The National Park Service protects more than 400 sites, and not all of them are canyons and geysers. It also cares for Civil War battlefields, a federal prison, a presidential assassination scene, and a centuries-old Spanish fort. Places with that much history come with legends to match. Rangers, reenactors, night guides, and ordinary visitors have been swapping ghost stories at these sites for generations. Here are 10 of the most famous, with plenty of real history behind the chills. Many of these sites offer lantern tours, night tours, or special programs in October, so check each park’s calendar before you go.

1) Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania
Over three days in July 1863, more than 50,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing at Gettysburg, the largest battle ever fought in North America. The most haunted corner of the battlefield is Devil’s Den, a jumble of giant boulders where Confederate sharpshooters fired on Union troops on Little Round Top. Photographer Alexander Gardner famously dragged a dead soldier’s body into position there to stage one of the war’s best-known photos.

Gettysburg’s most famous ghost is a barefoot Texan in a floppy hat and ragged shirt. Visitors say he appears among the rocks at Devil’s Den, points toward Plum Run, says “What you’re looking for is over there,” and then disappears. Photographers also complain about cameras that jam, drain their batteries, or refuse to fire at Devil’s Den and the nearby Triangular Field, where Texas and Maine troops fought hand to hand.
Address: 1195 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, PA 17325
Website: https://www.nps.gov/gett

2) Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California
From 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz held some of America’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz.” Cold wind, fog, and the chill of San Francisco Bay make the cellhouse unsettling even at noon. Today it’s one of the most visited sites in the park system, reached by ferry from Pier 33. The night tour is the one to book for Halloween.

The most feared spot on “The Rock” is D-Block, especially cell 14D, one of the solitary confinement cells known as “the hole.” Legend says an inmate locked inside screamed all night about a creature with glowing eyes. By morning he was dead, with strangulation marks on his neck. Guards have reported sudden cold spots in that cell, and rangers and visitors say they’ve heard banjo music drifting from the old shower room. That’s where Al Capone, who played banjo in the prison band, was said to practice.
Address: Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, CA 94133 (ferries depart Pier 33, Alcatraz Landing)
Website: https://www.nps.gov/alca

3) Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world, with more than 400 miles mapped and no end in sight. Humans have explored it for thousands of years. Its tragedies include a failed 1842 experiment in which Dr. John Croghan housed tuberculosis patients underground, hoping the steady cave air would cure them. Several patients died. Two of their stone huts still stand, and the Violet City Lantern Tour passes by them by lamplight.

The cave’s most famous ghost is Floyd Collins, a legendary caver who became trapped in nearby Sand Cave in 1925. His two-week ordeal became one of the biggest news stories of the decade, and he died before rescuers could reach him. His body was later displayed in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave, now part of the park, and was even stolen in 1929 before being recovered. Guides report hearing a man’s voice calling for help in the dark passages. Another legend tells of Melissa, a young woman in the 1840s who led a tutor named Beverleigh into the cave as a prank and left him there. He never came out, and some guides say they still hear her calling his name.
Address: 1 Mammoth Cave Pkwy, Mammoth Cave, KY 42259
Website: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/tragedy-at-sand-cave.htm

4) Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, West Virginia
In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown and his raiders seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, hoping to spark an uprising against slavery. The raid failed within 36 hours, and Brown’s last stand took place in the small brick fire engine house now known as John Brown’s Fort. The raid’s anniversary falls in mid-October, which makes a Halloween-season visit to this picturesque river town especially fitting.

Harpers Ferry may be the most haunted small town in the park system. Dangerfield Newby, a free Black man who joined the raid hoping to free his enslaved wife and children, was the first raider killed. His body was mutilated and left in an alley. Witnesses say his ghost wanders near Hog Alley in a slouch hat and baggy trousers, with a scar across his throat. John Brown himself has been reported walking the streets with his dog. Townspeople also tell of “Jenny,” a young woman whose dress caught fire and who ran onto the railroad tracks, where a train struck her. Some say her lantern still glows along the rails at night.
Address: 171 Shoreline Dr, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425
Website: https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-cities/the-most-haunted-places-in-harpers-ferry/

5) Antietam National Battlefield, Maryland
On September 17, 1862, about 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing at Antietam, making it the bloodiest single day in American history. At the center of the fighting was a farm road that soldiers renamed “Bloody Lane” after bodies filled it so deeply that men could walk its length without touching the ground.

The Irish Brigade of New York charged Bloody Lane shouting their Gaelic war cry, “Faugh a Ballagh,” meaning “Clear the way.” Years later, a group of schoolboys visiting the Sunken Road reported hearing a strange chant they described as sounding like “fah-ah-bah-lah.” Visitors also report the smell of gunpowder and the sound of distant gunfire. Nearby, the Pry House served as a Union headquarters and field hospital. Union General Israel Richardson, mortally wounded at Bloody Lane, died there weeks later while his wife nursed him. Rangers and visitors say a woman has been seen standing at an upstairs window.
Address: 5831 Dunker Church Rd, Sharpsburg, MD 21782
Website: https://tourbaltimoreghosts.com/the-haunted-antietam-battlefield/

6) Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site, Washington, D.C.
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the presidential box during a performance of Our American Cousin. Booth leaped to the stage, landed badly, and escaped into the night. Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House, where he died the next morning. Both buildings are now part of the park, and Ford’s is still a working theater.

Actors and stagehands have long whispered about Ford’s. Performers say they feel an icy chill, get lightheaded, or forget their lines when they stand at stage left, near the presidential box. Some say Booth’s ghost reenacts his leap and escape across the stage. Others report footsteps and faint voices in the empty theater late at night. Lincoln himself is one of the most reported ghosts in America, and his spirit has been linked to the theater, the Petersen House, and the White House.
Address: 511 10th St NW, Washington, DC 20004
Website: https://www.nps.gov/foth

7) Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Georgia and Tennessee
The Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 was the second-bloodiest battle of the Civil War after Gettysburg, with about 34,000 casualties over three days. In 1890, Congress made Chickamauga the country’s first national military park, and its quiet woods and fields are lined with more than 1,400 monuments and markers.

Chickamauga’s best-known legend is “Old Green Eyes,” a figure with glowing green eyes, long hair, and fangs said to roam the battlefield at night. One version says he is a soldier whose head was blown off, still searching the field for his body. Another says he haunted these woods long before the battle. Visitors also tell of a Lady in White who walks the fields searching for a lost love among the dead, and of phantom soldiers moving through the fog around Snodgrass Hill.
Address: 3370 Lafayette Rd, Fort Oglethorpe, GA 30742
Website: https://www.nps.gov/chch

8) Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Florida
The Spanish began building Castillo de San Marcos in 1672 from coquina, a stone made of crushed shells, and it’s now the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. In more than three centuries it has flown the flags of Spain, Britain, the United States, and the Confederacy, and it has been a prison as well as a fortress. In 1837, Seminole leader Osceola was captured under a flag of truce and held here. Fellow Seminole prisoner Coacoochee and others later escaped by squeezing through a narrow opening high in their cell wall.

The Castillo’s most famous legend is a dark love story. In 1784, the tale goes, Spanish Colonel Garcia Marti discovered his wife Dolores was having an affair with one of his officers, Captain Manuel Abela. Both vanished soon after. Decades later, workers found a sealed room inside the fort containing two skeletons. Visitors say they still smell a woman’s perfume in the fort’s rooms. Osceola, who died in prison in South Carolina and whose head was removed by an attending doctor, is also said to haunt the Castillo.
Address: 1 S Castillo Dr, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Website: https://www.nps.gov/casa

9) Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty National Monument, New York
From 1892 to 1954, about 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island on their way to a new life in America. Not everyone made it through. On the island’s south side sits a 22-building hospital complex that treated immigrants for diseases like measles, tuberculosis, and scarlet fever. About 3,500 people died there, including roughly 1,400 children, while around 350 babies were born.

The abandoned hospital, with its peeling paint, rusted bed frames, and empty autopsy room, is one of the eeriest places in the park system. Visitors on the guided Hard Hat Tour report doors that move on their own, footsteps in empty corridors, children’s voices, and figures dressed in old-fashioned nurse’s uniforms. Paranormal TV crews have investigated the wards. Even skeptics find it hard to stand in the contagious disease ward and not feel the weight of so many hopes that ended there.
Address: Ellis Island, New York, NY 10004 (ferries depart Battery Park, NY, and Liberty State Park, NJ)
Website: https://www.lunaticsproject.com/post/ellis-island-s-haunted-hospital

10) Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
Petrified Forest holds one of the world’s largest collections of petrified wood. These logs turned to stone about 218 million years ago, and their quartz crystals glow red, purple, and gold in the desert sun. Taking even a small chip is illegal. That hasn’t stopped visitors from sneaking pieces into their pockets for more than a century.

That’s where the curse comes in. For decades, the park has received packages of stolen petrified wood mailed back by people who say the rock brought them nothing but bad luck: car wrecks, lost jobs, illness, broken marriages, and worse. Many include apology letters begging the park to take the wood back and lift the curse. The returned pieces can’t go back where they came from, so they end up on what’s called the “conscience pile.” Some of the letters are displayed at the park, and a collection of them was published in the book Bad Luck, Hot Rocks.
Address: 1 Park Rd, Petrified Forest, AZ 86028
Website: https://www.nps.gov/pefo

Honorable Mentions
Fort Pulaski National Monument, Georgia
This brick fort on Cockspur Island near Savannah took nearly 20 years to build, and a young Army engineer named Robert E. Lee helped plan it. In 1862, Union rifled cannons battered its walls into surrender in just 30 hours. Later in the war it held the “Immortal 600,” Confederate officers kept in harsh conditions as prisoners, and 13 of them died there. Visitors report footsteps in the empty brick casemates and shadowy soldiers pacing the ramparts after dark.
Address: 101 Fort Pulaski Rd, Savannah, GA 31410
Website: Fort Pulaski National Monument, Georgia

Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi
For 47 days in 1863, Union forces besieged Vicksburg while its soldiers and civilians starved, with many families living in caves dug into the hillsides. The city surrendered on July 4, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River. Vicksburg National Cemetery holds about 17,000 Union soldiers, more than any other national cemetery, and most of them are unknown. Visitors tell of phantom cannon fire, drifting smoke, and soldiers who vanish among the monuments.
Address: 3201 Clay St, Vicksburg, MS 39183
Website: https://www.nps.gov/vick

Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, South Carolina
Seminole leader Osceola died a prisoner at Fort Moultrie in 1838, and the doctor who attended him removed his head before burial. His grave still sits just outside the fort’s entrance, and his ghost is said to walk the grounds. For a perfect Halloween twist, Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie as a young soldier in 1827 and 1828, and he later set his story “The Gold-Bug” on Sullivan’s Island.
Address: 1214 Middle St, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482
Website: https://www.nps.gov/fosu

Elkmont Historic District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
Elkmont began as a logging town and later became a summer getaway for wealthy Knoxville families, with clubhouses and rows of cabins along the Little River. After the park was created, the resort slowly emptied, leaving a ghost town of weathered cabins in the woods. The Park Service has restored some of the cabins, but hikers say the empty buildings and old cemetery feel anything but deserted after dark. Elkmont is also famous for its synchronous fireflies, which blink in unison each June.
Address: Elkmont Rd, Gatlinburg, TN 37738
Website: https://www.nps.gov/places/old-town-of-elkmont.htm

Lake McDonald Lodge, Glacier National Park, Montana
Lake McDonald Lodge was built in 1913 and 1914 as a Swiss-style hunting lodge on the shore of Glacier’s largest lake, with mounted game heads and a massive stone fireplace in its lobby. A security guard and a night auditor have both reported seeing a woman in old-time clothes looking out the lobby windows toward the lake. Guests have heard a couple arguing loudly on empty balconies, and one night clerk said she felt fingers running through her hair when no one was there.
Address: 288 Lake McDonald Lodge Loop, West Glacier, MT 59936
Website: https://flatheadbeacon.com/2016/10/25/glaciers-haunted-history/

From Civil War battlefields to a prison island to a cursed pile of million-year-old rocks, the National Park Service protects some of the most haunted ground in America. This fall, trade the haunted house for the real thing. Book a lantern tour at Mammoth Cave, a night tour of Alcatraz, or a sunset walk at Gettysburg, and bring your own ghost story home. Just don’t bring home any petrified wood.