Ostankino was built on the ground of an old cemetery, and Moscow's most persistent legend attaches to that fact. In the sixteenth century, when the boyar Sotin set out to plough a field here, a hunched old woman with a staff appeared and told him not to disturb those lying in the earth — or misfortune would find whoever did. She has been "seen" before every disaster in the area since; staff at the television centre recalled her in the days before the tower fire of 2000. People mention her matter-of-factly, the way they mention an omen, and almost nobody can say where they first heard it.

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The Crescent Hotel

An Arkansas hotel bought in 1937 by Norman Baker, a man with no medical training who announced he had a cure for cancer and turned the building into a "hospital". People came here to die, at considerable expense; Baker eventually went to prison for mail fraud. In 2019 excavation on the grounds turned up buried jars of human remains. The hotel is still open and sells ghost tours.