Child ghosts

Children's ghosts are often heard rather than seen: laughter in an empty corridor, as at the Stanley Hotel, or a ball rolling by itself. Some are said to be real children, like the Princes in the Tower. Most have no name at all, and others are known by a first name and little else, like Timmy at Waverly Hills or Lily at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

That lack of detail matters, because these stories are rarely tied to a record of any actual child, and some of the best-known ones are disputed. Hospitals and asylums were places where real children did die, and we try to keep that in view.