HAUNTED PLACES / IOWA
THE VILLISCA
AXE MURDER HOUSE.
A white frame farmhouse at 508 East Second Street in Villisca, Iowa, where eight people were killed in June 1912, kept as it was that year and open for tours and overnight stays. The history, what guests report, its television visits, and how to go.
The history
The house was built in 1868 on the east side of Villisca, in Montgomery County in southwest Iowa, a plain two-story frame house. By 1912 it belonged to Josiah B. Moore, who had worked seven years for Frank F. Jones, a Villisca businessman and later a state senator, before leaving in 1907 to open a competing business.
On the evening of Sunday, June 9, 1912, Josiah and Sarah Moore took their four children, Herman, Katherine, Boyd and Paul, aged 11, 10, 7 and 5, to the Children's Day program at the Presbyterian church. Two friends of the children, the sisters Lena and Ina Stillinger, came home with them for the night. The next morning a neighbor, Mary Peckham, found the house still shut and fetched Josiah's brother Ross, who went in and sent for the town marshal, Hank Horton. All eight had been killed in their beds with an axe, which was left in the house.
Townspeople walked through the rooms that morning before the house was sealed, and the scene was ruined. Suspicion fell on Frank Jones, on a drifter named William Mansfield, and on George Kelly, an English-born travelling minister who had attended the church program. Kelly signed a confession in August 1917 and withdrew it; his first trial ended in a hung jury, and a second jury acquitted him that November. No one was ever convicted, and the failed investigation helped bring about the body that became the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
The house was in poor shape by the 1990s. In 1994 Darwin and Martha Linn, local historians who ran the Olson-Linn Museum on the town square, bought it and returned it to 1912: they took off the vinyl siding, pulled out the wiring and plumbing, rebuilt the outbuildings and furnished the rooms with period pieces. On December 1, 1997, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Josiah B. and Sara Moore House, and the Linns opened it for daytime tours and overnight stays. Darwin Linn died in 2011, at 74. In late 2023 Martha Linn agreed to sell it to US Ghost Adventures, which also owns the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River and runs it today. It still has no electricity and no running water.
What people report
Most visitors come to ask whether the house is haunted. Martha Linn kept notebooks of what overnight guests told her in the morning, and said in 2014 that few groups left without something to write down. The accounts repeated most often are footsteps on the stairs when everyone is seated, children's voices upstairs, and small objects found moved.
The rooms people point to are the ones where the family died. The downstairs guest room, called the Blue Room, is where the Stillinger sisters slept; overnight guests describe shadows there and a sense of unease. Upstairs, the children's bedroom has become a shrine of sorts: visitors leave toys, and guides tell of a toy car found moved and of voices that seem to answer when the children are asked questions by name. Overnight groups often sit in the attic and wait.
Guests also describe scratches they did not feel happen and spots of light in photographs, in an old house full of people with cameras at two in the morning. None of it has been verified, and the town is divided: some residents welcome the visitors, others feel the house turns eight deaths into a show.
Accounts of hauntings here are folklore and entertainment, not verified events.
On television
The house was filmed for Ghost Adventures in 2010, in the season 4 episode "Villisca Axe Murder House", first shown on December 10 that year. Travel Channel's Amy Bruni and Adam Berry filmed there in 2019 for the third season of their series Kindred Spirits, in the episode "The Villisca Axe Murders", first aired on March 21, 2019; watch their visit on Travel Channel's official channel. BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural spent a night there for its seventh and final season in 2021, in "The Horrors of Villisca Ax Murder House", released on October 22, 2021; watch that episode on the BuzzFeed Unsolved Network's official channel. Project Fear, the YouTube series, filmed there for its third season in 2024.
Visiting and running your own session
Guided tours run in the warmer months, roughly spring to the end of October, several times a day; they take about 45 minutes. Overnight stays are booked all year, by the room or the whole house, with check-in at 5 p.m. and checkout at 10 a.m., and usually include the town museum and the Moore family graves in the Villisca cemetery. Check the venue's site for the current calendar.
There is no electricity, no running water and no plumbing inside; a restored barn beside it has a bathroom and outlets for charging. Overnight guests are asked not to sleep on the beds and are given sleeping bags. Ask your guide before filming other guests. In November 2014 a visitor on an overnight stay stabbed himself in the chest; he recovered, and the sheriff called it the house's first emergency in his 22 years. Go with the frame of mind you would take to a cemetery: eight people, six of them children, died in these rooms.
For a session, the kitchen or the parlor downstairs is the stillest place. Set the phone on a table away from pockets and chargers and leave it there. With no mains wiring in the house, the magnetic reading settles quickly.
Try a session there
Run a spirit box session at the Villisca house with Spooky Box. Your phone's sensors decide the moment a word arrives and chance decides the word; each one shows the reason it came up, and you can record the session as audio or video and replay it from any word in the log. It is made for entertainment, and a dark kitchen with no wiring suits it well.
Read next
- The Lizzie Borden House, Fall River: another murder house kept as a museum and overnight stay by the same company.
- The Sallie House, Atchison: a small Kansas house a few hours away with its own overnight reports.
- 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
- Villisca axe murders: the Wikipedia article on the case and the 1917 trials.
- Josiah B. and Sara Moore House: the National Register listing and the Linns' restoration.
- Would you stay overnight at the Villisca Axe Murder House?: a 2024 Iowa magazine feature on the tours and what visitors report.
- Villisca Axe Murder House: the venue's own site, for tours and overnight bookings.
Questions
Is the Villisca Axe Murder House really haunted?
Nobody can say. Guests and guides describe footsteps, children's voices and objects that move, but these are reports and folklore, not verified events. What is certain is the history: eight people were killed there in June 1912 and the case was never solved.
Can you stay overnight at the Villisca Axe Murder House?
Yes. Overnight stays are booked through the venue's site all year, by the room or the whole house, from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. There is no electricity, running water or plumbing in the house; a barn beside it has a bathroom and charging outlets. Guests sleep in sleeping bags, not on the beds.
Where is the Villisca Axe Murder House, and is it open to the public?
It stands at 508 East Second Street in Villisca, in southwest Iowa. Guided daytime tours run in the warmer months and overnight stays all year; check the venue's site for the current schedule. The house has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1997.
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.