The Tower of London in London, England, built in 1066 as a royal residence is where the crown jewels are securely kept until an attempt by Irish rebel Thomas Blood who tried to steal the regalia in 1671. The Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City is still home of the ghost of Eliza Jumel who is believed to have let her wine merchant husband die by bleeding to death in their home in 1832. The Château de Miolans, an impenetrable bastion in St. Pierre d’Albigny in the South of France is where the French aristocrat-turned writer Marquis de Sade was imprisoned after an out of control party in 1772 landed him an attempted murder charge.

In the series premiere, a scandalous affair between a British government minister, a showgirl, and a Soviet spy begins at Cliveden House in Taplow, England. Frankenstein Castle, now in ruins on a rocky hilltop in Darmstadt, Germany is the home of scientist, Johann Konrad Dippel who conducted experiments to bring the dead back to life and was the inspiration behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Cromer Hall, a British manor house on a moor inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write his classic novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles of his Sherlock Holmes stories. When Scottish aristocrat Lord Gordon-Gordon gets a share in the Erie Railroad, it results in a scandal from a scheme by Wall Street robber baron Jay Gould, and owner of a castle known as Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, New York

Castello di Malaspina in Fosdinovo, Italy becomes a tomb for Bianca Malaspina, an albino girl who defied her noble parents when she fell in love with a stable boy, causing them to brick her up alive in the dungeon. Upton House in Poole, England was a part of an inheritance dispute when a man from Wagga Wagga, Australia, claimed to be English aristocrat Roger Tichborne, the family's sole heir who drowned in a shipwreck 10 years prior. On Friday the 13th, December 1799, George Washington falls ill, and after doctors try to treat him with bloodletting, he passes away the next day in his home, Mount Vernon in Mount Vernon, Virginia, however, Dr. William Thornton proposes a radical procedure to reanimate him.

In 1440, the boy king, James II takes revenge on the rebellious Earl of Douglas for wanting his throne by inviting him to a banquet at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, later known as the "Black Dinner", inspiring one of the most brutal scenes in the Game of Thrones. When a wealthy widow of railroad millionaire Mark Hopkins falls ill and dies after marrying Edward Searles, the designer of Searles Castle in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the community believes he poisoned her for money. Gradara Castle in Gradara, Italy was at the center of two warring families—the Malatestas and the Polentas—who married off their beautiful daughter Francesca to the ugly Giovanni Malatesta, starting a tragic tale of love between her and his brother, Paolo.