Happy Friday the 13th - here's some of the creepiest places on Earth

After the death of his mother, Ed Gein began digging up graves of recently buried middle-aged women. He took their bodies home, where he tanned their skins and made his paraphernalia.

Soon after, Gein began to abduct and kill women.

After the disappearance of a woman who ran a local tavern, authorities were led to Gein's farmhouse, and one of the most horrific discoveries of all time.

Inside the house police found chairs reupholstered with fatty human skin, a soup bowl made from a human skull, a shade pull made of lips, masks made from human faces, a belt made of female nipples, and a vest made from a woman's torso. In total, the remains of 11 women were found in the house.

Gein's horrendous crimes have been the inspiration for horror films like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of The Lambs.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

In 1884, when Singer Sewing Machine President Edward S. Clark had a house built in Manhattan's Upper West Side, the area was so remote they named it "The Dakota," after the vast and unexplored Dakota territories.

The Dakota was the inspiration for Ira Levin's 1967 novel "Rosemary's Baby," which depicted scenes of witchcraft, satanism, cannibalism, and murder.

Common occurrences at The Dakota include phantom footsteps, mysterious rumblings, and elevators moving around on their own.

As Manhattan filled out around The Dakota, it hosted many celebrities. Most notably, John Lennon lived there at the time of his tragic murder in 1980.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

The sudden smell of chicken soup, apparitions from other eras, and doors that magically unlock are just some of the reported paranormal occurrences in the Winchester mystery house.

After Sarah Winchester lost her husband and only child, she consulted a psychic in Boston who told her, her family was haunted by the spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles.

The only solution was to build a home where those spirits could live. Winchester bought an unfinished farmhouse in California in 1886 and hired construction workers to work on it around the clock.

The house now has 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces and six kitchens. Some of staircases lead nowhere and some of the doors open onto a wall, but pragmatism is not what the heiress had in mind.

According to rumor, as long as the construction continued, she could stay alive.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

Unlike other locales on this list, Colorado's The Stanley Hotel actually enjoys its reputation as a haunted hotel. In fact, their own in-house paranormal investigator Liza Nyhart called it "a Disneyland for spirits."

In 1974, Author Stephen King immediately keyed into The Stanley's supernatural vibe, and made it the setting for his classic 1977 novel "The Shining," wherein it was known as "the Overlook Hotel.

The hotel, originally built in 1909, houses a deep roster of ghosts, including a maid who climbs into bed between unmarried couples, a maintenance man who enforces a strict 11 pm curfew by telling patrons to "get out," a musical spirit that hums along the concert hall, and an affectionate ghost named Eddie who is known to stroke women's hair and kiss their cheeks.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

The Amityville massacre has become one of the most famous crimes in American history, and some still speculate that demonic forces were involved.

Ronald DeFeo Jr was found guilt of murdering his whole family on November 13, 1974. A heroin and LSD user, DeFeo and his defense lawyer pleaded insanity, and said he heard voices telling him to kill his family.

One year after the murder, the Lutz family moved into the house.

Soon after moving in, the Lutzes reported some supernatural occurrences, among them were red eyes at windows, swarms of flies, the imprint of cloven hoofs in the snow and voices screaming at them to get out.

Lest than a month after moving in, they fled the house and left all their possessions.

Although many questioned DeFeo's and the Lutzes' claims of those paranormal activities and DeFeo later admitted that rejected his initial defense, the Lutzes claimed until their deaths that their story was true.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

More than 50 years ago, a hermit named Julian Santana Barrera encountered a drown girl and her baby doll floating in a canal.

Barrera took the doll back to his isolated island in the Xochimilco district of Mexico City, and later reported hearing a young girls crying and footsteps. Barrera became convinced that the spirit of the drown girl was haunting him, so in an attempt to appease the restless spirit, he hung the doll on a tree.

But the haunting didn't stop, and one doll became a dozen, and then hundreds. Eventually, Barrera came to believe that the dolls themselves were possessed, and that the entire island was cursed.

In 2001, Barrera drowned in the same spot as the child he had found. Now locals believe that he is among the spirits that haunt the island. Since then, the island has become somewhat of an attraction, where a brave few have reported the dolls blinking and gesturing to tourists.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

You definitely don't want to get lost in Japan's Aokigahara Jakai forest, also known as "Suicide Forest."

At least 100 bodies are found there every year, making it the most popular destination for suicide in Japan. Skeletons, clothes, tents as well as nooses are regularly found throughout the woods.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the place is supposedly haunted by "yurei" which are unhappy, angry spirits with long black hair.

One of the reasons the forest is so popular among those seeking to end their life is its mention in the 1993 controversial "The Complete Manual of Suicide" authored by Wataru Tsurumi. In the book, Tsurumi 'recommends' this forest.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places

According to LIFE, England's most haunted house was built above the remains of a Benedictine monastery, where according to legend, a monk and a nun were murdered after falling in love and trying to elope.

The first residents of the Borley Rectory, built in Essex, England in 1863, reported seeing ghostly figures staring out of a particular window.

But it was through Reverend Guy Eric Smith, who moved into the house in the 1920s, that the stories became known.

As Smith witnessed those ghostly activities, he reached out to Henry Price, a psychic researcher to investigate the place. The Smiths fled the place shortly after Price's visit, when the increasingly weird occurrences — keys flying from locks, coins raining from nowhere — drew scores of journalists to the property.

Source: LIFE, The world's most haunted places, The Widow of Borley