The Pennsylvania collection
Philadelphia County
72 places. A county full of stories.
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Inns & businessesAcademy of Music
Philadelphia's Academy of Music has a theater ghost story that begins with an apparently empty seat. In a collection of city folklore, Michael…
Culture & landmarksAmerican Philosophical Society Library Hall
Benjamin Franklin’s statue stands in a niche above the entrance to the American Philosophical Society’s Library Hall on Fifth Street. The building…
Historic homesBaleroy Mansion
Baleroy Mansion is a stone house built in 1911 on West Mermaid Lane in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. Its longtime resident, George…
Inns & businesses · Historical imageBellevue-Stratford
Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford became the center of a medical mystery after an American Legion convention in 1976. In the weeks that followed, 221…
Historic homesBetsy Ross House
The Betsy Ross House on Arch Street in Philadelphia is a museum associated with the upholsterer credited in American tradition with making the first…
Inns & businessesBishop White House
Bishop William White lived in this Philadelphia house from its completion in 1787 until his death in 1836. White was Pennsylvania’s first Episcopal…
Historic homesBoathouse Row
Boathouse Row’s illuminated rooflines have been a Philadelphia landmark since 1979. The rowing clubs and their reflections form a familiar view along…
Culture & landmarksCarpenters’ Hall
Carpenters’ Hall stands back from Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, in a courtyard that leads to one of the central landmarks of the American…
Historic homesCedar Grove
Cedar Grove was built in 1746 for Elizabeth Coates Paschall, a healer and member of a Philadelphia family whose descendants occupied the house for…
Inns & businessesCity Tavern
City Tavern in Philadelphia was a gathering place for people involved in the founding of the United States. It also had a ghost story in circulation…
Battlefields · Historical imageCliveden
Cliveden, the Benjamin Chew family’s house in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, became a stronghold during the Battle of Germantown on October…
Culture & landmarksCongress Hall grounds
Congress Hall at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia has a ghost story about two sisters walking its grounds in old-fashioned dresses.…
Inns & businessesCornerstone Bed and Breakfast
Cornerstone Bed and Breakfast occupies a historic stone house at 33rd and Baring Streets in Philadelphia's Powelton Village. A guest recalling an…
Inns & businessesCresheim Cottage
Cresheim Cottage in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy neighborhood has housed several restaurants and one recurring ghost tradition. The presence is called…
Inns & businessesCresheim Cottage
Cresheim Cottage on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia's Mount Airy neighborhood has a resident ghost known as Emily. Two restaurant operators…
InstitutionsEastern State Penitentiary Historic Site
Eastern State Penitentiary is the former prison on Philadelphia’s Fairmount Avenue, recognizable by its high stone walls and radiating cellblocks.…
Outdoors · Historical imageEdgar Allan Poe National Historic Site
The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site preserves a house where the writer lived in Philadelphia, at Seventh and Spring Garden streets. For…
OutdoorsFirst Bank of the United States
The First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia owes its creation to Alexander Hamilton’s campaign for a national bank. When President George…
Fontbonne Hall
Fontbonne Hall, a residence building at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, has prompted stories from former students about doors and appliances…
OutdoorsFormer 611 Records storefront
A ghost story associated with the former 611 Records shop at 611 South Fourth Street in Philadelphia begins in the apartment above it. A woman named…
OutdoorsFormer AMC Orleans 8
The former AMC Orleans 8 in Northeast Philadelphia began as a single-screen theater in 1963, opening with Days of Wine and Roses. Its large…
OutdoorsFormer Centennial Exhibition grounds
Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition displayed mounted animals among its educational exhibits. A surviving photograph of the United States…
Historic homesFormer Chalkley Hall
Chalkley Hall once stood in Philadelphia near Wheatsheaf Lane and Sepviva Street. The house took shape around an earlier residence associated with…
Culture & landmarks · AI illustrationFormer Civil War Library and Museum
Philadelphia’s Civil War Library and Museum occupied a townhouse at 1805 Pine Street from 1922 until its closure there in 2008. Union veterans had…
Former Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry
Alexander Albritton, a pitcher whose career in Black professional baseball included the 1920s, died at Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry in…
BattlefieldsFort Mifflin
Fort Mifflin stands on the Delaware River beside Philadelphia International Airport. Its military history includes imprisonment and executions, and…
Fortess Hall
Fortess Hall is a residence building connected to Ravenhill Mansion on what is now Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus. Former students…
Historic homes · Historical imageGrumblethorpe
Grumblethorpe began as the country home of John Wister, a German immigrant who built it in Germantown in 1744. The house stood among gardens,…
Historic homesHill–Physick House
The Hill–Physick House on South Fourth Street in Philadelphia was built for wine merchant Henry Hill in 1786. Surgeon Philip Syng Physick moved there…
Culture & landmarksHistorical Society of Pennsylvania
Albert Joseph Edmunds spent much of his working life organizing the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Born in…
Culture & landmarksIndependence Hall
Independence Hall's Assembly Room was the setting for both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention. During the 1787…
Inns & businessesIndependence Park Hotel
Philadelphia’s Independence Park Hotel occupies the historic Elliott Building on Chestnut Street. Former employees described several unsettling guest…
OutdoorsKhyber Pass Pub
Serrill Headley bought the Khyber Pass Pub on South Second Street in Philadelphia in the early 1970s. She transformed the neighborhood saloon with…
Cemeteries · Historical imageLaurel Hill Cemetery (Laurel Hill East)
Laurel Hill East Cemetery occupies a hillside above the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Founded in 1836, it is known for elaborate monuments,…
OutdoorsLemon Hill
Lemon Hill overlooks the Schuylkill River above Boathouse Row in Philadelphia. The estate is associated with merchant Henry Pratt, who cultivated…
Historic homes · Historical imageLoudoun Mansion
Loudoun Mansion stands above Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia. Built in the early nineteenth century and enlarged by later generations, it was a…
Inns & businessesMcGillin’s Olde Ale House
McGillin’s Olde Ale House has served Philadelphia from Drury Street since 1860. Its ghost tradition is associated with Catherine “Ma” McGillin, one…
OutdoorsMerchants’ Exchange Building
The Merchants' Exchange Building in Philadelphia's Old City is the setting of Michael McMahon's story about Jack Osteen, a blind singer who fed the…
SchoolsMiller Theater
Philadelphia's Miller Theater opened as the Shubert in 1918 and was long known as the Merriam. A ghost tradition credited to University of the Arts…
Outdoors · AI illustrationMom Rinker’s Rock
Mom Rinker's Rock rises above Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia, beneath the Toleration statue. Its name recalls Molly “Mom” Rinker, the central…
Inns & businessesMoshulu
Moshulu is the four-masted sailing ship moored at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, now used as a restaurant. Built in Scotland in 1904, it spent…
CemeteriesMother and Twins monument
Laurel Hill Cemetery’s Mother and Twins monument depicts the wife and children of sculptor Henry Dmoghowski-Saunders. One child was stillborn in…
Historic homes · Aerial viewMount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant, the eighteenth-century mansion overlooking Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, was built for Captain John Macpherson. A privateer,…
Culture & landmarksMütter Museum
The Soap Lady is an unidentified woman whose preserved body became one of Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum’s best-known exhibits. She was exhumed in…
CemeteriesPalmer Cemetery
Palmer Cemetery in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood holds generations of residents from a community shaped by fishing and shipbuilding. One of…
Culture & landmarksPenn Museum
In December 2006, a false fire alarm brought Penn Museum security chief Brian McDevitt to the surveillance recordings from the Etruscan corridor. On…
Historic homesPhiladelphia Canoe Club
The Philadelphia Canoe Club occupies an old mill building near the meeting of Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River. Its haunting tradition…
InstitutionsPhiladelphia City Hall
Philadelphia City Hall once held defendants in a seventh-floor cell reached by a metal staircase inside a south turret. That secluded part of the…
Culture & landmarksPhiladelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art contains period rooms assembled from historic interiors, bringing entire architectural settings into its galleries.…
Historic homes · Historical imagePhiladelphia Zoo
Solitude House stands within the Philadelphia Zoo, but began as an eighteenth-century country retreat for John Penn on the west bank of the…
Outdoors · AI illustrationPine Street at South Sixth Street
The Pine Street apparition is an elderly woman said to appear at a window in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood. In the version told by Spirits…
Historic homesPowel House
Powel House is a restored Georgian home in Philadelphia whose ghost stories often resemble the remnants of a formal gathering. The accounts collected…
SchoolsRussell Conwell House
Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, described a deeply personal haunting after the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1910. About three…
Historic homesS. Weir Mitchell house marker
A Philadelphia version of the ghostly-messenger story names physician S. Weir Mitchell as its doctor. One snowy night, a girl supposedly arrived at…
Saint Andrew’s-in-the-Field Episcopal Chapel
Saint Andrew's-in-the-Field in Philadelphia's Somerton neighborhood developed from Saint Luke's Somerton Mission. The older, small white chapel…
InstitutionsScattergood Building
Friends Hospital in Philadelphia is associated with several accounts of unexplained activity in its Scattergood Building. Night employees reportedly…
OutdoorsSecond Bank of the United States
The Second Bank of the United States on Chestnut Street later served as Philadelphia’s customs house. Its stone steps provide the setting for Michael…
SchoolsSite of the original James Martin School
The original James Martin School stood at Richmond and Ontario Streets in Philadelphia's Port Richmond neighborhood. The nineteenth-century brick…
Outdoors · Historical imageSmith Memorial Arch
The Smith Memorial Arch stands in West Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Among its columns and Civil War memorial sculptures are curved stone benches…
CemeteriesSt. Peter’s Episcopal Church and churchyard
St. Peter's Churchyard occupies the corner of Fourth and Pine Streets in Philadelphia. Behind its walls, old grave markers and shaded paths preserve…
Standard Tap
Standard Tap in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties occupies a building with a long tavern history. Staff have associated one of its reported ghosts…
SchoolsTemple Performing Arts Center
The Temple Performing Arts Center occupies Philadelphia's former Baptist Temple, a building closely associated with Temple University founder Russell…
Temple University Hospital
Jeanes Hospital, now Temple University Hospital's Jeanes Campus in Philadelphia's Fox Chase neighborhood, began with a bequest from Quaker…
Inns & businessesThe former Inn Philadelphia
The former Inn Philadelphia restaurant occupied two adjoining brick houses on South Camac Street, combined in 1914 for the Le Coin d’Or club.…
OutdoorsThe Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment legend claims that a 1943 Navy test made the destroyer escort USS Eldridge invisible at the Philadelphia shipyard. In the…
SchoolsThe Water Boy
The Water Boy sits at the foot of the staircase in Drexel University's Main Building Great Court in Philadelphia. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, later…
CemeteriesTinicum Marsh
The Ape Boy of Chester is a legend of a runaway who vanished into the wetlands between Chester and Philadelphia. In the story collected by Matt Lake…
Cemeteries · Historical imageTrinity Church Oxford and churchyard
Trinity Church Oxford in Philadelphia was the setting for a Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance visit on July 13, 1998. According to co-founder…
Inns & businessesWalnut Street Theatre
John “Pop” Reed was a longtime stagehand at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre. He wanted to remain part of its performances after death and…
CemeteriesWashington Square
Washington Square in Philadelphia was once a public burial ground. Poor residents, people without church burial arrangements, soldiers from both…
OutdoorsWest Allens Lane at Wissahickon Avenue
West Allens Lane in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy neighborhood has a tradition of a headless Revolutionary War soldier riding through the fog with his…
OutdoorsWilliam Penn statue
The William Penn statue outside Pennsylvania Hospital’s Pine Building was a gift from his grandson John Penn in 1804. The broad-brimmed figure stands…