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"You have a lot of strange accidental deaths in trailer parks — and that's the makings of a haunting. I heard of one guy who was killed when he was hit in the head with a nail gun. That has to make for an unhappy spirit."

A redneck ghost is just like any other, except he drinks more beer, leaves chewing tobacco canisters laying around, and may insist on midnight offerings of Cheetos.

2. The Express Lane Horseman: Here's the best reason yet to travel with plenty of quarters. Motorists in Richmond, Va., are reporting the milky-white specter of a Native American on horseback, chasing them as they cross the eastbound tollbooth on the Pocahontas Parkway.

The ghostly rider whoops and hollers a war cry, and sometimes carries a torch.

"The reports started in May, as soon as the tollbooth opened, and they've continued," says Sara Cross of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Is the haunted tollbooth merely a gimmick to get motorists to sign up for electronic tags for express-lane service?

"No," Cross says. "Actually, the ghost is so popular, the troopers are warning ghost hunters not to get out of their cars. It's hazardous."

3. The Cappuccino Choker:

What do you do when a sudden, strange chill runs through your coffee shop and your employees feel unseen fingers around their throats?

Reports of "The Cappuccino Choker" at Java Jive coffeehouse in Centre Hall, Pa., led to an investigation by local psychics. Rather than move, owner Rose Sweeney decided negotiation was better for business than outright exorcism.

Sweeney decided that "The Cappuccino Choker" needed a PR makeover, so she decided to rename the apparition. He's now known as Harry, and if you feel his presence there late in the evening, it's only because he's had too many refills.

4. The Phantom Shoe Bandit: In the Puerto Rican countryside, mysterious monsters known as "chupacabra" slaughter goats. In the wilds of Northern California, Bigfoot's mournful cry fills the night.

And in Hanover Township, Ind. — 60 miles southeast of Chicago — a mysterious pile of shoes, sometimes more than 100, accumulates on a country road near a cornfield — and no one knows how or why.

"It started six years ago with one woman's boot at the side of the road," says Jim Ambroziak, 56. "It stood there for a week. Then, mysteriously, a man's boot appeared. Then, we saw children's boots. Then it all went out of control."