12 spooky trails for spooky season

Every part of the country has its local ghost stories. There’s the tunnel nobody walks through at night, the cemetery on the hill, the canyon where something happened a long time ago that people still talk about. A lot of those places are on public land now, and plenty of them have a trail running right through them.

We pulled together ten of our favorites for October. There’s a railroad tunnel in southern Ohio that’s said to have four ghosts, a hilltop cemetery in California where people report a woman in white, and an overlook in North Carolina where strange lights have been showing up over the same mountain for more than a hundred years. There’s also a canyon on Mount St. Helens that played a big part in starting the whole Bigfoot legend.

Ape Canyon Trail

Cougar, Washington, United States

Distance: 10.2 mi · Elevation gain: 2,103 ft · Difficulty: Hard · Rating: 4.8 (1,335 reviews)

Ape Canyon is one of the places where the Sasquatch legend got its start. In July 1924, a group of gold miners came off Mount St. Helens with a story that ran in newspapers up and down the coast. They said a pack of seven-foot “apemen” had spent the night pelting their cabin with rocks. One of the miners, Fred Beck, said he’d shot one earlier that day and watched it fall into the gorge next to their claim. Search parties never found a body, but the gorge has been called Ape Canyon ever since, and Bigfoot hunters still come looking.

Wiseman’s View Trail

Linville Falls, North Carolina, United States

Distance: 0.4 mi · Elevation gain: 49 ft · Difficulty: Easy · Rating: 4.8 (655 reviews)

This is one to do at night. From the overlook, you’re looking straight across Linville Gorge at Brown Mountain, where people have reported strange floating lights for more than a century. They hover, change color, and wink out. One local legend says they’re lanterns carried by Cherokee women still searching for warriors who never came home.

Apple Pie Hill Fire Tower via Batona Trail

Vincentown, New Jersey, United States

Distance: 8.6 mi · Elevation gain: 232 ft · Difficulty: Easy · Rating: 4.5 (579 reviews)

The Pine Barrens are home to the Jersey Devil. The story goes that in 1735, a woman known as Mother Leeds cursed her 13th child before it was born. It came out with hooves, wings, and a forked tail, and flew up the chimney into the woods. People have been reporting screams in the pines and strange tracks in the sand ever since, and in 1909 a wave of sightings got bad enough that some schools and mills in the area closed for a few days.

El Yunque Peak Tower – Los Picachos

Río Grande, East Region, Puerto Rico

Distance: 4.2 mi · Elevation gain: 836 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.8 (284 reviews)

In 1995, farmers near El Yunque National Forest started finding their livestock dead, with puncture wounds and, they said, no blood left. Witnesses described a creature with huge dark eyes and spines down its back. People called it the chupacabra, the goat sucker, and many believed it came from the rainforest.

Gold Camp Road

Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States

Distance: 11.2 mi · Elevation gain: 1,092 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.7 (192 reviews)

Tunnel 3 on Gold Camp Road caved in back in 1988 and is still gated shut. The story around Colorado Springs is that a school bus full of kids was inside when it came down. Visitors talk about hearing children laughing in the other tunnels, and about coming back to find small handprints on their cars.

The Billy Yank Trail & Devils Den

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, United States

Distance: 9.7 mi · Elevation gain: 744 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.6 (1,026 reviews)

Devil’s Den is a field of huge boulders at the foot of Little Round Top. During the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate sharpshooters hid in the rocks and fired on Union soldiers holding the hill above. So many men died in the low ground between the two that soldiers called it the Slaughter Pen.

Visitors have been reporting ghosts here ever since. The most famous is a barefoot soldier in a floppy hat who appears among the rocks, points across the valley, says “What you’re looking for is over there,” and then disappears. On Little Round Top, people say they hear a drum beating in the trees at dusk.

Babson Reservoir Dogtown Loop Trail

Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States

Distance: 1.9 mi · Elevation gain: 154 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.3 (826 reviews)

Dogtown was a village on Cape Ann that slowly emptied out in the late 1700s. By the end, the only people left were a few poor women and the dogs they kept around, and the rest of Gloucester decided they were witches. One of them, Tammy Younger, was known as the Queen of the Witches.

Lake Drummond via Washington Ditch Road

Suffolk, Virginia, United States

Distance: 9 mi · Elevation gain: 19 ft · Difficulty: Easy · Rating: 4.3 (194 reviews)

The story of Lake Drummond goes back at least to 1803, when the Irish poet Thomas Moore turned it into a ballad. A young man’s fiancée died, and he became convinced she was out on the lake in a white canoe. One night he followed her light onto the water and never came back. On foggy nights, the story goes, you can see both lights drifting together.

Moonville Tunnel Rail Trail: Tunnel Section

Zaleski, Ohio, United States

Distance: 1.1 mi · Elevation gain: 137 ft · Difficulty: Easy · Rating: 4.4 (394 reviews)

The town of Moonville is gone, but its brick railroad tunnel is still standing. Depending on who you ask, it’s home to four ghosts: an engineer, a brakeman whose lantern still swings inside the tunnel, a woman who leaves the smell of lavender behind, and a local bully who throws pebbles down from the top. Railroad crews reported the lantern so often that engineers would hit the brakes for it.

Nortonville and Black Diamond Loop

Clayton, California, United States

Distance: 6 mi · Elevation gain: 1,377 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.6 (776 reviews)

Sarah Norton delivered hundreds of babies in the coal towns below Mount Diablo before her horses bolted and threw her from her buggy in 1879. She’s buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, a small hilltop graveyard this loop walks right through. When people talk about the “White Witch” of Rose Hill, a woman in white seen moving between the headstones, she’s who they mean.

Kerriston Ghost Town Trail

Snoqualmie, Washington, United States

Distance: 10.7 mi · Elevation gain: 1,223 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 3.9 (94 reviews)

Kerriston was a logging and brick-making town on the Raging River, about 30 miles southeast of Seattle. It got a post office in 1904, lost it in 1935, and by the late 1940s the last families had left and the forest had started taking it back. There’s no famous ghost story attached to it, just a whole town’s worth of leftovers scattered through the trees. As one AllTrails reviewer put it: “THIS SHIT HAUNTED AS HELL OMG !!!!!!!!!!”

Goldmine Mountain Peak Trail

Chandler Heights, Arizona, United States

Distance: 3.2 mi · Elevation gain: 498 ft · Difficulty: Moderate · Rating: 4.7 (2,345 reviews)

Two prospectors moved into these mountains in 1948 to look for gold. One of them, Mansel Carter, stayed for nearly 40 years and became known locally as the “Man of the Mountain.” He and his partner are buried near the trail, and you can still visit their graves.

The climb starts sandy and flat, then gets steep and rocky up to the highest point on any trail in San Tan Mountain Regional Park. One reviewer recommends it after dark, saying: “Great at night time, just don’t let the trail monster get you.” If you go at night, check park hours and bring a headlamp.