WHY are funeral homes so haunted?

WHY are funeral homes so haunted? I listed just a few, but a quick google search of 'haunted funeral homes' comes up with a whole lot, and you know anecdotally that there are so very many more. What is it about the funeral homes that causes the hauntings? Do the souls of the dead follow their bodies to the funeral homes when the funeral homes come to get them? Do they keep hanging out there even after their funerals? Reading up on this, it seems that former funeral homes seem to be just as haunted as active funeral homes. If I were a ghost I'd be wanting to hang out with my husband and wait until he died to move along ... or I'd go to church and pray so that someone from Heaven would come and get me and show me how to move along ... but hanging out in a funeral home? Nah.

Speculate. WHY do you think the funeral homes are so haunted?

Side story - I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, two doors down from a house that the town undertaker used to live in during the 30's and 40s and 50s or so. I played with the little girl who lived there. There was a ghost of the undertaker in the house. He used to sit on the beds of the little girl and her sister and breath heavy. He'd do the same to the grandmother when she'd come and stay for a visit. He liked girls and women .. even in death.

Former Funeral Homes that are Haunted

1. The Haunted Mortuary — New Orleans, Louisiana
The Grand Victorian Mansion was built back in 1872 and became a funeral home in 1928 when it was purchased by PJ McMahon. PJ McMahon and Sons Funeral Home operated until 2004, and during that time there were stories of many strange occurrences. Some stories tell of a phantom woman in white who remains on the top floor, still mourning her long-lost husband. Another tale tells of two young children that play pranks on unsuspecting visitors in the former funeral home. But perhaps most terrifying is the sighting of a former mortician, who, as the legend goes, can still be seen practicing his work in the basement of the old funeral home.

2. Jewett House — Mason, Michigan
The Jewett House was built in the 1800s by a lumber baron and became a funeral home in the 1920s. It remained in business right up until the 1990s. After the funeral home closed, the new owners turned the building into a private residence and rented it out. But renters never stayed at the home too long. Apparently, some unexplained activity had scared them out. According to the legends, footsteps, unexplained whistling, and whispering are often heard late at night.

3. Lentz Funeral Home — Raeford, North Carolina
Like many older funeral homes, this former funeral home doubled as a family home. It even inspired its own book, titled If These Walls Could Speak: The Undertaker’s Daughter. Written by Ina Lentz Griesbeck, the book documents her experience growing up in the rural North Carolina mortuary. Stories tell of lights in the basement mysteriously turning on. Or of random objects disappearing, only to reappear days later.

4. Coletta’s Funeral Home — Chicago, Illinois
This former funeral home operated from 1908-1955. After which, the funeral home became a bar. Many of the bar’s new patrons — including the owner — say they’ve seen some paranormal activity. Stories include mysterious thick white fog filling the basement at random and the appearance of an unknown man wearing a trench coat.

5. Kehoe House — Savannah, Georgia
The Kehoe House is now a romantic bed and breakfast in Savannah’s historic district. But prior to that, the mansion — built in 1892 — was a family-owned funeral home owned by the Kehoe family. As the legend goes, two of the Kehoe children passed away while the family lived in the building. To this day, guests report seeing two young spirits while staying overnight at the bed and breakfast.

6. Snedeker House — Southington, Connecticut
The Snedeker House is probably the most infamous on the list. It’s the real-life location that inspired the events that took place in the movie A Haunting in Connecticut. According to Ed and Lorraine Warren, two paranormal investigators, the home was the site of powerful supernatural forces that required an exorcism.

7. Castle House — Brumley, Missouri
This old Victorian home is more than 160 years old. During its history, it’s been both a funeral home and a hospital. It’s also one of the most haunted homes in the Midwest. If you’re feeling really brave, you can spend a night in the house by renting it on Airbnb.

8. House of Wills — Cleveland, Ohio
The House of Wills was originally a German opera house built some time in the early 1900s. The beautiful building later became a funeral home in the 1940s but kept much of the opera décor. The funeral home has been abandoned since 2005, but it’s believed the ghost of Mr. Wills himself still roams the haunted halls.

The Most Haunted Historic Funeral Home in the United States

"Probably Haunted" Funeral Home in Massachusetts For Sale

SO MANY MORE .... I won't list all the stories that popped up ...

a reply to: FlyersFan

I actually think the opposite. I think very few funeral homes and cemeteries are haunted.
They may have some “left over” spirits, but nothing outrageous.

I think hospitals, hospice, and nursing homes probably have more.
Also, sometimes the funeral homes are just old houses that have been converted. Maybe the old residents are mad all the dead people are going there.

Some have theorized that we live in a multiverse with just a thin veil separating them. Perhaps enough dead souls can unite their energy to penetrate these other-worldly veils?

Maybe 'hauntings' are much like UFO's in that people want to believe so much that they become prey for unscrupulous people telling falsehoods-like the Amityville Horror.

I've done a fair share of paranormal investigating and just don't think the dead would want to hang around a bunch of rotting corpses in the ground, I know I'd want to visit my home and loved ones, or fun places. A few times I got talked into investigating graveyards and absolutely no activity.

However I do think it possible a spirit may form an attachment to an object or place.

As a funeral home operator for a few years, shall I say a few BORING years. Other than the living guest all quiet. Now hospitals are a nightmare 24-7.

originally posted by: mikell
As a funeral home operator for a few years, shall I say a few BORING years. Other than the living guest all quiet. Now hospitals are a nightmare 24-7.

Same with nursing homes…you can feel it in the air there..

originally posted by: mikell
Now hospitals are a nightmare 24-7.:

About 25 years ago my husband had back surgery in Nashville. I took him to the hospital to get him checked in. There was something about that place that was so creepy. I kept looking at the desks where people were working and looking around the room ... expecting something creepy to appear. Never expected that feeling in a hospital.

a reply to: FlyersFan

All I know is that I was always on the fence on this stuff until I experienced it first hand in our 1994 built home in South Carolina.

The footsteps that I heard while wide awake at night were so prominent that I text the seller and asked did anytime die here. He said no. As a result of a chance meeting and a feeling of energy [a huge back story] I returned to the Catholic Church. The Pastor then contacted the Diocese of Charleston who sent in an Exorcist. Father Morey said that I have been under spiritual attack. He told me what to do and I have followed. We are also moving as way too much for us to handle spiritually.

I am all in on whatever they see including white energy rising from the ground outdoors on our security cam. As it relates to the lights in the home as related by the girl.

We have tons of electrical anomalies and lost over $6000 of electronic equipment getting zapped. We have Level I,II and II surge protection. Neighbor has gone through 6 refrigerators in 12 years.

Time to get out

a reply to: Waterglass

YIKES. We had something show up 3 years ago. It took 6 months to get rid of it. The parish priest couldn't do it so the diocese did the exorcist thing. The problem was, the only exorcist for this diocese lives 2 hours away and he had a bad hanging on case of COVID during all this. I admit I have PTSD from the whole thing. I can't even sit on the couch and watch a commercial for a scary movie without changing the channel.

You searched for haunted funeral homes, so you found some. It's not rocket science, just good old fashioned confirmation bias.

As someone who's had multiple NDEs, and became annoyingly sensitive to spirits, I can tell you, there are spirits everywhere.
Hell, there was one in my bedroom when I moved into this house. And when I walk through a funeral home or cemetery, I don't feel them being particularly haunted. A spirit might hang out in those places if someone they loved was visiting them there, but probably not otherwise.

Most spirits left their bodies long before the corpse got to the slab, and either stayed at the scene of their death reliving the trauma, or sought out living loved ones to try to find a way to communicate to them.
To recap: SOME funeral homes are haunted. There's haunted places all over. People are scared of funeral homes because they represent death, therefore, people ASSUME funeral homes are particularly haunted, but they really aren't.

It's also good to realize that spirits don't experience locality and space-time the way we do. They can be multiple places at once, and listening in, and if they feel or hear someone trying to talk to them, they might focus in their energy to go where that person is, but most of them aren't gonna feel a connection to a morgue slab, unless their death was an unsolved murder, and even then, they'll probably be too busy following people around to lay in a random drawer somewhere just because that's where their corpse was for a while. Only time you visit someone in a morgue is if you're ID'ing the body, or if you're ghost hunting, and if it's the latter, most of them will only be there because they felt someone trying to commune with spirits.

JAGstorm is totally right, you'd be far more likely to find a ghost in a hospital.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Now nursing homes and hospice care makes sense. They LIVED there.
And a hospital makes particular sense if a person was there a while battling a terminal illness or if the staff made a mistake and they want to tell what went wrong.
My dad's farm house was always haunted growing up, and so was my friend's farm house. He used to see visual apparitions and even hear footsteps trascending his stairs. Places where they lived is where they usually linger.
People just be scurred of morgues and dead bodies. LOL.
Scary does not equal haunted, folks.

a reply to: JAGStorm

a reply to: FlyersFan

The person does not want to leave there body if they have unfinished business or loved ones they care about, they will often fight to try to get there body's to come back but it is not always possible of course but as long as there is even a hint of life left within there former body they often refuse to let go and this also occurs around many cemetery's as well with many cases of hauntings and apparitions being seen in such places, traditions as old as humanity often made it taboo for the living to frequent such places except to pay respect to the deceased but you can think of them as city's and towns of the passed over whose souls have not yet passed to the other side or are staying here for some reason, waiting for there loved ones, with unfinished business or victims of great injustice that feel wronged.

After my mother died we were all inconsolable and still are but when we visited her in the funeral parlour over here in the UK the lights kept flickering around the building.

I almost had a break down when her body was about to be cremated, it was snow outside and yet the sun came out almost like a summers day despite it being winter as we drove away, it was almost impossible to bare however to lose the one parent I had, the same for my sister.

After that my other sisters and brother estranged as they were came with crocodile tears they had all robbed there own mother and did harm to us as well but it was her dying wish not to let them come near her after what they had done so out of her surviving seven children only me her youngest child and third son and my sister her third child were there to see our mother's body off though God knows I wanted to go with her.

After we had strange occurrences that proved to me and my sister that our mother was still with us.

We smelled her scent opium which she loved and things happened, nothing scary just nice as it was comforting although also very sad to know my mother was and possibly still is with us but painful to know I could not see her or make her a cup of tea ever again.

Before my mother passed I often got a strange smell in her bungalow of cigar smoke, it was unfamiliar to me but my mother suspected it was her father, her mother used to take something called snuff which was smelling tobacco and that smell I did recognize but since my mother's mother had betrayed her own youngest my mother and stolen her inheritance my mother said out loud that she had better not be coming for her because she would have nothing to do with her after what she had done, after that the smell of snuff tobacco became very rare but the smell of cigar smoke became more prevalent, my mother had been battling cancer for a long time and did not tell us the truth that the doctor had given her four years at most but she had battled on while it spread to her internal organs, bowl's liver and kidney's putting up with the unimaginable pain just to stay with us and in her own way look after us.

She was no stranger to suffering though after two abusive husbands and suffering life long disability's that she never admitted to having and lifelong deformity's to her body caused by childhood operations that were carried out by a group of doctors in the late 1930's on her over here in England for experimental reasons using her as a guinea pig as her mother had left her in the hospital after neglecting her following an incident in which her brother William Taylor had pushed her over a fire guard when she was just three years of age.

She was a proud, upright and honest person and a truly loving and good mother that would fight fiercely for her children even those that later betrayed her but since they left her to suffer and took payoff's defrauding there own mother whom had been fighting for the return of her stolen inheritance she could not forgive them for the utterly vile evil they had perpetrated.

My estranged sister Jeanette Eileen who had married an Iranian immigrant called Javod Ezzatver (there are other people with the same name and it's quite common in his country and among those whom originated there) even tried to poison her mother on several occasions, my other estranged sister Lynn or Alison Linda as her first names really are had her and myself and my good sister Christine's lived insured without our consent and had also been involved in the fraud even using a stranger to masquerade as her mother in order to perform her own part in defrauding our mother.

With all that my mother is probably very sad knowing how evil so many of her children became but she is definitely still alive on the OTHER side of life, after her passing my niece Nicola saw her vividly in a dream and she said to Nicola "you get it I am not dead I am alive there is no Death".

Flickering lightbulbs are are often claimed to be spirits or those on the other side able to manipulate the power within the lights as a way of trying to tell those coming to see them that they are still around and alive albeit no longer in there mortal body's.

At least I know that my mothers soul is a good one, likely even though her other children with the exception of Me and Christine betrayed her she is probably trying to save the souls of her fallen children even now.

It's a terrible thing to say but I wish I could just pop out of my own body and go home to my mother were ever she is but know that to do so would cause suffering for my one decent sister and my one decent niece (actually several of my nieces and nephews were lovely kids until there mothers poisoned there minds so I still love them but knowing what there mothers did I am estranged to them as well).

Spirits are real, we are Body, Soul and Spirit not just a body and a soul or a body and a spirit but all three things and they are all part of us.
The body die's for all of us, the spirit is also apparently mortal and can be killed or otherwise fade or become a ghost so it has to in time pass over to the other world but the soul is immortal.

originally posted by: mikell
As a funeral home operator for a few years, shall I say a few BORING years. Other than the living guest all quiet. Now hospitals are a nightmare 24-7.

When I was a kid my best buddies mom was a nurse. She worked nights and told some very creepy stories about her shifts.

Now my niece is a nurse. She has similar stories.

My experience from working in schools at night when I was in my twenties was rather chilling.

I try not to loiter around cemeteries and funeral homes so I couldn’t say much about them.

a reply to: NorthOfStuffx2

Hospitals are also a place of many unexplained occurrences due to the sheer number of folk that walk through the doors of life and bodily death there with many even lingering for a long time between these the two sides of life.

Not surprising that they too are often haunted or have paranormal activity occurring there but likely there are also many good spirits and angels there that help those that pass over if they can so probably far more good than bad in such places, after all the former generation does not want harm to befall the new generation and probably even if they can sometimes help the living to get better and spend there time protecting new-borns etc if they decide to hang around in such places..

I like to think that there are indeed many good spirits and angels there, watching over and guiding those in transition, or even offering comfort to the living.

It's a comforting thought to believe that the former generation continues to look out for the new generation and that there's a sense of protection and care in these spaces.

I do a lot of “ghost hunting” these days and have checked out a handful of funeral homes and the instruments I use return next to no results or just background strange occurrences common in all un-haunted locations with plenty of “real” explanations.

I think funeral homes are less haunted than most places tbh.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Oh nursing homes. Yeah, my colleague was afraid of ghosts. Always freaking out when she had a night shift. Once we put on ourselves some old bedsheets and paid her a visit. She woke up from her nap and oh dear, how she was screaming. Fun times. But anyway, it was better not to fall asleep during your nightshift and not because of the ghosts but some hyperactive grandmas who were roaming the corridors at night in their white nightgowns. And if you woke up to see one standing over you with her silver hair, you could get a heart attack.

But seriously, I never felt the presence of ghosts either in the nursing home, hospital or a funeral home. I guess it depends on individual sensitivity or, perhaps, I'm used to the constant presence of death due to my work. Somehow, death has lost all its magic vibe to me.

hmm

originally posted by: LeroyBoy
I like to think that there are indeed many good spirits and angels there, watching over and guiding those in transition, or even offering comfort to the living.

It's a comforting thought to believe that the former generation continues to look out for the new generation and that there's a sense of protection and care in these spaces.

And pay attention to Green Farewells, it's heartwarming to imagine that eco-conscious, sustainable practices might resonate with these good spirits too, as they support the well-being of our planet.

I've heard theories about funeral homes being a focal point for paranormal activity. Maybe it's the emotional energy of grieving families or the residual energy from the deceased.

Speaking of spooky encounters, when I was younger, my cousin lived near an old funeral home. There were rumors of strange noises and shadows, but we always brushed them off as kids. Still, it's fascinating to ponder the mysteries of the afterlife.

If you're curious about more tales of haunted places, I stumbled upon some interesting reads on newrestfunerals.co.uk.... Who knows what secrets lie within these old buildings? Keep the speculation going—it's all part of the thrill!