DALLAS — It's Halloween week, so it's a good reminder: North Texas has plenty of haunted places, homes, bodies of water and other homes to ghosts of all kinds.
Even those of a "particular nature," as our very own Sean Giggy delicately described in a 2022 story about a former bordello (look it up) where ghosts now reside.
Whether you believe any of that or not, well, that's your own prerogative.
We've compiled a list of some of our favorite haunts -- literally -- and most of these were explored by Giggy himself.
If you're looking for haunted houses of the entertainment kind, we've got you covered here.
Now, here are eight places with the real thing:
Hill House Manor in Gainesville
No one would confuse a small house on Denton Street in Gainesville for a moving company. But if you do move in, you haul yourself right back out -- and quick.
“It’s like a revolving door,” said Linda Hill, the home’s owner. “The longest anyone stayed in this house was six months.”
Through the curtain, she saw then heard a dark figure whisper "Lookin' good!" at her. At first, she assumed it was her husband -- until a few seconds later, when her husband walked in the bathroom.
"He said, 'Who were you talking to?'" Hill recalled. "And it was like, 'Oh my God, it really is haunted.'"
Rumor has it, the house, built in the 1840s, used to be a bordello. That’s why Hill said many of the ghosts here tend to reveal themselves in a particular nature.
“Sexual,” she said. “There’s no other way to put it.”
Hill said several people have recorded EVPs -- electronic voice phenomenon -- where the ghosts can be heard talking dirty in the house.
"'Oh baby, oh baby, yeah,'" Hill said, mimicking what has been heard. "'Yeah, I like it like that.'"
Dorris House in Grapevine
Imagine, sitting at the salon, getting your do done when suddenly, those hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
What are the odds it’s a ghost?
“One hundred percent,” said Lauren Jackson, owner of Renata Salons in Grapevine.
She and her mom bought the Dorris House, the second oldest home in Grapevine and when they opened Renata Salons it opened her eyes.
“What’s changed my mind is experiencing things for myself,” Jackson said.
Multiple times, she was either alone or with her mom and she’d hear a loud crash and when she went to the room the sound came from, “there was red nail polish everywhere,” she said.
The nail polish was in the center of the floor as if it had flown off the shelf and shattered. It happened multiple times and the nail polish was almost always red.
Rogers Hotel in Waxahachie
Downtown Waxahachie has a lot of ghosts. Just don’t tell that to the guy who makes a living promoting ghosts.
“I’m the skeptic,” said Doug Reid, owner of Waxahachie Haunted History Tours. “I look at it and say, ‘you can explain this away. You can explain that.”
Reid says if any place were to make him a believer, it’d be the Rogers Hotel.
Originally built in the 1840s, it burned down twice. The current and third rendition of the hotel opened in 1913.
Although the hotel left decades ago, some guests never did.
“In a second-floor room here, there was piano music coming out of it,” Reid said.
According to Reid, those sounds came during a time decades ago when the building was empty and there was no piano inside.
Millermore Mansion in Dallas
Dallas’ Old City Park houses roughly two dozen structures from Texas’ past. However, the park isn’t just a collection of old buildings.
“Oh no, it’s haunted,” Peggy Helmick-Richardson, a tour guide at Old City Park, said. “I think it meets all the criteria.”
Helmick-Richardson has given a lot of tours at Old City Park and said she may have not believed in ghosts if she hadn’t seen them herself.
One day, alone inside the Millermore Mansion, with only one way in and out and the doors locked, Helmick-Richardson saw a woman in a brown dress go up the stairs.
“Just kind of glided up,” she said. “So I get up and go up the stairs and there was nobody there.”
Lady of the Lake at White Rock Lake
At an old cemetery near White Rock Lake, WFAA found the woman Dallas has spent decades looking for.
“Some people laughingly do refer to me as the 'Lady of the Lake,'” said Sally Rodriguez, the unofficial lake historian.
Unlike the Lady of the Lake legend, Rodriguez is very much alive. She earned her nickname because no one knows the lake’s history better than she does, including a haunted history that’s well documented.
However, Rodriguez says no matter how many times the story is told, it’s not true.
At least, not likely.
“I’ve found lots of stories, but no stories that match that,” Rodriguez said.
A story that ends at Cox Cemetery, reportedly where the Lady of the Lake is buried.
But how did she get there?
According to the urban legend, long ago, a lady in a soaking wet dress stopped a young couple driving by and asked for a ride home.
The couple agreed, but when they arrived at their destination, they looked in the backseat and the woman was gone. Where she was sitting there was just a puddle of water.
Reindeer Manor in Red Oak
Reindeer Manor is the oldest haunted house in America, according to co-owner Alex Lohmann.
“Yeah, this is our 49th season here,” Lohmann told us in 2022.
What sets Reindeer Manor apart from other haunted houses is that it is haunted, potentially.
“Not potentially,” Lohmann said. “It is.”
That’s hard for Lohmann to admit. He used to do paranormal investigations just to prove ghosts don’t exist.
“To disprove,” he said. “To prove that this isn’t really a thing.”
So what changed? He bought Reindeer Manor.
In 1915, the original house on the property burned down and killed the entire family.
It was rebuilt a few years later, which is the house that still stands today.
It was in that house, in 1929, the owner poisoned his wife before hanging himself in the barn.
Now part of the haunted attraction, the spot in the barn where it happened has been a site where several guests claim to have had the same experience.
“An orb of light pushed them against the wall and choked them,” Lohmann said.
Employees have heard stuff, too, like footsteps in the attic.
“And there’s just never anybody there,” Lohmann said.
Miss Molly's Bed & Breakfast in the Fort Worth Stockyards
Fair warning: Anyone who checks out the Fort Worth Stockyards may want to think twice before checking in at Miss Molly’s Hotel.
Located on the second floor above the Star Café, Miss Molly’s is reportedly haunted.
“Some guests came and didn’t leave,” said general manager Paula Gowins. “They stayed.”
Gowins didn’t know that when she started working at Miss Molly’s 17 years ago.
“Things started happening and I was like, ‘Ok, I didn’t do that,’” she said.
She saw lights flicker, things disappear and doors lock. At first, she brushed it off, until, one night, she thought she was at the hotel alone.
“I saw a man,” Gowins said, pointing to one of the hotel’s eight rooms. “He was headed toward that room, so I followed him. I opened it up and nobody was in there. That’s when I called for help.”
She reached out to psychics, preachers, and anyone who could figure out what she saw.
Their conclusion?
It was a cowboy named Jake.
“This was his room and he died in here,” Gowins said, indicating he passed away in a corner room of the hotel.
Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells
The Baker Hotel and Spa once catered to the rich and famous and to people seeking a miracle.
When the Baker opened in 1929, Mineral Wells was a destination getaway, thanks to the mineral water that was believed to have healing powers.
However, restoration project manager Mark Rawlings says some people who came looking for a cure never left.
“There’s been 29 reported deaths in here is what I’ve been told,” Rawlings said.
One of those deaths was a 16-year-old bellhop, who—according to a newspaper article from 1948—was crushed by the elevator as he was preparing to begin his shift.
Online accounts say the boy has been spotted around the hotel throughout the years.
Rawlings said if anything paranormal is at the Baker, it isn’t creepy or scary.
“They’re just good people, now they’re good ghosts,” he said. “Why you gonna scare us off if we’re here fixing up your house?”
