Weird history41.9692° N, 87.6599° W
Chicago, IL
A Prohibition-era jazz club strongly associated with Al Capone's Chicago, complete with old booths, tunnels lore, and a remarkably preserved atmosphere.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
Weird history
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Weird history2,650
Suggest a stopReal events too strange to have made the textbook.
- Weird history44.2570° N, 72.5974° W
Montpelier, VT
This hillside cemetery is packed with elaborate Victorian funerary art, including carved stairways, sculpted figures and the locally notorious Hubbard memorial. Ghost and curse stories have attached themselves to some of the monuments, but the carvings themselves are the documented attraction.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history44.3773° N, 72.1222° W
Danville, VT
A once-busy mill village largely disappeared after a destructive nineteenth-century fire. Today interpretive signs, foundations and landscape remnants allow visitors to walk through the remains of a Vermont community that effectively vanished.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history37.7846° N, 80.3089° W
White Sulphur Springs, WV
Hidden beneath the Greenbrier resort during the Cold War, Project Greek Island was a massive fallout shelter designed to house the entire United States Congress after a nuclear attack. Its existence was exposed publicly in 1992, and the declassified bunker can now be visited only on scheduled guided tours.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history37.8032° N, 80.4451° W
Lewisburg, WV
This is the courthouse where Erasmus Shue was tried for the 1897 murder of his wife Zona, the crime at the center of the Greenbrier Ghost legend. The building remains a functioning courthouse, so it is a legitimate historical stop rather than a paranormal attraction and visitors should behave accordingly during business hours.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history44.7092° N, 118.4972° W
Greenhorn, OR
This nearly empty incorporated mining town sits high in the Blue Mountains, where old roads, mining history and scattered private holdings require cautious, non-trespassing exploration.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history38.5519° N, 82.8558° W
Greenup, KY
This unusually equipment-heavy veterans memorial surrounds its monuments with a full-size tank, fighter jet, helicopter and military boat. One of the Huey helicopter displays has held dog tags honoring veterans, turning the roadside park into a much more visually dramatic memorial than a conventional stone monument.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history39.3883° N, 75.3383° W
Greenwich Township, NJ
A monument commemorates the December 1774 Greenwich Tea Party, when local patriots destroyed a shipment of tea in protest against British taxation. The New Jersey action occurred after the more famous Boston Tea Party but remains an important regional Revolutionary-era protest.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history28.5226° N, 81.3510° W
Orlando, FL
Historic cemetery with notable local burials and occasional guided moonlight walks.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history47.4384° N, 92.9396° W
Hibbing, MN
Greyhound traces its roots to Hibbing, and this museum preserves buses, photographs and material from the company's early years. Full-size coaches make the collection feel more like a transportation time capsule than a conventional local-history room.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history38.3995° N, 82.5782° W
Kenova, WV
Griffith & Feil traces its pharmacy roots to 1892 and still operates an old-fashioned soda fountain inside the working business. Visitors can sit at the counter for ice cream and diner food while surrounded by a surviving piece of small-town pharmacy history.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history34.1340° N, 118.2885° W
Los Angeles, CA
Stone animal enclosures, barred caves and picnic tables remain from the abandoned 1912 Griffith Park Zoo inside a modern public park.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history39.4013° N, 118.6472° W
Fallon, NV
A short BLM trail winds among basalt boulders covered in ancient petroglyphs beside the remains of Ice Age Lake Lahontan.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history32.0028° N, 90.8951° W
Port Gibson, MS
A Natchez Trace stop where travelers historically crossed Bayou Pierre and where the old road alignment can still be followed on foot. The forested site combines Trace history with the feeling of a route reclaimed by nature.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history21.9655° N, 159.3688° W
Līhuʻe, HI
A preserved sugar-plantation estate contains the Wilcox family home, workers' structures, gardens, and machinery tied to Kauaʻi's plantation economy. Public access is through scheduled tours rather than unrestricted wandering across the working property.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history35.6202° N, 82.5429° W
Asheville, NC
During the Cold War, contingency plans designated Asheville’s Grove Park Inn as a relocation site where the U.S. Supreme Court could continue operating after a nuclear attack on Washington. The hotel is open to guests and visitors, but the former emergency shelter facilities themselves are not public.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history46.5852° N, 112.0410° W
Helena, MT
A tall 1870s fire-watch tower built after devastating early Helena fires. The landmark still stands above Last Chance Gulch and is visible from surrounding streets and trails.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history33.9883° N, 81.0502° W
Cayce, SC
Beehive kilns and industrial remains survive from a brickworks that once produced huge quantities of building material near the Congaree River. The preserved circular kilns look almost like small ruined fortifications and are visible from the Three Rivers Greenway area.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history36.0679° N, 90.9563° W
Walnut Ridge, AR
An outdoor walkway shaped like a giant guitar celebrates musicians connected to northeast Arkansas and nearby rockabilly history. Interpretive plaques turn the oversized instrument into a walkable music exhibit.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history41.3835° N, 72.0608° W
Groton, CT
Gungywamp is a baffling archaeological landscape of stone chambers, walls, rings and other features representing centuries of Indigenous and colonial activity. Its unusual structures have also inspired plenty of speculative theories. Access is controlled and should be through an authorized guided program rather than independent exploration.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history41.8286° N, 71.4052° W
Providence, RI
Lovecraft lived at 65 Prospect Street during the final years of his life, and the house appears in altered form in his story "The Haunter of the Dark." It is a private residence rather than a museum. OddWay visitors should view it only from the public sidewalk and should not disturb the occupants.
- Access
- Private land, view only
- Weird history41.8540° N, 71.3811° W
Providence, RI
Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is buried with his parents in Swan Point Cemetery beneath a modest stone bearing the phrase "I AM PROVIDENCE." Fans routinely leave notes, coins, drawings and other small tributes at the grave. Visit only during cemetery hours and follow cemetery rules.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history37.9761° N, 92.7699° W
Camdenton, MO
The stone ruins of an early twentieth-century mansion crown a bluff above the Lake of the Ozarks after the building was destroyed by fire in 1942. Public trails and overlooks let travelers explore the stabilized exterior ruins without trespassing.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history42.0035° N, 71.5133° W
Woonsocket, RI
A bronze statue of the famously loyal Japanese dog Hachiko stands outside Woonsocket's former train depot. The location was used while filming the 2009 movie "Hachi: A Dog's Tale," with the Rhode Island city standing in for the film's New England setting. The statue gives the movie connection a permanent physical marker.
- Access
- Open to visitors