Travel search engine Kayak has created the ultimate cross-country Halloween road trip that pulls out all the spooky stops, including Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite in Baltimore, an abandoned amusement park in West Virginia and Tennessee’s Bell Witch Cave, which inspired “The Blair Witch Project.”
In all, the eerie route that zig-zags through the United States includes 29 stops and covers 7,497 miles. It would take 133 hours and 34 minutes (or 5.5 days) to complete, but that would mean you drove straight through — and what are you, a vampire?
The road trip is dotted with all kinds of alleged haunts, with paranormal tours at a decommissioned World War II aircraft, the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi, Texas, and a stop at a picturesque lighthouse in St. Augustine, Florida that’s been featured on “Ghost Hunters.”
Here’s the lighthouse, which has been known to smell of phantom cigar smoke — a clue that it’s haunted by a former tobacco-loving innkeeper?
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, road trips and close-to-home trips have become alternatives to flights and international travel. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does caution that any kind of traveling increases the risk of getting and spreading COVID-19, and since road trips require stops for gas, food or bathroom breaks, you may be in contact with other people and frequently-touched surfaces.
So, this creepy road trip may be one that you save for future years or you could modify the route so that you’re road-tripping close to home.
Kayak’s spooky trip itinerary gets its start in Waterbury, Vermont. Reported hauntings at a local B&B include stories of guests who say they were checked in by an employee who didn’t exist, but looked much like the hotel’s long-deceased owner, according to the road trip map.
The road trip ends at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, which was the muse for “Winchester,” a 2018 supernatural horror movie. Helen Mirren played Sarah Winchester, who poured a fortune into building the mansion that has 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, a dead-end staircase, 17 chimneys and 160 rooms, and lore has it that she set up the house to detour ghosts. Here’s what the Winchester Mystery House looks like from the outside:
Other scary experiences on the road trip include a stop in Salem (“The Witch City”), a walk across the Pocantico River in Sleepy Hollow, New York via The Headless Horseman Bridge, and a visit to The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.”
Would you dare to do this road trip for Halloween?
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for other great tips and ideas to make the most out of life.
