The Haunted Babcock Building Of The Former South Carolina State Hospital Has A Bone-Chilling History

What's another notoriously haunted place in South Carolina?

Another notoriously haunted place in South Carolina is the Dock Street Theatre

If learning of the history of the haunted South Carolina State Hospital whets your appetite for all things spooky and haunted in South Carolina, you'll want to check out the Dock Street Theatre. The theatre has a reputation for being, well, theatrical, but the stories surrounding Dock Street Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina, are nothing but the cold, hard truth. As the location of the oldest performance theater in the U.S., you'd expect there to be a certain amount of ghostly tales and rumors. But what most visitors don't know is that the first theater at this location opened in 1736. It burned down, and the Planters Hotel was built upon its ashes. It was a popular spot for the wealthy -- and their mistresses of the night. As one story goes, a fraught and frantic prostitute called Nettie plunged over the hotel's balcony, perishing at what would later become the present-day Dock Street Theater. Today, the Dock Street Theater on Church Street is haunted not only by Nettie’s ghost but also by an actor from the 1800s who frequented the hotel: Junius Booth (yes -- the father of that John Wilkes Booth). Junius didn't actually die in the building; no one knows why he's here instead of where his actual death occurred, which was on a steamboat in Louisville in 1852. But truth is stranger than fiction, and both Booth and Nettie are regularly reported wandering the halls!

Of course, this isn't even the only haunted spot in historic Charleston; the city's Embassy Suites, Battery Carriage House, and Charleston Orphan House are all other ghost-addled spots in town.