Which Famous Ghost Are You?

A dog with the head of a rabbit appears in a Tennessee wood in 1817, beginning the most documented ghost story in history. From that moment, John Bell and his family are tormented by a spirit that claims to be the witch of 'Old Kate Batts' but is so complex that it could not have been created by a mortal person. The 'witch' could recount conversations taking place as far away as England, appear as an apparition, hold people down, and even poison John Bell. When it killed him, it vowed to return in seven years and kept its promise.

Whether she's Queen Mary, Mary Worth, or Mary Worthing doesn't matter. The terror she instills in preteen girls is what's important. The Internet is full of people who claim to have chanted 'Bloody Mary' into a mirror and lived to regret it. She leaves scars, burns shower curtains, drips blood, and does all manner of terrifying things. So who was she--a queen, a witch, or an incredibly vain woman? Is she you?

Maybe you believe in ghosts, and maybe you don't. The jury is still out on whether the founders of Spiritualism made up the murdered peddler story. In 1848, Maggie and Kate Fox told their mother they were communicating with a ghost called Split-Foot. They would ask him a question, and he would answer back in knocks and raps. He said he was a 31-year-old peddler with five children. He said he had been murdered and buried in the basement. When the Foxes' father and the townspeople tried to check, the excavation site was flooded with water from a storm. So, no one knows. Maybe you do. Either way, the Foxes started a huge movement and a town devoted to Spiritualism that still exists.

In 1713, the unlucky Lady Dorothy Walpole married the wrong man. Her violent husband was jealous of a love affair she had before their marriage, and when he suspected her of adultery, he locked her away and then held a mock funeral. She died under mysterious circumstances a decade later. Since then, distinguished members of British society have seen her when visiting Raynham Hall. She is always seen in a brown brocade dress. She is the subject of the most famous ghostly photograph, descending the main staircase of the manor.

More than a century and a half ago, a pioneer woman and her children were in their cabin near San Antonio, Texas, when it burned to the ground. The woman burst out of the house screaming, her face and limbs so disfigured that she had the appearance of a donkey. She plunged into Elm Creek to squelch the fire, but the body was never found. To this day, the Donkey Lady haunts the Elm Creek Bridge, jumping on car hoods, screaming in the woods, and crawling over the windshields of terrified ghost hunters. She even terrifies the coyotes, who run from her screams.

There are many ghosts at the Drury Lane but none so involved as the Man in Grey. He loves a good show. Unless the show is bad, he shows up in his regular seat, wearing eighteenth-century clothes. When he gets up, he walks down the row of seats and into a wall. Back in the 1840s, they decided to remodel the theater and found in that spot a skeleton sporting a knife in its chest. Before that time, no one had seen the ghost. He waited until the 1920s to show himself. No one knows why he waited so long.