10 Haunted Houses That Have Murdered People

9. The Ghost That Killed

In most cases, a haunting is more of a benign experience. A ruddy horrifying and disturbing experience, to be sure, but not one that involves the victim being put in any sort of immediate physical danger (outside of dying of fright or being clonked over the head by some household detritus should a poltergeist come knocking). That means that when a ghost is said to kill, it's rather a serious matter.

A story that's native to Kentucky, it starts with a man called Carl Pruitt, who strangled his wife with a length of chain after he suspected her of having an affair. Guilt-stricken, he took his own life soon after. He didn't have a great reputation after that: teens used to vandalise his grave, which was emblazoned with...a length of chain.

One kid died in a bike accident after one such bashing of his grave, his bank chain getting entangled round his neck and strangling him during a nasty spill. A man sick of tales of the haunted cemetery took a sledgehammer to the grave, the crunching sound assumed by locals to be the man doing his job; he was later found hung from a chain-link fence. The graveyard has since been replaced with a mall. Not a moment too soon.