Executive Mansion is the Queen Anne-style residence of the state's governor. Designed by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan and completed under A.G. Bauer in 1891, it has been continuously occupied by sitting governors since Daniel G. Fowle moved in in January 1891. The bricks were made by prison labor from Wake County clay; some still bear inscribed names. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and sits within the Blount Street Historic District.
Raleigh, NC
The North Carolina State Capitol is a Greek Revival statehouse completed in 1840 after the previous State House was destroyed by fire in 1831. Designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis with construction supervised by Scottish architect David Paton, it remains one of the best-preserved examples of a major American civic Greek Revival building still in active legislative-era use. It is a National Historic Landmark and houses the Governor's and Lieutenant Governor's offices.
Raleigh, NC
The Pine State Creamery is a 1928 Moderne-style former dairy plant in Raleigh's Glenwood South neighborhood. Encouraged by the State College Agricultural Extension Service at the end of World War I, the building operated as a dairy farmers' cooperative until its bankruptcy in 1995. The corner structure on Tucker Street and Glenwood Avenue is anchored by a distinctive three-story tower. Adaptive reuse turned the building into a food-and-beverage hub housing successive restaurants and bars including Xoco and, currently, Ark Royal Tiki Bar.
Raleigh, NC
Theatre in the Park began as the Children's Theatre of Raleigh in 1947 and changed to its current name in the early 1970s when it moved into the former National Guard Armory building inside Raleigh's Pullen Park. Executive Director Ira David Wood III — father of actress Evan Rachel Wood — has run the theatre for decades and has played Ebenezer Scrooge in his musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol annually since 1974, missing only one year.
Raleigh, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Raleigh program as "Raleigh Ghosts," a nightly walking tour of downtown Raleigh's State Capitol, Heck-Andrews House, and Executive Mansion, part of the company's multi-city chain of city-branded ghost tours.
Raleigh, NC
The White-Holman House, also known as Whitehall, is a circa-1799 late-Georgian/early-Federal two-story frame dwelling built for William White, North Carolina Secretary of State (1798-1811). It remained in the White family until 1884, when cotton broker William Calvin Holman and his wife Anna Belo Holman bought it and added a two-story Victorian wing. The house was relocated and restored in 1986; it is now a private executive office building.
Winston-Salem, NC
The Historic Brookstown Inn was built in 1837 as the Salem Manufacturing Company, a cotton mill established by the Moravian congregation of Salem. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as the Arista Cotton Mill Complex, it was converted into a 70-room boutique hotel that continues to operate under the Wyndham Trademark Collection.
Winston-Salem, NC
Reynolda House was completed in 1917 as the country estate of R.J. Reynolds, founder of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and his wife Katharine Smith Reynolds. Katharine Reynolds died in 1924 at age 44, four years after her husband. The estate was later converted into a museum of American art by their granddaughter Barbara Babcock Millhouse.
Winston-Salem, NC
God's Acre is the burial ground of the Moravian congregation of Salem, established in 1771 as part of the planned settlement of Salem, North Carolina. The cemetery follows the Moravian tradition of burying members chronologically in sections by gender and marital status, with identical flat grave markers leveling all distinctions of wealth or rank in death.
Winston-Salem, NC
The Salem Tavern was built in 1784 to serve travelers stopping in the Moravian settlement at Salem, North Carolina. The Moravian congregation built and operated the tavern — a common enterprise in Moravian settlements — as a source of revenue and a place of hospitality for outsiders. President George Washington lodged here in May 1791 during his Southern Tour, an event documented in his own diary.
Winston-Salem, NC
Salem College was founded in 1772 by the Moravian Church in Salem, North Carolina, making it the oldest women's college in the United States. The campus occupies buildings spanning three centuries adjacent to the Old Salem historic district. Babcock Dormitory is named for Mary Reynolds Babcock (1908–1953), daughter of R.J. Reynolds Sr. and a philanthropist, whose portrait hangs in the dormitory hallway.
Winston-Salem, NC
The Single Brothers House was built in 1769 as the communal residence and workshop for unmarried men of the Moravian congregation at Salem, North Carolina. The Moravians operated the house as a combined living quarters and craft training facility, with individual brothers assigned to trades including shoemaking, tailoring, and carpentry. The building is part of Old Salem Museums & Gardens, the most intact surviving Moravian settlement in America.
Winston-Salem, NC
The Agnew Hunter Bahnson House was built in the 1920s for Agnew Hunter Bahnson, a Winston-Salem businessman and inventor. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2012 it opened as the Spring House Restaurant, named for a historic spring on the grounds.
Winston-Salem, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Winston-Salem program under the local brand Colonial Haunts, running a nightly Old Salem walking tour from the Frank L. Horton Museum Center past the J. Blum House, the Single Brothers' House, and Salem College.
Winston-Salem, NC
The Zevely House was built in 1815 by Vannimmen Zevely, making it the oldest surviving house in Winston-Salem. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Federal-style structure has served multiple tenants over two centuries before being converted into Bernardin's Restaurant.
New Bern, NC
The Attmore-Oliver House at 511 Broad Street in New Bern, North Carolina, was originally built around 1790 for Samuel Chapman, a retired Continental Army officer, and substantially enlarged around 1834. The home now serves as the administrative offices and primary museum of the New Bern Historical Society, with a Civil War exhibit focused on the 1862 fall of New Bern and the city's subsequent Union occupation.
New Bern, NC
Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern, North Carolina, was acquired by Christ Episcopal Church in 1800 after the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1798-99 filled the original churchyard burial ground. The City of New Bern took over the cemetery in 1853 and added the distinctive coquina Weeping Arch entrance in 1854. The cemetery holds one of North Carolina's finest collections of 19th-century mortuary statuary.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNew Bern, NC
Craven Parish was established by the 1715 Vestry Act, and Christ Church Parish was formally created in 1741. The congregation's graveyard became the city's primary public burial ground and was overwhelmed during the 1799 yellow fever epidemic, when the dead were interred in mass trench graves. The brick church building dates to 1824 and was rebuilt after an 1871 fire. The church and parish house were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
New Bern, NC
Ghosts of New Bern is a locally based walking-tour operator running a candlelit ghost tour of New Bern's Historic District, departing from 246 Middle Street.
New Bern, NC
Built around 1810 by New Bern merchant John Harvey as a combined residence and commercial building, the Harvey Mansion has operated as an apartment house, boarding school, military academy, Union Army barracks, and the founding site of what became Craven Community College. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
New Bern, NC
New Bern Ghostwalk is an annual fall fundraiser event organized by the New Bern Historical Society, now in its 36th year, combining a self-guided walk through downtown New Bern with guided stops inside Cedar Grove Cemetery.
New Bern, NC
Tryon Palace was completed in 1770 as North Carolina's first permanent colonial capitol and residence for royal governors, designed by architect John Hawks. A cellar fire destroyed the main building in 1798; the reconstructed palace opened in 1959 using original architectural plans.
Greensboro, NC
Built around 1795 and significantly expanded in 1844 by architect Alexander Jackson Davis for Governor John Motley Morehead, Blandwood Mansion is the oldest surviving governor's home in North Carolina and one of the earliest Italianate-style buildings in the American South. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and is operated as a house museum by Preservation Greensboro.
Greensboro, NC
Dana Auditorium was completed in 1961 on the campus of Guilford College, a Quaker-founded institution established in 1837. The ground beneath it was used as a field hospital following the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781, one of the decisive engagements of the American Revolutionary War in the South. The building is named after Richard Henry Dana Jr., a Guilford College benefactor.
Greensboro, NC
Green Hill Cemetery opened in 1877 as Greensboro's first publicly operated cemetery, covering 51 acres along what is now N O Henry Blvd. It was designed in the rural cemetery tradition, featuring winding roads and diverse plantings — more than 700 tree species have been catalogued on the grounds. The gatekeeper's house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Greensboro, NC
The Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781 pitted General Nathanael Greene's Continental Army and militia against Lord Cornwallis's British regulars. Cornwallis technically won the field but at catastrophic cost — nearly a quarter of his effective force. British statesman Charles James Fox later quipped that 'another such victory would ruin the British Army.' Cornwallis withdrew to Wilmington and ultimately to Virginia, where he surrendered at Yorktown seven months later.
Greensboro, NC
M'Coul's Public House operates in the former Piedmont Hotel building on W McGee Street in downtown Greensboro. The Piedmont Hotel served as a brothel for some portion of its history, reportedly into the 1960s. The building's transition to an Irish pub brought new life to the space but preserved the history of its former occupants — or so the ghost stories suggest.
Greensboro, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Greensboro program under the local brand Greensboro Ghosts, running a nightly downtown walking tour covering the Biltmore Hotel, M'Coul's, and the Carolina Theatre.
Edenton, NC
Beverly Hall was built around 1810 and served dual purposes as a private residence and an informal bank, holding deposits for Edenton townspeople. The building is part of Edenton's well-preserved colonial and antebellum streetscape in the downtown historic district.
Edenton, NC
Completed in 1825, the Chowan County Jail served the county seat of Edenton, North Carolina for 150 years. At various points documented as the oldest active jail in the United States, it imprisoned 21 Black men in the collective fear following Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion in Virginia, and held family members of Harriet Jacobs — the enslaved author whose 1861 memoir 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl' documented their incarceration. The building is now a museum operated by the Edenton Historical Commission.
Edenton, NC
Completed in 1767, the Chowan County Courthouse is the oldest government building in North Carolina still in continuous use. Built in Georgian style on the Edenton town green, it is a National Historic Landmark and a rare surviving example of colonial civic architecture in the American South.
Edenton, NC
Completed around 1758 for Francis Corbin, land agent for the Earl of Granville, the Cupola House is the only surviving Southern colonial example of the 'jutt' — a second story that overhangs the first on all four sides. It is listed as a National Historic Landmark and was owned by the Cupola House Association before the Edenton Historical Commission assumed stewardship.
Edenton, NC
Pembroke Hall is an antebellum mansion in Chowan County constructed around 1850. It remained in private ownership through the Civil War era and into the 20th century, when it was occupied by families who later recounted ghost stories to regional newspapers.
Fayetteville, NC
Built in 1788 by Revolutionary War veteran Dolphin Davis, Cool Spring Tavern is the oldest surviving structure in Fayetteville. North Carolina Governor Richard Caswell died here in November 1789 while presiding over the state's Constitutional Convention, making it the site of one of the most historically documented deaths in the city.
Fayetteville, NC
Cross Creek Cemetery was established in 1785, making it the oldest cemetery in Fayetteville and one of the oldest in Cumberland County. Organized into sections for white, free Black, and Hebrew burials, it contains approximately 1,170 gravemarkers dating from 1786 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Fayetteville, NC
The Kyle House is a brick Greek Revival / Italianate structure built around 1855 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972. It sits within Fayetteville's historic residential district on Green Street and has served various civic and private functions since the mid-19th century.
Fayetteville, NC
The Oval Ballroom at Heritage Square in Fayetteville was built in 1818, originally attached to the Halliday-Williams House. It is the only surviving oval ballroom in North Carolina and was the venue for the 1850 trial of Ann K. Simpson, the first woman tried for murder in Cumberland County.
Fayetteville, NC
Built around 1797 on Dick Street in downtown Fayetteville, the Sandford House is the oldest of three colonial-era structures at Heritage Square, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The Woman's Club of Fayetteville has owned and maintained it since 1946.
Hendersonville, NC
On July 18, 1872, brothers Govan and Columbus Adair were publicly hanged at this Henderson County location, convicted of the KKK-linked murders of the Weston family and documented in the New York Herald. The Henderson County Curb Market, established 1924 and built on the current site in 1935, now occupies the former execution ground.
Hendersonville, NC
Henderson County's second courthouse was constructed 1904–1905 in the Classical Revival style and designed by Richard Sharp Smith, who served as resident architect of the Biltmore Estate. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and now houses the Heritage Museum.
Hendersonville, NC
The Skyland Hotel opened June 29, 1929 — three months before the stock market crash — as Hendersonville's premier six-story luxury address, hosting notable guests before conversion to condominiums in 1974.
Hendersonville, NC
The Henderson has operated as an inn since 1919, initially as a single-family home before becoming a boarding house and then a boutique hotel; only one family occupied it before current owner Michael Gilligan took over in 2017.
Salisbury, NC
The Empire Hotel traces its origins to the Boyden House, which opened in 1859 at the heart of Salisbury's commercial district. After the Civil War the building became a billet for Federal officers occupying the town, and it changed hands and names several times before closing in 1963.
Salisbury, NC
Built around 1820, the Hall House is one of Salisbury's oldest surviving antebellum homes. Dr. Josephus Hall served as chief surgeon at the Salisbury Confederate Prison during the Civil War before Union Gen. George Stoneman commandeered the house as his headquarters during the April 1865 raid.
Salisbury, NC
Salisbury's Meroney Theatre opened in the early 1900s as an opera house and cycled through at least six names — Bijou, Fotosho, Colonial, Strand, State, and others — before operating as the Towne Cinema and eventually going dark. Piedmont Players Theatre acquired and restored the building in 1992.
Salisbury, NC
The building at 212 S Main St in downtown Salisbury was constructed in 1922 as a Baptist church. It later converted to use as a community theater and now operates as the Old Courthouse Theatre, one of Salisbury's primary performing arts venues.
Statesville, NC
Bostian Bridge is a historic railroad bridge in North Carolina.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPStatesville, NC
Dating to 1756, the Old Fourth Creek Burying Ground is considered the oldest extant landmark in Iredell County. It holds the graves of Statesville and Iredell County founders, and a 1933 survey found that most of the estimated 1,380 grave markers had been lost to time.
Statesville, NC
The Old Iredell County Jail at the corner of Meeting Street and Court Street in Statesville was built in 1909 with a capacity of up to 50 inmates. It operated for approximately 60 years and saw roughly a dozen executions on its grounds during its active service. The jail is now inactive and serves as a stop on the Haunted Statesville Ghost Tour.
Statesville, NC
The Vance Hotel was built in 1922 on the site of the earlier Gaither Boarding House, where a young resident named Arlene Mitchell died of influenza in 1918. The hotel became a downtown Statesville landmark and was purchased by the city in 2012.
Durham, NC
The Cabe Lands Cemetery serves as the family burial ground of John Cabe, a prominent planter, miller, and politician who acquired over 300 acres along the Eno River in 1780 and expanded his holdings to approximately 3,000 acres by his death in 1818. The cemetery reflects early settlement patterns in the Eno River Valley during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Durham, NC
The Carolina Theatre of Durham opened as the Durham Auditorium on February 2, 1926, was remodeled for film in 1929 and renamed The Carolina, and became one of downtown Durham's signature venues. During its first 37 years it operated under segregation, and in 1962 it desegregated following years of student-led 'Round Robin' protests organized by the local NAACP youth chapter.
Durham, NC
Completed in 1930 and designed by Durham architect George Watts Carr Sr. with George W. Kane as general contractor, the Snow Building is considered — alongside the Kress Building — one of Durham's two most elaborate Art Deco buildings. It was developed by Anna Exum Snow on family land gifted to her as a wedding present and continues to function as offices, retail, and a rooftop penthouse.
Goldsboro, NC
Cherry Hospital was established in 1880 as the Asylum for the Colored Insane in Goldsboro, North Carolina — the sole mental health institution serving the state's entire Black population for its first 85 years. The hospital used electroshock therapy and caged unruly patients until at least 1956. It was desegregated in 1964, continued operating until 2016 when a new facility opened, and the original campus is now used as an agricultural research station with two patient cemeteries still on the grounds.
Goldsboro, NC
The Solomon Weil House was built in 1875 at 204 W. Chestnut St in Goldsboro, a yellow Victorian listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Solomon Weil and his brother Henry were prominent members of Goldsboro's German-Jewish merchant community. The house and the adjacent Henry Weil House are jointly listed on the National Register.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGoldsboro, NC
The Waynesborough House operated for decades as the Hotel Goldsboro, serving travelers and commercial visitors in the heart of Wayne County's seat. The building is now a mixed-use structure in downtown Goldsboro and carries its hotel-era reputation for unexplained activity.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMooresville, NC
Brawley Middle School is an educational institution in North Carolina.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMooresville, NC
Lake Norman was created between 1959 and 1963 when Duke Power dammed the Catawba River, flooding a valley that contained an 1781 Revolutionary War battlefield, old mill sites, multiple cemeteries, and dozens of homesteads. The lake is the largest man-made lake in North Carolina.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMooresville, NC
The old gymnasium at Mooresville High School was built in 1967 and became the site of persistent unexplained sounds starting in the early 1970s — attributed to a student who died in a car accident around that time.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMorganton, NC
The Western North Carolina Insane Asylum opened in Morganton in 1883, later renamed Broughton Hospital. Its patient cemetery holds the remains of hundreds of individuals who died in institutional care over more than a century, many of them buried under numbered markers rather than named stones.
Morganton, NC
The Brown Mountain Lights are an unexplained luminous phenomenon reported above Brown Mountain in the Pisgah National Forest of western North Carolina. The earliest documented observations date from the 1910s; Cherokee and Catawba oral traditions reference the lights for centuries before that. The United States Geological Survey investigated the phenomenon in 1913 and 1922.
Morganton, NC
Morganton, the Burke County seat in western North Carolina, has a documented history stretching back to the 18th century. The City of Morganton operates a ghost walk through its National Register Downtown Historic District, a 1.5-mile corridor with 62 contributing buildings from 1889 to 1940. The walk was researched by Joshua P. Warren, a paranormal investigator who contributed historical documentation for each stop.
Caroleen, NC
This Shadowlands entry appears to reference the same Second Broad River bridge crossing as the 'caroleen-bridge' entry, with coordinates approximately 35 meters apart. Both carry the same sisters hitchhiker legend with minor narrative variation. The two entries are likely duplicate Shadowlands submissions for a single location.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCaroleen, NC
The Caroleen Bridge spans the Second Broad River on US-221A in the small mill community of Caroleen, Rutherford County. Caroleen was historically a company mill town and is now a quiet rural community. The bridge itself is a public highway structure with no formal historical designation.
Chapel Hill, NC
Gimghoul Castle is the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, headquarters of the Order of Gimghoul, a secret society founded in 1889 at the University of North Carolina. The fieldstone building was completed in 1926 by Waldensian stonemasons from Valdese, North Carolina. It sits near Battle Park and is closed to the public.
Chapel Hill, NC
US Ghost Adventures runs its Chapel Hill program as a nightly walking tour meeting at the Ackland Art Museum, covering the historic Carolina Inn, Memorial Hall, and Caldwell Hall on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.
Gastonia, NC
Lincoln Academy was a boarding and day school for African American students near Crowders Mountain in Gaston County, North Carolina, founded by missionary educator Emily Catherine Prudden and opened in 1888. Administered by the American Missionary Association, it educated thousands until it closed in 1955; its buildings have since been demolished, leaving a cemetery and a historical marker.
Gastonia, NC
Built in 1902 and expanded to become North Carolina's largest textile mill, the Loray Mill was the site of the 1929 Gastonia Strike — a Communist-led labor action in which union organizer Ella May Wiggins was shot and killed and Police Chief Orville Aderholt was fatally shot on the picket line. The strike drew international attention and remains one of the most significant labor episodes in Southern U.S. history.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPGreenville, NC
The Evans family settled a 100-acre plantation near the Tar River in the early 19th century, and the town of Greenville grew up around their land. When Pitt Plaza mall was built in 1966, approximately two dozen Evans family graves were left in place and sealed behind a brick wall and concrete slab in what became the parking deck. No grass has grown over the site since construction.
Greenville, NC
The original Pitt County Courthouse, built in 1910 in the Classical Revival style, served as the county's main judicial building into the 20th century. When the jail cells it once hosted were relocated, lingering reports of unusual activity in the building — nightly knocking, disembodied voices, and shared inmate dreams — had already reached the local press.
Hickory, NC
The building at 30 3rd St NW began as a Hickory city municipal structure and operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition. The Hickory Community Theatre moved in and has operated there for decades, becoming one of the most active community theatre programs in the North Carolina foothills.
Hickory, NC
Lenoir-Rhyne University was founded in 1891 in Hickory, NC. Schaeffer Hall, one of the campus's original residential buildings, and P.E. Monroe Auditorium are the two structures most associated with the university's documented ghost tradition.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLaurinburg, NC
A rural road intersection seven miles southeast of Laurinburg, North Carolina, where local legend holds that a mother and daughter were killed when their stalled car was struck by a semi-truck. The spot became known as Gravity Hill after motorists began reporting that vehicles placed in neutral appeared to roll uphill.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLaurinburg, NC
Founded in 1785, Stewartsville Cemetery is among the oldest intact burial grounds in Scotland County, notable for holding interments of white, free Black, and Native American community members in an era when segregated burial was the norm. The grave of Rev. Colin Lindsay is marked here, and a local tradition holds his mother was buried alive around 1740 and revived when grave robbers disturbed her coffin to steal a ring.
Manteo, NC
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island in North Carolina preserves the location of the 1585-1590 English Roanoke colonies, including the 1587 colony of 117 men, women, and children that vanished before John White's return supply voyage in 1590. The site is administered by the National Park Service.
Manteo, NC
US Ghost Adventures runs its Outer Banks program under the consumer brand 'Pirate City Ghosts,' a nightly Manteo walking tour meeting at Town Common Park and covering the Cora Mae Basnight Bridge, the Roanoke Island Inn, and the Elizabeth II ghost-ship replica.
Marion, NC
Linville Gorge, carved by the Linville River through the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of Burke and McDowell Counties, is the deepest river gorge in the eastern United States. Managed as wilderness within Pisgah National Forest, the gorge has been associated with the Brown Mountain Lights phenomenon since at least 1910, when documented reports began appearing in print. USGS scientist George R. Mansfield conducted the first formal government investigation in 1922.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMarion, NC
Pleasant Gardens Baptist Church is an active SBC congregation in the Pleasant Gardens community of McDowell County, listed in the SBC Churches Directory. The church maintains an active cemetery (recorded on Find a Grave) and is adjacent to Pleasant Gardens Elementary School. No NRHP listing or formal historical documentation was located during research.
Ocracoke, NC
Ocracoke Light is the oldest operating lighthouse in North Carolina and the second-oldest operating lighthouse in the United States. Built in 1823 by Noah Porter for $11,359, the 75-foot whitewashed brick tower has guided ships through Ocracoke Inlet for over two centuries and has been administered by the Cape Hatteras National Seashore since 1951.
Ocracoke, NC
Teach's Hole is the channel off Ocracoke Island where the pirate Edward "Blackbeard" Teach was killed in a battle with Royal Navy Lt. Robert Maynard on November 22, 1718, after using nearby Springer's Point as his base for over a year.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPRutherfordton, NC
Gilboa is a historic Methodist congregation near Rutherfordton in Rutherford County, North Carolina, with roots in the late 1700s and a hillside cemetery holding Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans. The site is tied to the story of Daniel Keith, hanged in Rutherford County in 1880 and reputedly buried here in an unmarked grave.
Rutherfordton, NC
On December 11, 1880, a man named Daniel Keith was publicly hanged at the old Rutherford County jail in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, after being convicted in the death of a young girl. Local tradition holds that Keith maintained his innocence, and the case is remembered in the county as a likely wrongful execution. The jail was later converted to offices and demolished in 1960.
Sanford, NC
Built in 1772 by Philip Alston on a horseshoe bend of the Deep River, the House in the Horseshoe was the site of a documented Revolutionary War engagement on August 5, 1781, when Loyalist colonel David Fanning led a militia attack against Alston's Patriot forces. It is now a North Carolina State Historic Site.
Sanford, NC
The Temple Theatre opened in 1925 on Carthage Street in Sanford, NC, built by Robert Ingram Sr. as a vaudeville and film house with Art Deco and Colonial Revival detailing. It closed in the 1960s and sat dark for years before restoration; it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operated by the Temple Theatre Company.
Atlantic Beach, NC
Fort Macon is a Third System brick coastal fort built between 1826 and 1834 to guard Beaufort Inlet on the North Carolina coast, named for U.S. Senator Nathaniel Macon. North Carolina militia seized the fort for the Confederacy in April 1861, and Union forces under Major General Ambrose E. Burnside recaptured it in 1862. It is now the centerpiece of Fort Macon State Park.
Banner Elk, NC
Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina was founded in 1900 by Edgar Tufts as an Appalachian mission school and grew into a four-year liberal arts college. Tate Hall, the dormitory at the center of the college's ghost folklore, was originally Grace Memorial Hospital — a 20-bed medical facility established by Tufts that served the surrounding mountain communities. The hospital was renovated into dormitory use in 1961 and renamed in honor of Dr. Tate.
Bear Creek, NC
The Devil's Tramping Ground in Chatham County, North Carolina is a 40-foot circle of bare earth where a foot-wide path supports no vegetation. Written accounts date to the 1800s; oral accounts extend to before the American Revolution. The site sits ten miles from Siler City in the Harper's Crossroads area of Bear Creek and appears on state historical records through the NCpedia and Visit North Carolina databases.
Beaufort, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Beaufort, NC program under the local brand 'Beaufort Black Veil Ghost Tours' (also marketed as Beaufort Terrors), a nightly one-hour walking tour of the historic waterfront district, independently listed and reviewed on GetYourGuide.
Blowing Rock, NC
Textile magnate Moses Cone built Flat Top Manor in 1901 as a country retreat on 3,500 acres in the North Carolina high country; his wife Bertha survived him and managed the estate until her death, bequeathing it to the federal government with instructions it remain closed — instructions that were not followed.
Bryson City, NC
On December 30, 1882, a group of approximately 30 incarcerated men — almost all of them Black, working under the post-Civil War convict lease system — were being ferried across the rain-swollen Tuckasegee River to continue construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad's Cowee Tunnel near Dillsboro. The raft capsized. Nineteen men, shackled in leg irons, drowned. They were buried in unmarked graves on the mountain above the tunnel. A North Carolina historical marker acknowledging their deaths was unveiled in May 2024.
Burlington, NC
Burlington's Paramount Theatre opened in 1928 as the Grand Theatre, built by J.R. Qualls. The name changed to the Paramount in 1929 and the venue has operated continuously as a downtown entertainment anchor ever since, surviving the decline that closed many single-screen theaters.
Concord, NC
The Cabarrus County Courthouse at 65 Union St S in Concord, North Carolina, was built between 1875 and 1876 to replace an earlier courthouse destroyed by fire in 1875. The Second Empire structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is operated by the Historic Cabarrus Association as a museum and arts venue. It retains decommissioned prison cells on its upper floors from its years of judicial and custodial use.
Corolla, NC
Currituck Beach Lighthouse, built in 1875, was the last major lighthouse constructed on the North Carolina coast, filling a dark gap in the Outer Banks navigational chain between Bodie Island and Cape Henry. The 162-foot unpainted brick tower is one of the tallest brick lighthouse structures on the East Coast. The lighthouse and adjacent Keepers' Dwelling are operated as a museum by the Outer Banks Conservationists.
Creswell, NC
Somerset Place is a state historic site on the northern shore of Lake Phelps in Washington County, North Carolina. Between 1785 and 1865 it was one of the four largest plantations in North Carolina; by 1860 more than 300 enslaved people lived and worked on the property. The site is now operated by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPDudley, NC
The Battle of Goldsborough Bridge took place December 17, 1862, when 10,000 Union troops under Brig. Gen. John G. Foster routed a smaller Confederate force and destroyed the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad bridge over the Neuse River — severing a major Confederate supply line to Virginia. Approximately 150 Confederate casualties resulted. The 32-acre site preserves surviving earthworks.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPElizabeth City, NC
The Cropsey family moved from Brooklyn to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in 1898 and settled at 1901 Riverside Avenue, a Queen Anne house they called Seven Pines on the bank of the Pasquotank River. On the night of November 20, 1901, 19-year-old Ella Maud 'Nell' Cropsey vanished after speaking with her boyfriend James Wilcox on the porch. Her body was recovered from the river 37 days later. Wilcox was tried twice, convicted of second-degree murder in 1903, and served roughly fifteen years.
Flat Rock, NC
The building at 2905 Greenville Hwy in Flat Rock, Henderson County, opened around 1850 as the Farmer Hotel. It claims to be the oldest continuously operating inn in North Carolina. During the Civil War, Confederate forces used the structure as a quartering point, with Captain B.T. Morris and his troops documented as having stayed there. The inn has operated under several names, most recently as Mansouri Mansion.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPFletcher, NC
Calvary Episcopal Church in Fletcher was organized in 1857 and the church building was consecrated on August 21, 1859, by the Right Reverend Atkinson, bishop of the diocese of North Carolina. The parish was founded by Daniel and Helen Craig Blake, proprietors of a stagecoach inn and way station just north of Fletcher, who donated the land. The churchyard contains burials dating to the 1860s and earlier (in unmarked graves) and is the resting place of generations of Henderson County families, including the town's namesake Dr. George W. Fletcher.
Four Oaks, NC
Bentonville Battleground is the site of the March 1865 Battle of Bentonville, one of the last major Civil War engagements in North Carolina. Hundreds of soldiers died in the fighting.
Hatteras, NC
The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum opened in 2002 at Hatteras Village and underwent a major renovation, reopening in 2024. It documents over 5,000 ships lost off the Outer Banks since 1526 — among the highest concentration of shipwrecks on the American seaboard. Exhibits cover the Spanish colonial era, piracy, Civil War naval engagements, and World War II's 'Torpedo Alley,' during which German U-boats sank hundreds of Allied vessels in sight of North Carolina beaches.
Havelock, NC
Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, established during World War II on land in Craven County, North Carolina, was built on land that included the Little Witness Cemetery, where Kissie Ann Sykes and members of her family were buried. Construction of the flight line disturbed or displaced some of the cemetery's graves, separating Kissie's burial site from those of family members.
Hayesville, NC
Hayesville is the county seat of Clay County, North Carolina, situated in the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Georgia border. The surrounding Cherokee County and Clay County region lies within the ancestral territory of the Cherokee Nation — the Trail of Tears passed through this area in 1838-1839. European settlement followed in the early 19th century, and the town of Hayesville was formally established in 1861. The region's layered history — Cherokee displacement, mountain settlement, and 20th-century commercial development — provides the context for its paranormal character.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHildebran, NC
Established in 1905 by Michael Erastus Rudisill on a 1,500-acre Burke County tract, the Henry River Mill Village operated as a self-sufficient textile community producing fine cotton yarns until the mill closed in 1971 and burned in 1977.
Huntersville, NC
Latta Place in Huntersville, North Carolina was built around 1800 by James Latta, an Irish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1785 and built a successful merchant business before converting his Mecklenburg County land into a cotton plantation. By his retirement in 1820, the property encompassed 742 acres worked by 34 enslaved people. Mecklenburg County closed the site in 2021 and is investing $11.2 million in a redesigned interpretive experience expected to open in 2026.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPJamestown, NC
The bridge associated with Lydia's Bridge folklore is a former railroad underpass along old US Highway 70 in Jamestown, North Carolina. The legend has been linked by researchers Michael Renegar and Amy Greer to Annie L. Jackson, a Greensboro woman killed in a June 1920 automobile accident on the High Point Road. A state historical marker was installed at the site in 2023.
Kinston, NC
The CSS Neuse was a Confederate ironclad gunboat built at White Hall, NC and launched in Kinston in 1863. She never saw combat. When Union forces advanced on Kinston in March 1865, her crew scuttled and detonated her in the Neuse River to prevent capture. She lay submerged for 98 years before being raised in 1963 and is now the centerpiece of a state historic site.
Lenoir, NC
The Chapel of Rest was built in 1887 when Samuel Legerwood Patterson — first elected NC Agricultural Commissioner — deeded land on his Happy Valley estate to the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina. The original chapel burned in 1916 and was rebuilt in 1917. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, it is maintained by the Chapel of Rest Preservation Society, which acquired the property in 1984.
Lexington, NC
Lexington's courthouse was built in 1858 in a stone temple form, making it one of the more architecturally distinctive county seats in the North Carolina piedmont. Damage from Lexington's 1932 'Big Fire' led to significant renovation work in 1933; the building now houses the Davidson County Historical Museum.
Linville Falls, NC
The Linville Gorge Wilderness in Burke County, North Carolina is part of the Pisgah National Forest and contains the deepest river gorge in the eastern United States. The Brown Mountain Lights — unexplained luminous phenomena visible from Wiseman's View and other overlooks near the gorge — were first reported in published accounts around 1910. A 1922 investigation by USGS scientist George R. Mansfield attempted to explain them as reflected headlights and brush fires but could not account for all reported sightings.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLucama, NC
Acid Park is a paranormal site in North Carolina.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLumberton, NC
Meadowbrook Cemetery is a city-owned burial ground in Lumberton, North Carolina, opened in 1907. It is maintained by the City of Lumberton and contains grave markers spanning more than a century of Robeson County residents.
Maco, NC
The Maco Light was a ghost-light phenomenon reported along a stretch of railroad track near Maco Station in Brunswick County from the late 1800s until 1977, when the Seaboard Coast Line removed the rails. It grew out of a real 1856 accident that killed conductor Charles Baldwin, later folded into folklore as the headless brakeman "Joe Baldwin."
Monroe, NC
The Blakeney House at 418 E. Franklin Street in Monroe, North Carolina was built in 1903 by W.S. Blakeney, president of the Bank of Union, who relocated from South Carolina. The Classical Revival design is by the noted Charlotte firm of Hook and Sawyer, with John Wallace as contractor.
Mt Pleasant, NC
Mount Pleasant Prison Camp opened in 1929 in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, operating during the chain-gang era before closing in 2011. The compound remained structurally intact — barbed wire, watchtower, and original dormitories — when distillers Leanne Powell and Thomas Thacker converted it into Southern Grace Distilleries in 2016, releasing their first barrel of bourbon from the former prison dorm in January 2017.
Nags Head, NC
The Bodie Island Lighthouse, built in 1872, is the third light station to stand on this stretch of the North Carolina Outer Banks. Its 156-foot tower marks one of the most treacherous sections of the Graveyard of the Atlantic between Cape Henry and Cape Hatteras.
near Morganton, NC
The Brown Mountain Lights are an intermittent light phenomenon visible from the Burke County, North Carolina, side of Brown Mountain, a low ridge along the Burke-Caldwell county line. Sightings have been documented since 1833. The U.S. Geological Survey investigated the lights in 1913 and again in the 1920s, and the phenomenon has been studied repeatedly by academic researchers since.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNewton, NC
Old St. Paul's Lutheran Church near Newton in Catawba County, North Carolina, is a two-story log-and-weatherboard church built in 1818 by German Lutheran and Reformed settlers. It is one of the oldest existing churches in North Carolina west of the Catawba River and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Its Federal-style interior retains a carved sounding board and an upper gallery historically used to segregate enslaved worshippers.
Ocean Isle Beach, NC
The Winds Resort Beach Club is an operating oceanfront resort on Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County, North Carolina, just north of the South Carolina line and the North Myrtle Beach area. It is a conventional family beach resort with rooms and cottages; its only notable lore is a single ghost story about a guest named 'Sam.'
Old Fort, NC
Old Fort in McDowell County developed around its Western North Carolina Railroad depot in the post-Civil War period, becoming a gateway community to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The McDowell County Historical Society's annual Ghost Walk of Old Fort, documented in the McDowell News as early as 2021, draws on a locally published ghost book and decades of collected oral tradition along the Railroad Avenue corridor.
Rockingham, NC
Rock the Ghost Walk has offered guided tours through Richmond County, North Carolina's documented dark and historic sites since 2018, organized by the Preservation of Downtown Rockingham Project. Tours rotate between an Uptown Ghouls walk through uptown Rockingham, a Haunted Homes walk through the Rockingham Historic District, and a Hamlet Ghost Walk along Main Street in the neighboring Amtrak depot town of Hamlet — alternating annual October public events between the two municipalities.
Rocky Mount, NC
Nash County planter Bennett Bunn built Stonewall Manor around 1830 on the banks of the Tar River, establishing it as the heart of a large plantation. After Bunn's death in the house, Elizabeth Bryan Lewis lived there for approximately fifty years until 1916. The manor is on the National Register of Historic Places and is now managed by the Nash County Historical Association.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPRoxboro, NC
Clarksville Station began as a Victorian train depot built in 1905 in Clarksville, Virginia, serving south-central Virginia and north-central North Carolina until closing in June 1973. The depot was dismantled and moved 45 miles south to Roxboro, NC, where it reopened as a themed restaurant in 1975. Two authentic 1860s railroad cars — one documented as a Civil War hospital car — serve as dining rooms.
Southport, NC
US Ghost Adventures operates its Southport program as "Southport Ghosts," a nightly walking tour of downtown Southport starting at Franklin Square Park, part of the company's multi-city chain of city-branded ghost tours. A verified GetYourGuide booking review corroborates that the program is actively operating.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSwannanoa, NC
Warren Wilson College is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, in the mountains east of Asheville in Buncombe County, North Carolina. It grew out of the Asheville Farm School, founded by Presbyterian women in 1894, and is known today for a distinctive 'triad' model combining academics, on-campus work, and community service on a working farm.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPVander, NC
The Vander Light is a ghost-light legend centered on an active railroad crossing on Old Vander Road in Cumberland County, near the small community of Vander east of Fayetteville. The phenomenon has been reported by local residents for well over a century.
Washington, NC
Built around 1913 for proprietor C. A. Turnage — who incorporated the enterprise as New Theatre Inc. — the Turnage Theatre originally combined a shoe store on its ground floor with a vaudeville theater above. A separate 'talkie' theater was constructed behind the original structure in 1928. Adaptive rehabilitation in the 1990s restored the complex, and it now houses Arts of the Pamlico in a 32,000-square-foot facility with two theaters.
Waynesville, NC
Waynesville, the Haywood County seat, has a documented history stretching back more than 200 years, with a Main Street corridor that preserves commercial buildings from the mid-1800s through the early 20th century. The History and Haunts Tour, operated by Waynesville Walking Tours, grew from the area's rich archive of crime records, Civil War-era history, and community lore gathered by local guides.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWendell, NC
Morphus Bridge Road runs through rural Wake County near Wendell, North Carolina. The bridge crossing has accumulated a local ghost legend involving a family accident said to have occurred in the 1940s, though no historical documentation of the specific event has been found in public records.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWhiteville, NC
Heartbeat Bridge is a popular Columbus County local legend associated with a bridge on Chair Factory Road over swampland near Whiteville. The structure is a public highway bridge with no formal historical designation. No historical murder or documented event corroborating the legend has been identified.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWilliamston, NC
The Screaming Bridge is a rural bridge where Yarrell Creek Road crosses Yarrell Creek (also called Sweet Water Creek) outside Williamston in Martin County, North Carolina. It is known almost entirely for a long-standing local ghost legend rather than for documented history; HauntBound found no archival record confirming the events the legend describes.