The Black Angel in Iowa City's northside Oakland cemetery.

As many fundamentalist Christians eagerly point out, popular holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, and Easter combine American pop culture with the occult and paganism, and in fact, their modern incarnations are almost completely un-Christian.  It’s for this reason that some Christian sects oppose celebrating Halloween or even Christmas–at least in the modern American fashion.  Maybe, then, Halloween is one of the most interesting times of year because it’s when the mysterious becomes an overt feature of our lives without the religious overtones.

For those of us who love history, Halloween makes it fun to revisit local lore.  The best ghost stories combine the unexplained with local history to generate myths that add color to life here in Iowa.  I always think of the era when white settlers seized Iowa from Native Americans, then overran and settled it, as a much more dramatic time, a period where people relied more on luck and their own abilities to survive.  The people who built Iowa had to deal with the elements; with their own mental and physical malladies; and with each other without the benefits of modern technology or medicine to do it.  There are so many stories of Iowans building impressive monuments by hand, driving themselves to theatric suicides, or otherwise producing human accomplishments we wouldn’t consider today.

Part of what makes history so interesting is the fact that a lot of these things would just simply not happen today.  For instance, in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, where I went to college, deputized citizens and vigilantes shot and killed two people for peeping into a girls’ dorm.  That sort of thing would never happen today, but with a little imagination and evolution over time, it could turn into a terrifying ghost story.

Anyway, I’ve done some digging and turned up haunted places in Eastern Iowa that you can easily visit this Halloween season for yourself.

• The Black Angel of Oakland Cemetery 
  Iowa City
  -  Also see this piece from Associated Content
  

  Old Dubuque County Jail

• The Mason House Inn
  Bentonsport
• The Old Dubuque Jail
  Dubuque
• The Franklin Hotel
  Strawberry Point
• Brucemore Mansion
  Cedar Rapids

After visiting one or two of these places, you might be tempted to buy the Iowa Road Guide to Haunted Locations book.  Don’t bother unless you like typos, passive voice, and perplexingly vague historical descriptions.