59 haunted destinations cataloged across Rhode Island, spanning 10 counties. The collection features museum, haunted house, and haunted hotel — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Cranston, RI
Built in 1790 by William Sprague, the Cranston mansion was home to four generations of one of Rhode Island's most powerful industrial families, including Governors William Sprague III and IV. It is now the headquarters of the Cranston Historical Society and a 28-room museum at the corner of Cranston Street and Dyer Avenue.
Harrisville, RI
The Old Arnold Estate is a 1736 colonial farmhouse on Round Top Road in Harrisville, Rhode Island. The property became internationally known through the experiences of the Perron family, who lived there from 1971 to 1980 and whose accounts inspired the 2013 film The Conjuring. The property's recent commercial operation as a paranormal attraction ended with the November 2024 revocation of its entertainment license.
Providence, RI
Barnaby Castle is an elaborate 2½-story Victorian mansion built in 1875 and expanded in 1888 for retail magnate Jerothmul B. Barnaby, designed by Providence architects Stone, Carpenter & Willson. The house is forever linked to the 1891 murder of Josephine Barnaby, the first prosecuted murder-by-mail in U.S. history. The mansion hosts an annual 'Halloween at the Castle' event and is featured by Doors Open RI.
Newport, RI
Rose Island, a small island in Narragansett Bay near Newport, Rhode Island, served as a U.S. Army quarantine station in the 19th century, where immigrants and sailors arriving with cholera and other contagious diseases were isolated and sometimes died. The island's dead were buried on the grounds; the 1938 hurricane disturbed and reinterred some of those graves. The Rose Island Lighthouse, built in 1869, guided ships around the island until 1971; the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation restored the structure in the 1990s and now operates it for visitors and overnight stays.
Providence, RI
The Brown University Faculty Club occupies the former mansion of textile industrialist Zachariah Allen (1795-1882), built in the mid-19th century in Italianate style. Brown University acquired the building in 1938 and converted it to its Faculty Club, where it has served Brown's faculty, staff, and alumni community for nearly a century.
Providence, RI
Swan Point Cemetery was established in 1846 as one of the United States' earliest garden cemeteries, on an initial 60-acre tract along the Seekonk River in Providence's East Side. Subsequent land acquisitions expanded it to its current 200 acres. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and contains roughly 40,000 interments, including H.P. Lovecraft.
Providence, RI
The Annmary Brown Memorial is a windowless brick library, art gallery, and mausoleum at 21 Brown Street, designed by Providence architect Norman Isham and built 1903-1907 by Civil War General Rush Christopher Hawkins as a memorial to his wife Annmary Brown, who died in 1903. Both Annmary Brown and General Hawkins are interred in the building. It is now operated by the Brown University Library.
Providence, RI
Benefit Street is a historic thoroughfare in Providence's East Side, lined with 18th and 19th-century homes and institutions. The street holds literary significance through Edgar Allan Poe's 1848 engagement to Providence resident Sarah Helen Whitman, whom he met at 88 Benefit Street. Their courtship included time spent at the Providence Athenaeum library.
Providence, RI
Carrie Tower is a 95-foot Italian Renaissance brick-and-limestone clock tower on Brown University's Front Green, designed by Boston architect Guy Lowell and dedicated in 1904. It was a gift to Brown from Paul Bajnotti of Turin, Italy as a memorial to his late wife Caroline Mathilde Brown — granddaughter of Brown's founder Nicholas Brown — who died in 1892. The base bears the inscription 'Love is Strong as Death' from Song of Songs 8:6-7.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPProvidence, RI
The Cathedral of St. John is an Early Gothic Revival Episcopal cathedral built in 1810 by Providence architect John Holden Greene on the site of an earlier 1722 King's Church. The adjacent colonial-era burial ground contains graves of 18th-century parishioners and enslaved Providence residents. Closed for regular worship in 2012, the building is reopening as the Center for Reconciliation, addressing the diocese's historic ties to slavery.
Providence, RI
The Edward Dexter House is a Federal-style wood-frame mansion built 1795-1797 originally at the corner of George and Prospect Streets. In 1860 the house was sawed in half and moved in two sections to its current location at 72 Waterman Street. It has been owned by the Rhode Island School of Design and used variously as administrative space and student housing.
Providence, RI
The Providence Biltmore opened in 1922 as a Beaux-Arts hotel designed by New York firm Warren & Wetmore, who also designed Grand Central Terminal. It became Rhode Island's tallest building upon completion and was part of the Bowman-Biltmore chain. Acquired by AJ Capital Partners in 2017 and renovated, it now operates as the Graduate Providence.
Providence, RI
The Halsey House is a Federal-style brick mansion built in 1801 by Colonel Thomas Lloyd Halsey, a Providence shipping merchant and French consular agent. It stands prominently on Prospect Street on College Hill and is now divided into apartments. The house is most famous as the literary model for the Ward family home in H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 novel 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.'
Providence, RI
The John Hay Library is Brown University's principal repository for rare books, manuscripts, and university archives. Built in 1910 in the Beaux-Arts style and named for John Hay, Lincoln's private secretary and later Secretary of State, the library holds the world's largest H.P. Lovecraft archive, the Damon Collection of occult literature, and four confirmed anthropodermic (human-skin-bound) books.
Providence, RI
Ladd Observatory is Brown University's astronomical observatory at the corner of Doyle Avenue and Hope Street, opened October 21, 1891 with a $55,000 gift from former Rhode Island Governor Herbert Warren Ladd. It houses a 12-inch Brashear refractor and original 19th-century scientific instruments. The first director was astronomy professor Winslow Upton.
Providence, RI
The Samuel B. Mumford House is a Federal-style 1825 private residence with a monitor-on-hip roof and Gothic-colonette-framed entrance. It was originally located at 66 College Street and moved to 65 Prospect Street in the late 1950s when Brown University expanded onto its former lot. H.P. Lovecraft lived here from May 1933 until shortly before his death in March 1937.
Providence, RI
The Nightingale-Brown House at 357 Benefit Street is a three-story wood-frame mansion built 1791-1792 for Colonel Joseph Nightingale. It was the seat of the Brown family from 1814 to 1985 and is described as one of the largest surviving American 18th-century wood-frame structures. The building is now home to Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPProvidence, RI
The Providence County Jail opened in 1838 near what is now the Rhode Island State House, built on the solitary confinement model derived from Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Prisoners were held in six-by-ten-foot cells and smaller punishment rooms measuring three-and-a-half by six feet, where some served entire sentences in near-total isolation. In 1997 archaeologists excavating beneath a parking lot discovered the intact foundation and cell structure of the long-demolished jail.
Providence, RI
The Old State House at 150 Benefit Street is a Georgian-era brick colonial statehouse completed in 1762 to replace a 1732 building destroyed by fire. It was one of five Rhode Island colonial statehouses that hosted the rotating colonial legislature. On May 4, 1776, the General Assembly meeting here renounced allegiance to King George III, making Rhode Island the first colony to declare independence — two months before the Declaration of Independence.
Providence, RI
The Providence Athenaeum is a membership library founded in 1836 and housed since 1838 in a Greek Revival building at 251 Benefit Street designed by William Strickland. It is one of the oldest libraries of its kind in the United States and is closely associated with the 1848 courtship between Edgar Allan Poe and Providence poet Sarah Helen Whitman.
Providence, RI
Providence City Hall is a Second Empire municipal building completed in 1878 from designs by architect Samuel J.F. Thayer. Construction began in 1875 under Mayor Thomas A. Doyle, the city's longest-serving 19th-century mayor. The building remains in use as the seat of Providence city government.
Providence, RI
Providence Ghost Tour is an independent, locally run operator offering lantern-lit walking tours of Providence's College Hill/East Side and Benefit Street, distinct from the multi-city US Ghost Adventures chain, which separately runs a Providence program.
Providence, RI
Real Ghosts of Providence is a true-crime walking tour run by the Providence Tour Company, a local sightseeing and food-tour operator, covering documented Providence murders and scandals and the downtown landmarks associated with them.
Providence, RI
Built between 1783 and 1794 and originally known as the John Reynolds House, 88 Benefit Street was rented from 1816 by Anna Power, mother of poet Sarah Helen Whitman (1803-1878). It is best known as the site of Whitman's 1848 courtship with Edgar Allan Poe, including the rose-garden meeting that inspired Poe's second poem titled 'To Helen.' The house has been owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island since 1959 and remains a private residence.
Providence, RI
The Stephen Harris House at 135 Benefit Street is a colonial-era Providence residence built around 1763. According to local tradition, it was constructed near or atop a former Huguenot burial ground, and a series of misfortunes — failed shipping ventures and multiple stillbirths — befell the Harris family in the early 19th century. H.P. Lovecraft fictionalized the dwelling in his 1924 novelette 'The Shunned House.'
Providence, RI
University Hall is the oldest building on the Brown University campus, completed in 1770 as the College Edifice. It served as American and French army barracks and hospital during the Revolutionary War. Construction involved the labor of enslaved Africans, including men documented in Brown's records as 'Pero,' 'Mary Young's Negro Man,' 'Earle's Negro,' and 'Abraham'; the building's history is part of Brown's institutional reckoning with its ties to slavery and the slave trade.
Providence, RI
The Arcade is a Greek Revival granite shopping arcade built in 1828 by architects James C. Bucklin and Russell Warren for developer Cyrus Butler — the first enclosed shopping mall in the United States. After cycles of vacancy and decline through the 20th century, it was rehabbed in 2013 as a mixed-use building with ground-floor retail and upper-floor residential micro-lofts.
Newport, RI
The Artillery Company of Newport was chartered by the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1741 and is the oldest military organization in the United States operating under its original charter. Its armory at 23 Clarke Street, built in 1835 in the Greek Revival style, now serves as a military museum.
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Newport, RI
Castle Hill Inn, originally the Agassiz Mansion, was constructed in 1875 as a summer estate for Alexander Agassiz, a renowned marine biologist and Harvard professor. The Gilded Age mansion was designed by architect Robert H. Slack and served the Agassiz family for generations. The property later housed a naval base during World War II and was eventually converted into a luxury inn.
Newport, RI
Brenton Point began as a sheep farm in the 1600s under William Brenton, a religious refugee from Massachusetts. During the Revolutionary War, the site served as a strategic fort. In 1876, prominent attorney and amateur Egyptologist Theodore M. Davis built his grand mansion, The Reef (later The Bells), along with elaborate carriage houses, stables, and servant quarters to display his collection of Egyptian antiquities.
Newport, RI
Belcourt of Newport is a 60-room, 50,000-square-foot summer cottage designed by Richard Morris Hunt for Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, with construction beginning in 1891 and completing in 1894. The Tinney family acquired the deteriorated property in 1956 for $25,000 and operated it as Belcourt Castle until the 2012 sale to Alex and Ani founder Carolyn Rafaelian, who funded a multi-million-dollar restoration.
Newport, RI
Seaview Terrace, also called Carey Mansion or Burnham-by-the-Sea, is a Chateauesque mansion in Newport completed in 1925 for liquor magnate Edson Bradley. His wife, Julia Williams Bradley, died in August 1929, with her funeral held in the house's chapel. From 1966 to 1971 the exterior served as the fictional Collinwood Mansion in the soap opera Dark Shadows.
Newport, RI
The Common Burying Ground was established in 1665 in Newport, Rhode Island, on land given to the city by Dr. John Clarke. Its northern section, God's Little Acre, holds 499 marked graves of free and enslaved African Americans and is considered the largest surviving colonial African burial ground in the United States.
Newport, RI
Fort Adams is the largest coastal fortification in the United States and a National Historic Landmark. Construction began in 1824 on the site of a smaller 1776 earthwork and continued through 1857, eventually enclosing an area capable of garrisoning 2,400 troops. During the Civil War, the U.S. Naval Academy relocated here from Annapolis for three years. The fort remained an active military installation through World War II.
Newport, RI
The Jailhouse Inn occupies the site of the colonial Newport County Jail on Marlborough Street. A jail stood here from 1680; the building was rebuilt in 1772 by George Lawton and Oliver Ring Warner. Enlarged in the late 1800s as a police station, it served Newport's criminal justice needs until 1986 before conversion to an inn.
Newport, RI
Newport Classic Car Co. is a Newport, Rhode Island vintage-automobile tour and rental company that runs a seasonal-appeal, year-round ghost-themed sightseeing tour through the city's historic mansion district.
Newport, RI
The Old Colony House on Washington Square in Newport is a Georgian statehouse designed by Richard Munday and completed in 1741. The fourth-oldest surviving statehouse in the United States, it served as a barracks during British occupation and later as a hospital for French soldiers during the Revolutionary War. It is a National Historic Landmark.
Newport, RI
Beechwood is a Gilded Age estate at 580 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, originally built in 1851 for New York merchant Daniel Parrish. After fire damage in 1855 it was rebuilt and was acquired in 1881 by William Backhouse Astor, Jr. Mrs. Caroline Astor used Beechwood as the social capital of New York's elite. Larry Ellison purchased the estate in 2010 and is restoring it as a private art museum.
Newport, RI
The Hotel Viking opened May 25, 1926 as Newport's first large-scale hotel, featuring Beaux-Arts architecture and 208 rooms on Bellevue Avenue. It was the anchor property for Newport's early tourism infrastructure. The hotel closed November 3, 2025 for a multimillion-dollar renovation led by KHP Capital Partners, designed to honor its centennial, and reopened May 1, 2026 with four new dining concepts and renovated spa facilities.
Newport, RI
Touro Cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island was dedicated in 1677 and is the second-oldest Jewish cemetery in North America. The cemetery served the colonial-era Spanish-Portuguese Jewish community of Newport, with origins tracing through Amsterdam, London, and the Caribbean. The site is closely associated with the adjacent Touro Synagogue, the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States.
Newport, RI
Trinity Church on Queen Anne Square is the oldest Episcopal parish in Rhode Island. The congregation was established by 1698 and the present Georgian building, designed by Richard Munday, was constructed in 1725 to 1726. Its surrounding burying ground holds many early Newport figures. The church is a National Historic Landmark.
Newport, RI
US Ghost Adventures operates its Newport program as "Newport Ghosts," a nightly walking tour of downtown Newport's colonial and Gilded Age landmarks, part of the company's multi-city chain of city-branded ghost tours.
Newport, RI
The White Horse Tavern at 26 Marlborough Street in Newport occupies a building dating to about 1652 and has operated as a tavern since the 1670s, billed as the oldest operating tavern in the United States. In 1673 the building hosted the murder trial of Thomas Cornell, a case notable for admitting spectral evidence.
Bristol, RI
Colt State Park is a 464-acre Rhode Island State Park on Poppasquash Neck in Bristol. The property was assembled by industrialist Samuel P. Colt starting in 1905 by consolidating the Chase, Church, and Van Wickle farms. Colt built the Casino summer house and a stone barn for a prize Jersey herd. He died in 1921; his marble entrance piers were carved with the inscription 'Private Property, Public Welcome.' Rhode Island purchased the property in 1965 and dedicated it as a state park on August 21, 1968.
Bristol, RI
The Barn at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island is a relocated nineteenth-century structure composed of two former Glocester, Rhode Island farm barns dating to 1840 and 1894. The barns were rescued by historic-preservation students and faculty in 1981, dismantled, and reconstructed on the RWU campus, opening as a theatre in 1986. The building now houses the William N. Grandgeorge Theatre, university theatre program, and Barn Summer Playhouse.
Coventry, RI
The Nathanael Greene Homestead in Coventry, Rhode Island, known as Spell Hall, was established in 1770 on the grounds of the Greene family's iron foundry. Nathanael Greene co-founded the Kentish Guards state militia before the Revolutionary War, rose to Quartermaster General of the Continental Army, and as Commander of the Southern Department executed the strategic retreat that forced the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.
Coventry, RI
The oldest section of the Paine House was built around 1691 by sawmill operator Samuel Bennett in what's now Coventry's Washington village; later enlarged and run as a tavern, it has operated as a museum under the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society since 1953.
Exeter, RI
Chestnut Hill Baptist Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island, holds the grave of Mercy Lena Brown, a 19-year-old who died of consumption in January 1892. Two months later her body was exhumed by villagers convinced she was the cause of a wasting illness in her family. The Brown case is the best-documented incident in what scholars call the New England vampire panic.
Exeter, RI
Founded in 1908 as the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded on 331 acres in rural Exeter, the institution underwent several name changes culminating in the Dr. Joseph H. Ladd Center before closing in 1993–1994. For over eight decades it housed Rhode Island's developmental disability population under conditions that, especially from the 1940s onward, became defined by severe overcrowding, abuse, neglect, and medical malpractice. Its closure was forced by a class-action lawsuit following a 1977 dental scandal. The buildings were demolished between 1995 and 2016; the campus now serves as the Rhode Island Fire Training Academy and Job Corps Center.
New Shoreham, RI
Block Island Southeast Light was built in 1875 on the dramatic Mohegan Bluffs at the island's southeastern tip. The 52-foot brick tower and Victorian Gothic keeper's dwelling were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. By the 1990s, coastal erosion had brought the lighthouse within 55 feet of the cliff edge; in 1993, the entire structure was moved 245 feet inland in one of the largest lighthouse relocations in U.S. history.
New Shoreham, RI
In December 1738 the British immigrant ship Princess Augusta wrecked at Sandy Point on the north end of Block Island. The 220-ton ship had sailed from Rotterdam carrying roughly 240 emigrants; contaminated water caused an outbreak that killed most of the passengers and half the crew, including the captain, during a long, storm-battered crossing. Nineteenth-century retellings, above all John Greenleaf Whittier's 1867 poem 'The Palatine,' renamed the wreck the Palatine and built the ghost-ship legend around it.
Warwick, RI
The Fairfield by Marriott Inn & Suites Providence Airport Warwick is an active limited-service hotel at 1940 Post Road in Warwick, Rhode Island, near T.F. Green International Airport. The property has operated under various flag transitions; older paranormal compilations identify it under Fairfield Inn Marriott and La Quinta names.
Warwick, RI
The Aldrich Mansion is a seventy-room estate on Narragansett Bay developed beginning in 1896 by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, whose daughter Abby married John D. Rockefeller Jr. at the property in 1901. After the Aldrich heirs sold it to the Roman Catholic Church in 1939, it served as Our Lady of Providence Seminary until 1983.
Narragansett, RI
The South County Museum was founded in 1933 and has operated at Canonchet Farm in Narragansett, Rhode Island since 1985. The 175-acre property was originally a Narragansett Tribe summer campsite, then the William Robinson farm, purchased by Governor (and later Senator) William Sprague in 1850. In 1863, Sprague and his wife Kate built a 64-room four-story Victorian mansion called Canonchet on the property; the mansion burned to the ground on October 11, 1909 after a defective fireplace flue ignited the building. The museum operates today as a rural-history institution focused on southern Rhode Island.
Pawtucket, RI
Built in 1793 on the Blackstone River, the Slater Mill was the first successful water-powered cotton-spinning mill in the United States and is widely called the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. It is a National Historic Landmark.
South Kingstown, RI
On December 19, 1675, colonial forces from Plymouth, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay Colonies attacked the main Narragansett winter settlement in what is now South Kingstown, Rhode Island, during King Philip's War. As many as 600 Narragansett people were killed, many burned alive when colonial troops set fire to the encampment. Historians have described it as one of the most brutal engagements in New England history. A granite obelisk erected in 1906 marks the site.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPWarren, RI
The Kickemuit River in Warren, Rhode Island, flows through the site where King Philip's War began on June 20, 1675. A band of Pokanoket warriors attacked English settlement along the river's banks, burning homes and setting off the 14-month conflict that would devastate both Native and English populations across New England. The Kickemuit Cemetery, between Child Street and Schoolhouse Road, is among Warren's oldest.
Westerly, RI
Seaside Shadows Haunted History Tours, founded in 2013 in Mystic, Connecticut by historian and author Courtney McInvale, runs an award-winning Downtown Westerly Ghost Tour meeting at Westerly Town Hall, distinct from an unrelated, separately operated US Ghost Adventures program in the same town.
Woonsocket, RI
The Stadium Theatre is a 1926 movie palace and vaudeville house in downtown Woonsocket, built by local industrialist Arthur Darman. After decades of decline it was restored and reopened in 2001 as a performing-arts center. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.