HAUNTED PLACES / KANSAS
THE SALLIE HOUSE,
ATCHISON.
A two-story house on North Second Street in Atchison, Kansas, known since the early 1990s for one family's accounts and a child's story the records do not confirm. What is documented, what is reported, and how to visit.
The history
The Sallie House stands at 508 North Second Street in Atchison, a Missouri River town about 50 miles northwest of Kansas City: a plain two-story house on a residential street a few blocks from downtown. Sources date it anywhere from the mid-1800s to about 1890.
The land belonged to the Finney family. Michael Finney came from Fermoy, Ireland, reached Atchison in 1856 and died in 1871; he and his wife Kate bought property along North Second Street. His son Charles C. Finney, born in Atchison in 1865, qualified as a doctor in 1894. A 1918 state history lists his home at 510 North Second Street, next door, with his sister Agnes at 508, and his practice downtown in the Martin Building at Fifth and Commercial. Nothing in the record puts an operating room inside the house.
The story told on the tours is that a girl of about six named Sallie was carried in with a failing appendix in the early 1900s, that the doctor cut before the anesthetic had taken hold, and that she died on the table. Writers who have checked the census, birth and death records report no such child in the house or the town, and Wikipedia says plainly that there is no record of a Sallie living or dying there. Where the story came from is not known.
The documented residents are quieter. Ethel Anderson owned and lived in the house from 1958 to 1990, according to the Clio local history entry, and insisted until her death in 2000 that the house was not haunted. Tony and Debra Pickman moved in with a newborn son and stayed through 1993 and 1994. Their accounts, told to the Fox series Sightings, whose crews came back more than once in the mid-1990s, are the reason anyone outside Atchison knows the address. Debra Pickman later wrote a book about the family's time there.
The house has had no tenants since the 1990s. It was put on the market in February 2016 and withdrawn in November 2017, and today it is run as an attraction. Kansas City public radio reported in 2022 that the city of Atchison owns and operates it; the liability waiver on the booking site names a private company and the Atchison Area Chamber of Commerce as the parties behind the tours. A haunted trolley runs on weekends in September and October, and organizers told KCUR it brings about a thousand people a season to each of the town's haunted houses.
What people report
The Pickmans' accounts are the core of it: lights that dimmed, cold spots, their dog growling at the door of the upstairs nursery, stuffed animals found arranged in a circle. Tony Pickman reported scratches across his chest, back and arms, candles he said lit on their own, and a shirt that caught fire. He drew the girl he said he had seen, and the family left in 1994 after he came to fear being pushed from the upstairs balcony.
Visitors and investigators have added to the list since. The most repeated claim is scratches on men, which is where the house's nickname, "the man-hating ghost", comes from. Guests also describe phone batteries that drain, cameras that fail, knocks, and objects that are not where they were left. The two rooms people point to are the nursery upstairs and the basement, now closed for safety reasons. A Chamber of Commerce staff member told a reporter she gets headaches inside; a writer who stayed the night for KANSAS! magazine in 2022 heard knocking from early evening and was told the old furnace is the usual explanation.
Against all of this stand Ethel Anderson's 32 years with no story to tell, and the record's silence on Sallie. These are what people say happened to them, in a home furnished as it was in the 1990s and kept empty for thirty years: accounts, not findings.
Accounts of hauntings here are folklore and entertainment, not verified events.
On television
The house was filmed for Ghost Adventures in season 10; the episode, "Sallie House", aired on the Travel Channel on January 17, 2015. BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural first visited in 2016 and came back for its final episode, season 7, episode 6, released on November 19, 2021. Project Fear, the YouTube series, filmed there in 2024 and again in 2025, in its seasons 3 and 7. Watch the BuzzFeed Unsolved visit on the BuzzFeed Unsolved Network's official channel.
The shows did not start the story. Sightings had put the Pickmans on national television a generation earlier; what the later visits did was turn a local address into a destination.
Visiting and running your own session
Day and night access is booked through Visit Atchison, the town's tourism site. Self-guided day tours last an hour and start between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon; photographs are welcome. Overnight stays run from 3 in the afternoon to 9 the next morning for groups of two to ten, guests must be 18 or older unless a parent or guardian is present with signed consent, and everyone signs a liability waiver. Dates and hours change with the season, so check the venue's site.
The house rules are posted with the booking: bring your own bedding, since the beds are not for sleeping in; no smoking, pets, cooking, candles or open flame; no Ouija boards or seances; no attempts to cleanse the house. The basement is closed. Photographs, video and audio recording are encouraged, so a phone session is within the rules. It is a former family home on an ordinary street with neighbors on either side; keep voices down after dark and leave it as you found it.
For a session, the quiet choice is the upstairs nursery, the room most accounts name, with the phone set on the floor or a windowsill away from the stereo, the furnace and anyone moving about. The front room downstairs is the other option once the group has settled. Pick one spot, let the phone learn the room, and leave it be.
Try a session there
Run a Spirit box session there with Spooky Box. The phone's sensors decide the moment and chance decides the word, each word shows the reason it came up, and you can record the session as audio or video and replay it from any word. It costs nothing to start, and it is made for entertainment.
Read next
- The Villisca Axe Murder House: another small Midwestern house kept as it was and opened for overnight stays, in southwest Iowa.
- The Lizzie Borden House: a family home in Fall River, Massachusetts, turned overnight attraction, with its own documented history and legends.
- Taking a phone on a ghost hunt: what its sensors can and cannot measure, and how to run a session.
- The Spooky Box home page, and every place on this site.
Sources
- Visit Atchison: Sallie House overnight stays: the venue's booking page: hours, group size, house rules and the waiver.
- Clio: The Sallie House: local history entry on the Finney and Anderson ownership, the Pickman tenancy and the missing records for Sallie.
- A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (1918): Charles C. Finney: the doctor's 1918 biography: his degree, his practice and the two addresses on North Second Street.
- KCUR: Atchison's haunted house tourism (2022): Kansas City public radio on who runs the house, the trolley and visitor numbers.
Questions
Is the Sallie House really haunted?
No one can say. What exists is a set of accounts: the Pickman family's from 1993 and 1994, and those of visitors and tour staff since. The story of a girl named Sallie dying in the house has no record behind it, and the woman who lived there from 1958 to 1990 said it was not haunted. Treat all of it as reports and folklore, not verified fact.
Can you stay overnight at the Sallie House?
Yes. Overnight stays are booked through Visit Atchison, run from 3 in the afternoon to 9 the next morning, and take groups of two to ten. Guests must be 18 or older unless a parent or guardian is present with signed consent, everyone signs a liability waiver, and you bring your own bedding. Check the venue's site for dates and current rules.
Is the Sallie House open to the public during the day?
Yes. One-hour self-guided day tours start between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, take up to ten people, and photographs are welcome. The house is also a stop on Atchison's autumn haunted trolley tour. Hours change with the season, so check the venue's site before you travel.
Spooky Box is paranormal entertainment. It uses device sensor activity and a word engine to create atmospheric sessions. Generated words and sensor readings do not establish the presence of spirits or verified communication.