Haunted Hong Kong: Read if you dare

For Halloween, we checked out the best/worst of haunted places in Hong Kong, and dug into their gruesome, bloody, horrifying histories.

High Street haunted house

The Sai Ying Pun Community Complex looks like the archetypal haunted house: eerie yellow lights shine on massive stone arches, casting long shadows on dark, empty verandahs. It has a history to match.

Once upon a gruesome time, the complex was a place where heads rolled and the demented screamed to their deaths. Fondly, yet fearfully, known as the High Street Haunted House, it was built in 1892 as quarters for European nurses.

According to urban myth, the building was seized by WWII Japanese troops and use as an execution hall. It was converted into a mental asylum after the war, abandoned in 1961 and since has been badly scarred by two fires.

Over the years, there have been repeated sightings of a devilish figure in traditional Chinese costume bursting into flames on the second floor of this haunted place. Headless poltergeists have also reportedly been seen running down the corridors in the dead of the night.

Also on CNNGo: Video: On the trail of a Hong Kong ghost

Nam Koo Terrace

The deadly Nam Koo Terrace may be close to the city’s no-nonsense high-rises, but with dense foliage looming over the site creating a cocoon of silence, it’s hard not to be spooked as you make your way up the deserted, shady steps leading to the house.

Local legend holds that something is horribly wrong at Nam Koo Terrace. Since 1918, it has been the scene of too many suicides, rapes and murders for authorities to keep count.

Japanese soldiers made Nam Koo Terrace a military brothel in WWII -- local women were raped and tortured inside the house. Their headless spirits are now said to spew green smoke in the building's dilapidated rooms at night.

A group of teenagers on a ghost-hunting trip made headlines in 2003 when a girl was possessed at the gates and had to be hospitalized. If that's not heart-stopping enough, last year a man was found dangling on the tree outside the manor, dead.

If you visit on a Sunday, be prepared to jump out of your skin when eerie laughter echoes through this haunted place. (It might be from Filipina domestic helpers lounging in a nearby park. Or it might not.)

Tsung Tsai Yuen

An innocent school picnic near Tsung Tsai Yuen turned deadly when all 28 kids and teachers were buried alive in a landslide five decades ago. Since then, ashen-faced children are said to wave to passing cars and hikers at night, and drivers claim to see white shapes flitting across the road nearby.

A stone plaque now covered in moss was erected in memory of the dead at this quiet site. Feng shui master Ng Pui-fu said it will placate the restless spirits at this haunted place.

On another scary note, an off-duty police officer was caught earlier this year masturbating in the nearby bushes wearing nothing but fishnet stockings. Now that’s what we call paranormal.

Granville Road 31

Bustling Granville Road is home to Hong Kong’s best shopping deals -- and its grisliest phantom.

In 1999, a stuffed Hello Kitty was found in an abandoned apartment with the head of a 23-year-old woman wedged inside. Turns out the poor damsel was tortured by her three debtors for a month before being amputated, skinned and boiled.

In the months following the slaying, CCTV cameras in neighborhood stores captured a female form lurking in shops well after closing hours.

Ten years on, the apartment is still boarded up and abandoned. The hair salon and lingerie shop operating downstairs are somewhat nonchalant about their neighbor’s grisly past, but even so, we strongly advise those with an overactive imagination against visiting this haunted place -- the red, peeling paint on the stair rails remind us of dried blood.