A Small Town, a Scar, and the Murder of Eight

Tragedy strikes when our expectations collide with harsh reality. You expect your daily commute to go safely. Tragedy strikes when you’re rear-ended going 70mph. You expect your body to take good care of you. Tragedy strikes when you have a major heart-attack or stroke. You expect to be safe in the place that you call home. 

Tragedy struck a small family and a couple of young visitors in June of 1912. They came home from a church function and expected to go to bed and wake up the next morning to a new day, but a harsh reality had other plans for the Moore family and two Stillinger girls. For them, tomorrow never came. 

There are few, if any, places like the Villisca Ax Murder House. To step inside is to step into a deep, festering, psychic wound that has not only not been given the opportunity to heal, but is instead reopened every single day. This quaint, rural house nestled in the corn fields of western Iowa no longer has the feeling of a home like I’m sure it had over one hundred years ago; the feeling is now one of darkness, oppression, and the horrors of the past.

Kelly and I first set foot into the Ax Murder House as a team January 22 of 2022. We had been asked to join an investigation by our friends over in Hillbilly Hauntings. They were newer to the paranormal investigation scene and were looking to dive into the deep end with the proper assistance, that being us. It took little to no real negotiating on their part to get us to join an investigation at one of the most haunted houses in the Midwest, if not the entire United States.

One of the ideas we try to express in our lectures is the importance of the correlations between personal experience and what we perceive to be measurable responses on our investigations.

There is value in a “Class A” E.V.P intelligently responding to a question. There is value to the shadow man you find somewhere off in the distance in that photograph. There is value to a K2 meter spiking at the exact moment a plate flies off the table.  These are some of the closest things we can get to an objective truth in this field.

But there are these other things as well. The uneasy feeling you get for no apparent reason under that one rafter in the barn. Maybe later you find out that’s the exact spot a man took his own life. The large shadow figure you saw at the end of the hall, but here’s the thing, you’re not the only one who has seen this apparition. These are also the types of experiences we can’t ignore, and for the people who experience these things, they’re just as real as the objective truths.

That particular night, in that particular house, objective readings and subjective experiences met. 

We found ourselves spread around the second floor as the midnight hour approached. This is the time when some say the killer did the deed.  

So there we are. I’m (Chris) in the attic where the murderer was said to have waited until he knew the Moores were sound asleep. Kelly was just outside the attic door. The rest of the gang waited in silent anticipation throughout the bedrooms on the second floor. 

Equipment was scattered throughout the house. A REM pod sat next to the Moore parents’ bed. Motion activated lights were randomly placed like supernatural landmines throughout the second floor. Not to mention a cavalcade of audio recorders, video cameras, EMF detectors, and small teddy bear. 

I sat in a small chair and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. I didn’t trust this little chair much. Didn’t seem like it was built to hold a man my size, but I cast the thoughts away as a strange knot seemed to develop in my stomach. 

Initially I ignored the strange sensation. The local diner food wasn’t exactly what my digestive tract was used to and I was more concerned with the fact I was near sensitive audio equipment, if you get my drift.

As the minutes slipped by though the knot grew. The slight irritability turned into moments of genuine pain. To go with this discomfort, I was starting to feel anxious. About what, I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that my heart was beginning to beat faster. I had moments that felt more like trill and anticipation. Others felt more like disgust. All the while, the pain in my guts had caused me to not only lie on the floor, but take some considerable effort not to actively lay there and writhe in pain.

Before I continue, we have to talk about Kelly. Aside from being a great investigator and the best partner a guy could ask for both in the field and just life in general, she is also a very gifted psychic medium.

Though no stranger to “woo woo” experiences myself, I’ve always been curious as to how she experiences what she does. I’ve wanted to hear things she hears them, see what she sees.

Not here.

Kelly has explained it to me and quite a few other people that over the course of the time of the murders she sees it all. She says it plays like a movie for her every time and from varying points of view. One time she was shown everything by one of the Stillinger girls. Another time it was from the point of view of the killer.

She experiences it all. The sound of the flat side of the ax crashing wet and hollow through the face of Josiah Moore. The trepidation, excitement, sick pleasure, and vicious self loathing. The astonishment when he saw the two Stillinger girls in the downstairs bedroom. The excitement when he found out he could put his ax to work again.

No. Not here. 

At the time, I wasn’t as curious about Kelly’s visions as I was growing concerned about my condition. I felt like I was suppressing a panic attack. My stomach was a swirling hellbroth of anxiety, restlessness, and a foreboding I couldn’t shake. 

Then, off of a sudden…it was gone. 

“He just left the attic.” I heard Kelly say from outside the door. 

Then, in a matter of seconds, the REM pod by the Moore parents’ bed screamed. It was a long and consistent cry. When it finally stopped, the silence was deafening. 

Not too soon after that though, a motion activated light in the children’s room lit up. 

Now, this is a situation with a lot of moving parts, but we think something significant happened in a matter of seconds and it involved those correlations between personal experience and what we perceive to be measurable responses that I mentioned earlier. 

First was my experience. 

No matter how mentally unwell this killer was, I can’t imagine he sat there feeling nothing at all as he waited for the family to go to bed. I suspect his feelings got even more intense as he realized the moment was approaching. Just like my symptoms were, that is, until he left the room. 

Next for Kelly’s part. 

I’ve long since stopped trying to explain what she does with “normal” logic. Her seeing the killer leave the attic at the exact moment my afflictions (that she didn’t even know about at the time) were alleviated goes beyond a coincidence in my mind. 

Then the equipment. 

When equipment goes off on an investigation, it’s already an anomalous event. EMF spikes, REM pod interactions, and random temperature drops shouldn’t happen. So when the REM pod by the parent’s bed went off so strongly it was interesting for three reasons. 

One: The fact it went off at all. 

Two: The timing. For a piece of equipment that should have remained silent all night, why, as soon as our personal experiences suggest the killer had left the attic, did it go off? 

Three. The location. Any piece of equipment could have gone off, but no other one did at that time. No. It was the one in the most logical place the killer would have gone first. The adults in the house would have put up the most fight. It made sense he would have gone to where Josiah and Sarah slept first. 

Then the light in the kids’ room…

I don’t care to think too much about the situation after that. 

If our story were to stop here, I think we’d be left with a pretty awesome ghost story and, for Kelly and myself, it did. 

But our friends’ night wasn’t quite over yet. 

Kelly and I left for our hotel around 4AM. Between what Kelly experiences and my own woo-woo experiences with sleep (long story for another time), we don’t sleep in some locations. The Villisca Ax Murder House easily makes this list. Our friends on the other hand, we’re getting beds made in the living room as we were walking out the door. 

The nearest hotel to the ax murder house is in a town called Red Oak, about a 20 minute drive from Villisca. 

Within half an hour we had rolled up to the hotel, checked in, and lazily humped our bags down the hall and into our room. 

We’re no strangers to early morning check-ins so we have a pretty solid system in play. Kelly gets dropped off at the front door and goes to check in (ideally securing a late check out) while I park the car and grab the bags. With any luck, she’s close to finishing up her part as I’m coming in and we can then head straight to the room. Toiletries to the bathroom, drum goes in its own chair, and unnecessary lights are covered. I take a wee nip of whiskey to ease my still active central nervous system and we’re usually out cold within a half an hour. This process almost never includes Kelly’s phone ringing as we’re getting settled in. 

“Hey…uh…where’s that hotel at again?” The voice on the other end of the line seemed nervous.

Based off the story we were told, for good reason. 

It was about bed time for Hillbilly Hauntings. Jason had gone out to use the restroom. Heather had gone out to smoke. This left Peyton and Carter inside, alone. 

I’ve spent a little time alone in the house and there’s something about the place that leaves you with a terrible sense of isolation. Someone could be just outside the door, but they might as well be 500 miles away. So I imagine it was creepy for them, but it was about to get much, much worse. 

Footsteps. 

They said the sound started above where they were in the living room, in the children’s room. From there, it walked over to the parents’ room.  

To his credit, Carter went to investigate. Whether this was a good or bad idea probably depends on who you ask because when he reached the bottom of the stairs those phantom footsteps charged at him from the top of the steps. 

Tragedy struck a small family and a couple of young visitors in the June of 1912. They came home from a church function and expected to go to bed and wake up the next morning to a new day, but a harsh reality had other plans for the Moore family and two Stillinger girls. For them, tomorrow never came.

Today, the murders in Villisca remain one of Iowa’s most notorious cold cases and although I do believe the Moores and Stillinger girls deserve justice, I can’t deny that there’s something morbidly poetic about the mystery of it all. 

The sense of the unknown and feelings of disgust about the murder itself are reflected in the hauntings of the house. The somber feelings of the ones who found the family that morning still paint the walls like the blood of the innocent did that day. All these sensations seem to echo through time to today, but the thing is…echos get quieter over time. Not here. No. The horrors of the past still cry out louder than ever in Villisca, Iowa.