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The spookiest cities in the US — and why they still scare us

An angel gazes upon visitors to Bonaventure Cemetery.

(CNN) — Several locales across the US claim to be king when it comes to Halloween. But three in particular — Savannah, Georgia; New Orleans and Salem, Massachusetts — have the haunting histories to truly earn the title.

The trio of historic cities, each of them at least a couple of centuries old, are charming and welcoming in the light, with their cobblestone streets, well-preserved, centuries-old structures and other nods to days of old.

But when night falls and the wind howls through empty streets, these cities cast a darker spell. For many visitors and year-round residents of these three cities, their macabre history is part of the draw.

“Becoming acquainted with a place’s supernatural beings, and becoming a transmitter of a place’s supernatural lore … is a way of further weaving ourselves into the stories of a place, and proclaiming our own belonging within it,” said Lowell Brower, a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Folklore program, where he teaches, among other courses, “The Supernatural in the Modern World.”

Each is eerie in its unique way, though both Savannah and New Orleans claim to be the most haunted city in America. We’ll leave that decision up to those who know these cities best — ghosts, maybe.

“There is huge value is sharing (and studying) that which haunts us,” Brower said. “It might just be the best way to understand what people fear, what they wish for, what they choose to remember or can’t forget, what they are capable of, and what they might yet transform themselves into.”

Savannah, Georgia

Southern gothic personified.

An angel gazes upon visitors to Bonaventure Cemetery.

evenfh/Adobe Stock

Spooky claim to fame: The 1994 book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” put Savannah’s spooky bonafides on the national map, but locals have long spotted ghosts and encountered paranormal entities in their historic city. Just about any building over 100 years old can claim that a patron once felt a ghostly presence there.

Some haunted spots:

The Mercer-Williams House is known to “Midnight” readers and film viewers as the home in which Danny Hansford and Jim Williams died. But even before their deaths, visitors have reported seeing a young boy in its windows — perhaps, they think, the boy who died there in 1969. The home is now a museum, where visitors can test the ghostly presences themselves.
There are several purportedly haunted hotels and B&Bs scattered about the historic downtown, including the Marshall House, a former…

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