Urban legends say you can hear voices calling out from the surrounding woods and see apparitions wandering the ski slopes at night, supposedly the ghosts of people who died in ski accidents. The ski resort has the vibe of something right out of a Stephen King novel, complete with rusted ski lifts and isolated, decaying buildings. Now, a few miles’ hike into the woods on the eastern side of Kirksville is required to reach it. The destination was open for just five years in the 1980s and has been empty ever since. The residence hall was closed due to structural issues, not supernatural ones, but if Charlotte’s ghost did haunt the hall, she now has a much lonelier afterlife.įor local places that look like a great setting for a horror movie, you can’t beat the abandoned Rainbow Basin Ski Resort. Her cause of death was never clear and rumors ranged from suicide to freezing to death in the unheated building.Ĭharlotte’s ghost was known for turning lights on and off, rattling doors and moving furniture. Grim Hall’s use as a residence for students was discontinued in 2016, but before that many reported hauntings by the ghost of a nursing student named Charlotte Burkhalter who died there in the 1930s. The award for the spookiest spot on campus has to go to the appropriately named Grim Hall. The Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority house is also said to be haunted by two ghostly children. You can supposedly find three ghosts in Baldwin Hall, encounter a deceased university employee in Centennial Hall and contact a student who died in 1958 via ouija board in Ryle Hall. If you believe the stories, Truman State University is home to a whole host of ghosts. No one has claimed to have seen his ghost, but visiting his unmarked grave is a creepy activity on an even deeper level. The stone chair is said to have been aged very little by time, which is either evidence of its supernatural nature or, as the Haunted Tour of Kirksville website notes, “the result of good masonry.”Īs a side note, Highland Park Cemetery is also the final resting place of Harry Laughlin, the father of American eugenics. If you make that mistake, the story goes, hands will appear from the ground and drag you down into hell. Urban legend says you will be either cursed or rewarded if you sit in the chair at midnight, but that it’s particularly unwise to do so on Halloween. It’s located at Highland Park Cemetery and was commissioned by William Baird, a prominent banker - he’s not buried in the cemetery, so he was apparently just trying to creep people out, and he succeeded. This haunted item is still within the Kirksville city limits.
Sadly, he put an end to dybbuk box scavenger hunting in 2017 when he donated the box to Zak Bagans, host of the TV show “Ghost Adventures.” The box and whatever may or may not possess it now reside in Bagans’ Las Vegas Haunted Museum. Haxton eventually claimed to have sealed away the dibbik and hidden the box in a secret location in Kirksville.
Haxton was a strong believer in the box’s supernatural powers - he claimed to have developed strange health problems, including “head-to-toe welts,” consulted Rabbis about how to get rid of the dibbuk and even wrote a book about the box. The student quickly grew tired of being haunted and sold it again to Jason Haxton, the director of the local Museum of Osteopathic Medicine. The dibbuk box came to Kirksville when Mannis resold it on eBay to a Truman State University student. After experiencing nightmares, odd smells and health problems, Mannis traced the box back to a family who claimed it was inhabited by a “dibbuk” - an evil spirit from Jewish folklore, said to be a dead spirit able to possess the living.
The legend was first popularized by Kevin Mannis, who reported a series of supernatural occurrences surrounding a wine cabinet he bought on eBay. Maybe the most famous ghost story to feature Kirksville is the story of the original dibbuk box. Whether you’re a believer or a supernatural skeptic, these local legends will make those October evenings a little bit creepier. Every community has its share of urban legends and supposedly haunted places, and Kirksville is no exception. With Halloween approaching, October is the season of ghostly tales and horror stories.