Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, California, USA

What do you get when you cross a storied past and gorgeous spaces? “Real,” not staged, haunted houses. “When you have rich history and cultures, you’re going to get ghost stories,” says Charles Spratley, who wrote Piercing the Veil: Examining San Diego’s Haunted History and runs Haunted Orange County tours. This may be why visitors say they’ve heard loud footsteps at the Whaley House, once the home of a prominent 19th-century family. Public hearings—and hangings—reportedly took place on the grounds before the Greek-revival-style house was built, and Yankee Jim, whose ghost stomps around upstairs, or so the story goes, was hanged on the property. If reports are to be believed, the family, too, never left. Violet Whaley committed suicide, but visitors report spotting her, as well as her parents, who presumably refuse to rest in peace while their daughter still roams among the living. Those seeking a closer encounter of the paranormal kind look to book room 3327 of the Hotel del Coronado, the most requested room at the hotel. In 1892, 24-year-old Kate Morgan checked in under an alias, only to shoot and kill herself days later. Current-day visitors report odd occurrences, like the TV and lights turning on and off by themselves, the sound of footsteps, inexplicable breezes and scents, and a woman materializing and vanishing in the garden—and hallways—before their eyes.