12 Terrifying Ghost Stories From Around The World

7. Murdered Wife Haunts Library

The life of Sophia Eberlein was a short, tragic one. Having emigrated from Russia to the United States as a young woman, she found herself married to Hugo Eberlein, a well-known businessman with whom she bore two daughters, Lillian and Alice.

Following Hugo's death in 1928 she remarried, taking up with a man named Jacob Bentz in her home of Harvey, North Dakota. It is unknown if this second marriage was particularly tumultuous, but what is known is that Bentz bludgeoned his wife to death not longer after.

Despite cleaning up the crime scene and trying to make it look like Sophia had died in a car accident, Bentz was caught out by a visit by Lillian who noticed the blood splatters in her deceased mother's bedroom. Bentz admitted to the crime and was sentenced to life in prison, where he himself died in 1944.

It's a sad story, and one which has all the hallmarks of a later haunting: a violent, horrible death, at the hands of a loved one, the victim burdened with "unfinished business". Which is perhaps why, when author William Jackson began working in a library built on the land of the old Eberlein family home, he found himself the victim of cold chills, moving furniture and the glimpsed sight of the manifestation of the murdered Sophia.

According to Jackson, the librarian's office was built in the exact spot where Sophia's bedroom was, the part of the house she was killed and apparently her final resting place.

Spookier than the lady at the start of Ghostbusters, that. Definitely less funny.