North Carolina Cities with Most Ghost Sightings

What Are the Most Haunted Cities in North Carolina?

As Halloween nears, BetCarolina.com is looking into the most haunted cities in North Carolina.

We’re talking ghost sightings, and we don’t mean the ghosts Carolina hoops fans saw in the 1979 NCAA second round when St. John’s took down Duke and Penn beat North Carolina in Raleigh. We’re talking real ghosts, call the Ghostbusters to get them out kind of ghosts.

BetCarolina.com – your source for North Carolina sports betting – used GhostsofAmerica.com to compile the amount of ghost sightings across the state of North Carolina. After determining the number of sightings per city, we developed the Top 10 cities for ghost sightings. Here are the results:

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N.C. Cities That You Would Most Likely See a Ghost

Rank	City	No. of Sightings
1	Camp Lejeune, NC	45
2	Salisbury, NC	29
3	Winston-Salem, NC	26
T4	Mount Airy, NC	22
T4	Greensboro, NC	22
6	Fort Bragg, NC	21
7	Gastonia, NC	19
T8	Jacksonville, NC	18
T8	Richlands, NC	18
T8	Fayetteville, NC	18

Speaking of Spooky

Ranked No. 1 in North Carolina for spectral sightings is all of the city of Camp Lejeune, with the Marine Corps Base being the single most haunted place in the state. Maybe it’s something in the water that leads to all the sightings, but there’s definitely something in the air. Back in 2011, ghost hunters with the South East Paranormal Investigators Association descended on the USO there to confirm word of disturbing appearances, and rumors of ghosts are so prevalent that the Marine base has organized a haunted kayaking event. In 2012, Camp Lejeune asked on Facebook if anyone had experienced paranormal activity there. People responded with tales of footsteps when no one was present, a little boy running through his reflection, an invisible man crossing the road to the base and more.

Second for spirits in North Carolina is Salisbury, where they began a “Ghost Walk” in 2010 that covers six blocks of “well-researched” phantom findings. Want to read up first? Check out The “Wettest & Wickedest” Town: An Illustrated Guide to The Legends and Ghosts of Salisbury, N.C. by Karen C. Lilly-Bowyer.

In third place is Winston-Salem, where the hauntings are in the history: Reynolda Gardens and Old Salem are said to be inhabited by the “Lady in White” and “Little Red Man,” respectively. Winston-Salem also offers ghost tours.

Mount Airy is tied for fourth on our list. A recent report says that ghost tours are so popular there they actually provide an economic boost to the Airy-a. Historic Mount Airy Ghost Tours even haunts Facebook with its own page and also has its own page on TripAdvisor. Greensboro is also tied for fourth in the state at the Ghosts of America website as of October 2024.

At No. 6 is Fort Bragg, where a mysterious house built by Scotsman John Lamont was recorded as “haunted” on a 1922 map of the property. For more “proof,” there’s the “haunted stories of Fort Bragg NC” page on TikTok, a fitting site since TikTok is haunting on its own.

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Author

Howard Gensler

Journalists / Reporter

Howard Gensler is a veteran journalist covering the North Carolina sports betting market for BetCarolina.com. Before his focus on US sports betting, Howard worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Howard is also a founding editor of bettorsinsider.com.