Haunted Places and Cursed Objects — Side Notes
Some places don’t let go. Some objects refuse to be neutral. A house remembers footsteps it no longer hears. A jewel changes hands and leaves a trail of misfortune sharp enough to earn a reputation. Ships vanish, reappear, and linger in the cultural imagination long after the last logbook entry dries. These stories persist not because they’re tidy, but because they resist closure.
The Side Notes in this section walk the line between record and rumor. They explore haunted sites and cursed objects as cultural phenomena—how history, trauma, theft, spectacle, and storytelling braid together until a place or thing becomes charged. Expect context, competing explanations, and a steady eye for why certain locations and artifacts keep being revisited, filmed, fenced off, or locked behind museum glass.
This isn’t a thrill ride. It’s a catalog of persistence—where memory clings to matter and refuses to be archived quietly.
Featured Side Notes
You can also find these articles—and many more—within the main Grimoire Blog.
America’s Creepiest Haunts: From the Winchester Mystery House to the Myrtles Plantation — Step inside America’s most haunted landmarks—the Winchester Mystery House, with its endless staircases and ghostly whispers, and the Myrtles Plantation, where spirits linger beneath moss-draped oaks. Discover the chilling legends and eerie encounters that make these places the stuff of nightmares.
Cemeteries That Whisper: Tales from Tombstones and Mausoleums — Step through the iron gates and into shadowed paths where tombstones whisper secrets of the past. From eerie mausoleums to spectral apparitions, explore haunted cemeteries worldwide and the chilling tales etched in stone.
Clocks Under the Sea: The Antikythera Mechanism’s Renaissance in Pop Culture — Beneath the waves, an ancient bronze device predicted the movements of stars and eclipses. The Antikythera Mechanism, lost for centuries, now captivates modern audiences, from YouTube explainer videos to pop-science fascination, bridging the gap between antiquity and today’s digital wonder.
Cursed Screens: The Dark Side of Digital Hauntings — From viral videos that haunt viewers’ dreams to apps that send messages no one should know, digital hauntings reveal a chilling truth: even screens can be gateways to the supernatural, where pixels and code carry whispers, warnings, and horrors from beyond the veil.
Dialing the Beyond: True Tales of Ghostly Phone Calls — When the phone rings in the dead of night, sometimes it’s not the living on the line. From whispered warnings to eerie messages from loved ones long gone, ghostly phone calls blur the line between the living and the dead, leaving a chill that lingers long after the line goes silent.
Forbidden Destinations: A Journey Through the World's Most Haunted Locations — Step into the shadows and explore the world's most haunted locations. From Paris’s Catacombs to Mexico’s Island of the Dolls, uncover chilling histories, ghostly whispers, and eerie experiences that blur the line between the living and the dead. Dare to wander where history refuses to rest.
Mystery Batteries & Electric Past: Baghdad’s Ancient Energy — Beneath the sands of ancient Mesopotamia lies a curious artifact: the Baghdad Battery. Was it an ancient electric cell, a ritual object, or a forgotten medical tool? Its secrets spark debates across archaeology, pop culture, and forums, bridging ancient ingenuity with modern fascination.
Reflections of Fear: The Enduring Terror of Bloody Mary — In PseudoPod's August 2025 episode, "Reflections on Bloody Mary," the classic urban legend is reimagined through the lens of contemporary horror. This episode delves into the psychological and cultural aspects of the Bloody Mary myth, offering a fresh perspective on a tale that continues to captivate and terrify.
The Enfield Poltergeist: Echoes of a Haunting — The Enfield Poltergeist terrorized a London family in the late 1970s, with furniture moving, strange voices, and unexplained phenomena. Skeptics doubt it, believers swear by it, and the mystery continues to haunt the imagination.
The Screaming Tunnel: Canada’s Haunted Passage of Fire and Grief — They say if you light a match at midnight in Ontario’s Screaming Tunnel, you’ll hear her scream—the ghost of a girl consumed by fire and forgotten by time.
The Wailing Walls of Edinburgh: Scotland’s Most Haunted Corners — Beneath Edinburgh’s cobblestones lurk shadows that never rest. From the suffocating vaults to the haunted grounds of Greyfriars Kirkyard, the city whispers of sorrow and screams of the dead. Discover why the Scottish capital is one of the world’s most terrifyingly haunted places—and what lingers behind its wailing walls.
Yorktown Memorial Hospital: Where the Living and the Dead Converge — Yorktown Memorial Hospital, long abandoned and steeped in eerie tales, draws paranormal seekers. Shadowy figures, disembodied voices, and restless spirits haunt its halls—now closed to the public, its chilling legacy endures.
Hauntings and curses endure because they give weight to consequence. They suggest that actions leave residue, that places can be altered by what happens within them, and that objects can accumulate more than dust. Whether explained through psychology, history, environmental factors, or belief, the effect is the same: attention gathers and refuses to disperse.
The Side Notes don’t promise answers or safe conclusions. Some entries will feel grounded and historical. Others may remain unresolved by design. That ambiguity is part of the material. These notes aren’t about proving the paranormal—they’re about understanding why certain places and objects won’t stop being talked about.
If you linger here, do so thoughtfully. Read the plaques. Mind the thresholds. Not everything that’s remembered wants to be handled again.
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