MilSpouse lists its top 10 most haunted military bases

Spend a little time around any military installation, and you're bound to hear tell of ghosts and urban legends. Often, the local gossip is just that, mere myth and fabrication.

But sometimes, an area is beset with enough spooky evidence that is hard to ignore, as is the case with the following ten haunted military bases.

You might want to turn the lights on before reading this list.

10. West Point Military Academy, New York

With reports of a ghostly cavalry still reporting for duty, the academy often pops up on most haunted lists. In 2017, 'Thrillist' named West Point the most haunted place in New York.

Of particular interest is Room 4714, where an opalescent figure is said to drift in and out of stone walls, terrifying first-year plebes as they settle into their new sleeping quarters.

Perhaps, not so coincidentally – Sleepy Hollow and West Point are a mere 42 minute drive apart. Maybe that's also part of the reason Ed and Lorraine Warren – the famed ghost-hunters whose stories inspired films, "Annabelle," "The Conjuring," and "The Amityville Horror" – also lectured at the academy in the 1970's.

9. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Fort Leavenworth's Frontier Army Museum has documented nearly three dozen haunted houses, making Leavenworth one of the most haunted Army installations. The museum has dockets of stories captured throughout the base, and from the nearby correctional facilities of: U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth, U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, where multiple inmates within the facilities are on death row.

The museum's stories are so well-told, that their annual "Haunted Fort Leavenworth Tours" sell out weeks in advance.

8. Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming

F.E. Warren is old, having begun operations in 1867 as Fort D.A. Russell. Airmen stationed here have reported other-worldly screams so terrifying that they've called base Security Forces to report it. The responders understand, because in the Security Forces Group Building 34, K-9 units whimper and whine at the staircases. The building was once the base hospital, its basement, the morgue.

The base's haunted reputation routinely fills seats on the Cheyenne Visitors Bureau "Haunted Halloween Trolley Tour," and has attracted the Colorado Paranormal Investigation (CPI), a Denver-based team of ghost hunters, and the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society. Both agencies have recorded unexplained paranormal activity.

On-base housing residents offer the following advice: "Want to know if your house is really haunted? Wait for Halloween, and see if the trolley tour pauses by your driveway."

7. Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington

Under the shadow of Mt. Rainer, in what used to be mere uninhabited rugged wilderness, Joint Base Lewis-McChord has accumulated its share of the ephemeral. Once the site of a guest house called The Red Shield Inn, the Fort Lewis Military Museum has been a hub of paranormal activity with reports of hauntings dating back decades – including rumors of an exorcism to placate an actor's restless spirit who was murdered in the inn.

Although records of the exorcism have not yet been officially substantiated by the Catholic Church, numerous accounts and reporting suggest the event might have indeed occurred.

6. Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana

When a state boasts tales of voodoo, spooky hotels, and ghost roads – it's small wonder that when hospital and cemetery space is repurposed in Louisiana, the dead don't get the message. Military members whose office space just happens to be along Davis Avenue, coincidentally the site of the former base hospital, have reported doors slamming shut, footsteps running down hallways, and objects thrown across the room. Even the Base Exchange and Commissary are haunted here, as both locations were built upon the former home of the Stonewall Cemetery.

As if the base hauntings weren't scary enough, the nearby cities of Shreveport and Bossier-City are a hotbed of spookiness, including an eerie creek crossing called "Green Light Bridge" where unexplained green lights hover around the small, country bridge. Those who live near the area know, "green means go" and if you ever see the lights – run.

5. Warner Robins Air Force Base, Georgia

The ghost stories swirling throughout the misty Georgia landscape are many. As the 13th Colony, the state certainly makes a good case for itself as being one of the most haunted in the continental U.S.

Warner Robins is located 18 miles south of Macon, Georgia – a city home to many haunted legends itself, including the chilling Hay House, named one of the "13 Most Beautiful Haunted Destinations in the World" by Architectural Digest. It's a house where wedding photographers have captured the wedding party, and ghosts, on camera.

And, if you fancy meeting a witch, just head a few miles outside of the base to "Gravity Hill." Legend has it that locals were actually kind to the witch who lived here in the 1800's, and interred her body in a grave upon her death. It's believed she continues to repay the kindness by helping cars over the ridge. To see her work, place your car in neutral, and watch as it rolls…uphill, against gravity.

There is also plethora of unexplained phenomena that would send Mulder and Scully running, including multiple UFO sightings, and a strange incident from 1954. Still not completely understood, over 50,000 birds, representing 53 species flew straight into the base's runway flood lights, and careened like projectiles into the ground. To date, the event remains one of the largest mass bird mortality incidents in recorded U.S. history.

4. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio

Dubbed the "Birthplace of Aviation," Wright-Patterson is one of the largest Air Force bases and also home to the USAF Aviation Museum – full of historic planes, where some of the former air crews…haven't quite left.

But it's Building 219 in particular that has presented the most paranormal activity. The three-story brick building was also the site of a hospital, the basement level of course serving as the morgue.

Hauntings there are so well known that the base featured on the SyFy Channel's "Ghost Hunters" series. The production team actually received DoD permission to be escorted onto the base for an investigation, which heavily focused on Building 219. Several phenomena were recorded, including footsteps and incessant tapping.

When one of the ghost hunters asked the dark, empty air, "Give us two taps if you want us to leave," and two taps quickly sounded – he said he felt obligated to honor his word and the team quickly left. Only later, while investigating their digital recordings did they hear women's laughter following the taps.

3. Fort McNair, Washington D.C.

Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, the arms of justice moved swiftly. After a 12-day manhunt, John Wilkes Booth was shot and killed by police, while his co-conspirators were quickly apprehended and imprisoned in the Washington Arsenal awaiting trial. Four would be sentenced to death by hanging, two others given life sentences.

One of the guilty sentenced to die included Mary Surratt, the proprietress of the boarding house where Booth and his associates developed the assassination plot. Although Surratt adamantly maintained her innocence, she was found guilty – and became the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government, with President Andrew Johnson himself signing the orders for execution.

The guilty watched from their jail cell windows as their own gallows were constructed in front of them, in the south part of the Washington Arsenal Courtyard.

The Washington Arsenal is now…none other than Fort McNair, where it is said an angry, restless spirit roams the grounds, shrouded in a dark bonnet and long black dress, melting snow in a path, as if still retracing her steps to the gallows…

2. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam

In a place that has experienced intense emotion and devastating tragedy, something is bound to be left behind.

Even before enduring one of the most tragic military attacks on U.S. soil, the Hawaiian Islands teem with stories of the supernatural. Locals warn to watch out for Pele – the goddess of fire who also has a proclivity for hitchhiking as the "White Lady." There are the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors called "Night Marchers" who drum their way across the sky during full moons, and of course, deities who guard the volcanoes, placing a curse on anyone foolish enough to take lava rocks from the Islands.

Bookended alongside the Islands' own haunted history is the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. A total of 2,403 Americans were killed in the attack, the majority of deaths occurring in Pearl Harbor, while others occurred on neighboring installations, Schofield Barracks, and Wheeler Army Air Field. The torpedoed USS Arizona took 1,177 souls with her as she sank to the ocean floor, and still lies in memoriam.

Numerous military members have reported eerie noises from the harbor, disembodied screams, and appliances that seem to have a mind of their own. Those living in base housing have also reported mumbling voices, footsteps, and laughter, doors and cabinets that open…and close, on their own, and flickering lights, just to name a few encounters.

1. Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan

Japan frequently tops the most haunted lists in horror film and literature, and the notoriety is warranted. Tales of terror stretch back in Japanese literature to the Heian period (794-1185), in a time so ancient that stories were inked onto scrolls, known as Gaki-zoshi, or "Scrolls of the Hungry Ghosts."

Unsurprisingly, Kadena Air Base and the surrounding military community have reported all manner of terrifying activity. Ghosts have approached one installation gate so many times, that the activity has been captured in multiple videos.

Building 2283 on Kadena was once a tranquil single-family base housing unit built next to a daycare center, until an alleged family murder took place in the home. The USO used to hold ghost tours here, until curtains parted by themselves and a landline phone – long disconnected, rang in the house in front of terrified tour groups. Before the building was demolished in 2009, the next-door daycare teachers complained that their students kept throwing their toys over the fence. When questioned, the children replied, "the little kids on the other side asked us to."

And the hair-raising terror continues in the Kadena Hospital Caves on the Banyan Tree Golf Course. The caves were once a former bomb shelter and hospital where 350 medical staff, and 222 nursing students from Japanese military units were assigned in WWII. When U.S. Forces came ashore, the caves were…evacuated. Some evacuated by ingesting potassium cyanide pills, others jumped to their death from nearby Maeda Point.

To this day, off the cliffs of Cape Maeda, scuba divers report seeing ghosts…underwater.

It's worth knowing that in Japanese ghost folklore, water plays a critical role as a medium in which souls can travel to…and from, the world of the dead.

So, the next time you PCS, and you hear your new staircase creaking, or could have sworn you turned the lights off before bed…you might not be imagining things. You might just be right.

This article originally appeared on Military Spouse. Follow @MilSpouseMag on Twitter.