American Horror Nights

The St. Simons Lighthouse has guided ships into Brunswick, Georgia, for more than 150 years, and its keepers are said to have never left, from Frederick Osborne, murdered on the lighthouse steps in 1880 and still heard climbing the stairs, to the woman in white waiting on the landing for a ship that never arrives.

Calico was one of the richest silver towns in the West, then a genuine ghost town, then a restored tourist town in the Mojave Desert, and its ghosts, from Lucy Lane in the schoolhouse to the miner still working the Maggie Mine, are said to have come back with the restoration.

The Old South Pittsburg Hospital served Marion County, Tennessee, from 1959 to 1998, and it has been one of America's most famous haunted hospitals ever since, with a laughing little girl in the corridors, a nurse still making her rounds, and a darker presence on the third floor that staff used to call the dark thing.

In the Texas hill country between Wimberley and Blanco, the Devil's Backbone ridge is a beautiful daytime drive and a very different place after dark, home to a Spanish monk in a brown robe, Confederate riders on the ridge line, a woman in white by the road, and a dread that drivers report whether or not they know the legends.

On a bluff above the Wilmington River outside Savannah, Bonaventure Cemetery holds more than one hundred acres of live oaks, marble angels, and famous ghosts, from six-year-old Gracie Watson and her lifelike statue to the man walking a dog that is no longer alive and the Bird Girl made famous by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

High above Los Angeles, the Hollywood Sign has watched over the city for a century. This episode tells the sad, true story of Peg Entwistle, the young actress who died at the sign in 1932, and the ghost said to still walk the hillside in a white dress.

The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville began as a gospel tabernacle in 1892 and became the Mother Church of Country Music as home of the Grand Ole Opry. This episode tells the story of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline on its stage, the applause in an empty hall, the Grey Lady in the pews, and why musicians say the room itself listens back.

Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island held as many as twelve thousand Confederate prisoners during the Civil War, and more than two thousand of them died there. This episode tells the story of the island prison, its overcrowded barracks and mass grave at Finns Point, the soldier on the ramparts, the Lady in White, and the young prisoner said to still ask whether the war is over.

The Houghton Mansion in North Adams, Massachusetts, was built by a mill magnate who lost his daughter and then his own life in automobile accidents in the same year, 1914. This episode tells the story of Albert, Mary, and Cordelia Houghton, the grand Victorian house on the hill, and the young woman in white said to stand at the top of its staircase.

The USS Lexington earned the nickname Blue Ghost in World War II because the enemy reported sinking her four times and she kept coming back. This episode tells the story of the carrier's wartime dead, the sailor in the engine room, the figures on the flight deck, and why the museum ship in Corpus Christi is said to still carry its crew.