October 9, 2009 (2009-10-09) – October 28, 2018 (2018-10-28)
Most Terrifying Places in America was an American paranormaldocumentarytelevision series that premiered on October 9, 2009 on the Travel Channel as a stand-alone special. The special was subsequently broken down into an episodic series. Each episode featured the legends and stories of several reportedly haunted locations throughout America.
In October 2018, a five-episode special series aired on the Travel Channel which gave the show episode titles instead of numbered volumes.[1]
Synopsis
The series was narrated by Mason Pettit. Each episode started off showing haunted "hotspots" on a map of the United States.A particular haunted location was then selected by each of the series' "ghost hunters," and investigated by them and their team. Paranormal investigators, historians, psychics, and mediums all presented commentary on these sites. Historical footage was often shown, and any eyewitnesses interviewed. The show reported on the paranormal as told from purported personal encounters with the supernatural. At the beginning of each episode a parental advisory was shown: "Warning: What you are about to see may be too extreme for the young, the impressionable, and the faint of heart. Parental discretion is advised."[2]
In the seventh one-hour special, the episode tells the tales of nine haunted locations, which are reportedly haunted by the supernatural.
Special
A Halloween special named Most Terrifying Places in America: Top 13 aired on Friday October 29, 2010. This special episode counted-down the 13 most terrifying places from past episodes.
This episode tells the tales of the open road by exploring terrifying roadside attractions and the haunted roads less traveled that will make drivers want to lock their doors and roll up their windows. A Memphis juke joint that featured blues and a brothel, an old bridge in Mississippi where a murderer was hanged for his crimes, Savannah's oldest operating hotel built before to the Civil War that was used as a hospital for amputations, a ghostly lake that tells the tale of what really happened to the Donner party, Florida's highway to hell locals call the 'Dead Zone' and an Arkansas hotel that was operated as a cancer hospital run by a charlatan.
The episode ventures into towns across America that are reportedly haunted by their dark pasts. A museum dedicated to experimental medicine located in America's first apothecary is haunted by the spirit of a sadistic doctor, a tattoo parlor that was formally home to a secretly odd organization, a dangerous intersection in Tennessee which was the site of a deadly shoot out, an infamous bridge in Vermont where a heart-broken teenage girl leaped to her death, a prison near an ancient burial ground that its inmates believed cursed them to stay there for all eternity, and a Revolutionary War fort where visitors report the ghosts of long-dead soldiers still march on the grounds.
This episode explores scary attractions across the nation: a motel next to a cemetery that's a Coulrophobia's worst nightmare, a morbid museum that houses haunted artifacts like a demonic Raggedy Ann doll, an old western ranch with a 19th-century schoolhouse that's reportedly haunted by a schoolmarm and her students, a historic Mississippi town that locals claim is cursed by a witch who killed its citizens, a movie theater in Maine where a sorrowful woman starred in her own horror film when she leaped off the theater's balcony to her death, and a sinister cement factory-turned-haunted attraction that scares its patrons with real ghosts.
This episode features locations where the restless souls of the dead never sleep. A Florida lighthouse that's filled with darkness of those who died there, a former Victorian-era asylum for women where the insane were experimented on, one of the few remaining Rotary Jails where inmates tried to escape by severing their limbs, a majestic mansion in Detroit built by a lumber baron is claimed to be haunted by his two wives, a restaurant that was once a remote outpost in Nebraska where a scorned woman killed her unfaithful husband is reportedly haunted by a ghost called "Faceless Fred", and a small country store in the Florida Everglades is the site of a deadly shootout of a bloody outlaw who hid his victims in the swampy waters.
This episode explores supernatural locations linked to terrifying tales. A ghostly road in Nebraska where local legend suggests a farmer hanged his entire family that included seven daughters and his wife, a mysterious forest where hikers reportedly vanish without a trace, an Upstate New York farmhouse where it's claimed a demon resides, a creepy mining town in Colorado that was once called 'the wickedest town' in America, a New England Victorian-style mansion where its former owners possesses the living tenants, and a former sanitarium that performed medical experiments with electricity to cure its patients' ailments.
