One file per town
Group the archive by locality and the shape stops looking like a collection and starts looking like a drift of single sheets: 1,577 of 2,116 indexed localities — 74.5% — hold exactly one dossier apiece.
The deepest one-file benches
single-filing localities per jurisdiction · top 12
Where single-filing is the rule
share of a jurisdiction's localities holding one file · jurisdictions with ≥10 localities
Absolute counts favor big states; the share view shows where the record is structurally thin — jurisdictions whose map is almost entirely single sheets.
The heaviest one-file towns
a thin locality is not a thin file- 01RMS Queen MaryLong Beach · California · Ship5 claims · 3 legends
- 02Chestnut Hill CemeteryExeter · Rhode Island · Cemetery5 claims · 3 legends
- 03Flatwoods Wild Man report areaFlatwoods · West Virginia · Folklore Area5 claims · 3 legends
- 04Skinwalker RanchBallard · Utah · Ranch6 claims · 1 legends
- 05Paulding LightWatersmeet · Michigan · Site5 claims · 3 legends
- 06Honey Island Swamp Monster Folklore AreaPearl River · Louisiana · Swamp Folklore Area5 claims · 3 legends
- 07Bachelor’s Grove CemeteryMidlothian · Illinois · Cemetery4 claims · 4 legends
- 08Brushy Mountain State PenitentiaryPetros · Tennessee · Prison5 claims · 1 legends
- 09Prospect PlaceTrinway · Ohio · Mansion5 claims · 2 legends
- 10Union CemeteryEaston · Connecticut · Cemetery4 claims · 4 legends
- 11BannackBannack · Montana · Ghost Town4 claims · 2 legends
- 12Black Angel Monument at Oakland CemeteryIowa City · Iowa · Cemetery Monument4 claims · 3 legends
The one-ghost town
Most of America's haunting geography, as this record holds it, is a single filing in a place nobody else filed. Three of every four localities on the map exist here because one building, one bridge, one stretch of road earned a dossier — and nothing else in town did. The atlas's headline places sit in these towns too: the heaviest files above are each the only filing their locality has.
What the number cannot separate is the place being thin from the record being thin. Some of these towns genuinely have one story — a plantation in a parish, a light on a road outside a town that barely incorporates. Others have more to file and no one filed it. The archive can't tell which from inside its own shelves, and says so rather than guessing.
One honest seam to note: a locality here is the dossier's own city field.11 of the 1,577 singletons carry no city at all — pinned to a state but not to a town — and files filed under variant spellings of the same place would read as separate localities. The 74.5% is the count as the record keeps it.
Record last amended October 2, 2026 · localities recounted with the archive