3 Scary stories

Scary ghost stories aren't for the faint of heart! But for those who are all about the Halloween movies and all things witches or vampires, we've got spine-chilling tales for you from around the country. One might just take place near where you live, amping up the creepy factor, and if not you might just need to plan a trip to ones of these spooky ghost towns.

On the East Coast, there have been reports (by John Lennon!) of the Crying Lady in The Dakota, a famous apartment building in New York City. Down in the South, Huggin' Molly haunts Abbeville, Alabama, and chases—and embraces—people around the town. Over in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the Crescent Hotel is allegedly haunted by a number of ghosts, and down in St. Francisville, Louisiana, a ghost named Chloe can reportedly be sighted in the Myrtles Plantation.

So scroll on to start reading these scary ghost stories (don't worry, they're short) or save them for after dark for a more terrifying experience. They are sure to get you into the Halloween spirit and give you plenty of ideas for stories to tell to add fright factor to your friends too!

Sloss Furnaces | Birmingham, Alabama

Five years after the Civil War, Birmingham, Alabama, was founded. With its birth in 1871 came the need for tons of pig iron to fix the U.S.'s crumbling infrastructure, so Colonel James Withers Sloss began to build Sloss Furnaces. A year later, the company opened its doors to hundreds of employees, according to its official website. Jobs on blast furnaces were advanced but also dangerous, and many workers started falling to their deaths in the furnaces.

By the early 1900s conditions had worsened with a cruel foreman, James "Slag" Wormwood, who took dangerous risks to increase production, according to Reader's Digest. During his tenure at Sloss, nearly 50 employees died on-site, and many others were involved in terrible accidents. Allegedly, his workers threw him into the furnace in retaliation in 1906.

Today you can still walk the grounds of Sloss Furnaces, if you dare. You may even hear Slag's voice yelling, "Get back to work!" and witness other paranormal experiences.

The Crying Lady in the Dakota

Since its opening in 1884, The Dakota apartment building has been home to many rich and famous residents of New York City. Among them were John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who moved in in 1973. John was also assassinated outside the building in 1980. Before that fateful day on December 8, though, John said he say a "crying lady ghost" walking the halls, and afterward Yoko, who still resides there, claimed she saw John's ghost sitting at his piano and that he said to her: "Don't be afraid. I am still with you."

The Bell Witch

If you're a scary-movie lover, you might actually know about the Bell Witch. The films An American Haunting and The Blair Witch Project are both based on the story. Way back in the early 1800s, a man named John Bell moved his family to an area in Tennessee called Red River, which is now known as Adams, Tennessee. After they had settled in the new home, some peculiar things started happening. The Bell family began hearing some bizarre noises, including dogs barking, chains rattling, rats chewing, and a woman whispering. Soon, that woman became known as the Bell Witch, and many people believe she's the ghost of a former neighbor of the Bell's, Kate Batts. Batts and the Bells had a dispute over land, and she had sworn vengeance on the Bell family before she died. Later on, Bell died from poisoning, and it's rumored to be the work of the Bell Witch.

The Ghosts of the Crescent Hotel

Spend the night in the haunted Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which opened in 1886. (During construction, a worker named Michael was killed, and his ghost reportedly still haunts room 218.) The hotel came under the ownership of known medical fraud Norman Baker in 1937, who fancied himself a doctor. He turned the hotel into the Baker Cancer Hospital, claiming to have the cure for the disease (he did not, obviously). Patients who died under his care were buried right in the hotel's basement, which served as a makeshift morgue. He was arrested in 1940, but his patients' spirits are said to still remain. Because the hotel is still open, guests often say they see apparitions and hear noises during their stays. SyFy's Ghost Hunters even has footage of something moving in the basement.