The Most Haunted Places in Pennsylvania

Ranked

1. 

   1. Baker Mansion Altoona · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Baker Mansion is an 1849 Greek Revival stone home built in Altoona by ironmaster Elias Baker, co-owner of the Allegheny Furnace ironworks, now operated as a museum by the Blair County Historical Society. Accounts center on Baker's daughter Anna, whose father broke off her engagement to a steelworker; she kept the wedding dress she never wore until her death in 1914, and tour guides also recount a family patriarch who reportedly collapsed and died of a stroke while calling for tea, a moment marked today by a pressure-pad installation that reenacts the fall. Visitors report the dress moving inside its display case, phantom screams from the basement, and a solo overnight visitor's account of an echoing sound near the piano.

   8 original accounts · documented across 5 decades, 1852-1989 · retold in 4 later publications

2. 

   2. Saint Vincent Archabbey, Basilica and College Latrobe · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: High

   Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe was founded in 1846 by the Bavarian Benedictine monk Boniface Wimmer, the oldest Benedictine monastery in the United States, and grew to include a seminary, college and basilica before Wimmer's death in 1887. Campus tradition attaches a returning presence to Wimmer around the anniversary of his death, and to a monk killed in an 1862 gristmill accident in the mill where he died. Students report a Ouija board session that ended when a floor-length mirror flew off a door and shattered against the opposite wall, along with a recurring presence in a prop room and a hooded figure glimpsed in a dormitory and identified as a former staff member.

   6 original accounts · documented across 7 decades, 1846-1996 · retold in 3 later publications

3. 

   3. Baleroy Mansion Philadelphia · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Moderate Private, not open to visitors

   Baleroy Mansion in Chestnut Hill belonged to the Easby family from 1926 until George Meade Easby died in 2005, and he spent his life there building the property's reputation as a haunted house. Family tradition holds that after his brother Steven died in 1931 at age six, George saw the boy's reflection turn to a skull in the courtyard fountain. Easby described sightings of his mother and a chair he claimed had caused four deaths.

   8 original accounts · documented in 1961 · retold in 7 later publications

4. 

   4. Historic Rock Ford Lancaster · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Historic Rock Ford is the preserved 1794 Georgian brick mansion of Revolutionary War General Edward Hand, adjutant general to George Washington, run today as a historic house museum by the Rock Ford Foundation and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. The lore is anchored in the well documented 1807 death of John Hand inside the house, and in a Yuletide candlelight tour tradition in which visitors reported a tall bald man with a prominent nose seated in a darkened corner, later identified from his portrait as General Hand. Other reports describe a young girl in the Blue Parlor, footsteps in empty rooms, and cold spots in the Unrestored Room.

   6 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1807-1990 · retold in 6 later publications

5. 

   5. Cambria County Jail Ebensburg · Prison / Reformatory · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Cambria County built the Gothic Revival Old Stone Jail in Ebensburg in 1872, its 27 original cells eventually crowded past 120 inmates, and closed the building in 1997 before new owner David Davis reopened it for historic and paranormal tours in September 2024. Local legend ties reported activity to the jail's history of hangings and to the unresolved 1884 disappearance of inmate Mickey Smith before his scheduled execution. Visitors and investigation teams report disembodied voices and cold spots near the former gallows, and one visiting group describes a member touched by icy hands and a figure glimpsed on the catwalk before it vanished.

   4 original accounts · documented across 7 decades, 1870-2026 · retold in 6 later publications

6. 

   6. Gettysburg National Military Park Gettysburg · Battlefield / Military Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   The July 1-3, 1863 Battle of Gettysburg produced roughly 51,000 casualties and marked the war's turning point after Lee's army retreated to Virginia; the site became a national park in 1895. Visitors to Devil's Den report figures in period dress among the boulders, camera malfunctions, and drum rolls carrying across the fields at dusk. Two Pennsylvania Hall administrators once described stepping off an elevator into what they took for an operating Civil War surgical ward.

   Documented since 1863 · 5 independent sources · 9 media mentions

7. 

   7. Logan Inn New Hope · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: High

   The Logan Inn began in 1727 as the Ferry Tavern on the Delaware and was renamed in 1828 for Chief Logan of the Lenni-Lenape. Emily Lutz, mother of a former owner, spent her final years in Room 6 and died there. Guests report blankets pulled from the bed and a man's reflection behind them in the mirror, while a child said to have drowned in the old canal is reported near the parking lot.

   4 original accounts · documented across 9 decades, 1722-2021 · retold in 5 later publications

8. 8. Mansfield University, North Hall Mansfield · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   North Hall at what is now Commonwealth University-Mansfield was built in the 1870s and expanded around 1908 with a six-story interior atrium called the Well, sealed for fire safety in 1930; the building closed in the 1970s before reopening as the North Hall Library in 1996. University archives trace the building's ghost lore to a student's fatal fall in the atrium around 1928 or 1930, a figure the archives themselves refer to as Sarah, though her identity has never been documented. Staff and alumni report an elevator opening after being addressed by name, footsteps on an empty floor heard independently by two people, and an archives worker's description of a partial, body-shaped figure that vanished from view.

   3 original accounts · documented across 4 decades, 1908-2017 · retold in 3 later publications

9. 9. The Knickerbocker Hotel Linesville · Other Dark Tourism Site · Family Comfort: Low

   The Knickerbocker Hotel opened on January 12, 1882, in Linesville, built by Milo and Clara Arnold as a combined hotel, restaurant, lounge, and family home. Clara died of tuberculosis in 1885 at age 37 and remains the most-named figure in the building's folklore. Investigators and visitors report her apparition on the staircase and in upstairs rooms, along with a child, a phantom cat, and shadow figures in the basement and second-floor corridor.

   Documented since 1882 · 5 independent sources · 4 media mentions

10. 

    10. USS Olympia Philadelphia · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

    USS Olympia was commissioned in 1895 and served as Commodore George Dewey's flagship during the May 1898 Battle of Manila Bay, where the Asiatic Squadron destroyed the Spanish fleet without a single American combat death; in November 1921 she carried the remains of the Unknown Soldier from France to Washington, D.C., and she is now preserved at Penn's Landing as part of the Independence Seaport Museum. The most-cited figure in her ghost lore is Coxswain John Johnson, who died in an 1895 gun-barrel accident aboard the ship and was memorialized in a poem written by a fellow crew member. A 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation documented volunteers and visitors reporting a cold-touch grab, a full-body figure in the engine room, a figure at the ship's wheel, and a child's account of a sighting in a locked stateroom.

    4 original accounts · documented in 2008 · retold in 4 later publications

Superlatives