When faced with the prospect of spending the night in a haunted house (like, a literal home, supposedly inhabited by literal ghosts), a few strategies came to mind: (1) Refuse to believe in said literal ghosts. (2) Mock the very idea of said literal ghosts. (3) Bring my mom.
I went with all three.
The house in question, a 1910 red-brick manor in Jefferson City, Missouri, was featured in a recent episode of Travel Channel’s The Dead Files for being, well, haunted. “Hobo Hill House” was purchased in 2017 by a young family who transformed the decrepit old pile into their dream home via an HGTV-worthy makeover. And then, less than a year later, when they became convinced that spirits were possessing their 5-year-old daughter, they abandoned it, contacted a TV medium who proclaimed the building was home to four separate ghosts (Four! Separate! Ghosts!), and decided to list the place on Airbnb for $267 a night.
Airbnb 'Hobo Hill House,' Jefferson City, Missouri
And because I am committed to spooky szn and to journalism, I agreed to stay in this 3-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom vacation rental for one single night. And drag my surprisingly game mom along.
“Just because I’ve never seen a ghost doesn’t mean they don’t exist!” my mother mused over the phone days before our trip. “And anyway, they say spirits only show themselves to those who believe,” she continues, “and I think it’d be so cool to see a ghost!” A ghost who was, let me remind you, accused of possessing a CHILD. (By the way, that’s not even the whole story—the former owners also claimed they heard voices saying “hi” when they came home, and they both noticed a “tall man in a suit and top hat” once out of the corner of their eye. Hello, nightmares.)
Thankfully, I can always rely on my husband to help with survival tactic number two: jokes. When I send him a photo of the massive plate of biscuits and gravy I intend to have for lunch on the day of my stay, he replies, “I foresee…demonic activity…in the bathroom....”
Whatever it takes, fine—I need a laugh. I snap a photo of the house as I approach it on foot and send it to my husband: “See the obviously haunted house sitting atop the distant hill, ringed with roiling storm clouds?” I write. “And the sinister-looking boarded-up old school building just down the hill?” The picture—the actual, real-life vista—is Scooby Doo–level creeptastic. See?
“Whoa. Crazy,” he replies.
“Zoom in,” I write back. “I’m staying in the pretty landscaped house in between.” Zing! Suck it, ghosts—you’re not nearly as scary as your next-door neighbors! (Uh, no offense.)
But when I make it to the front yard and see, among all the autumnal landscaping, a single tiny sign, it’s a little harder to stay jolly. “Sage,” it reads, “for strength.” Good grief. I unlock the back door, walk into the deathly quiet, and immediately note the large wall hanging over the fireplace, quoting C. S. Lewis: “Courage, dear heart.”
“Alright, okay,” I say out loud to no one. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” My mom won’t arrive for at least an hour.
I spend the time pretending this is an absolutely normal Airbnb, by which I mean I get extremely nosy and make myself at home. I have just riffled the contents of the fridge (do demons like Activia, or did the owners have the same premonition as my husband?) when my mom arrives, bearing a Tupperware of cookies and a cellophaned Oujia board purchased for the occasion. I give her the tour (“Ooh,” she coos in the kitchen, “two ovens!”)—and this time, I include the dank and dark cellar, which I conveniently forgot to visit when I was alone. (“Eh,” my mom says. “Our old cellar was far worse.”)
We pass a perfectly lovely evening—doing some shopping, going out for Thai, then curling up on the couch with the cookies—before my mom announces it’s time to fire up the Oujia board.
“Are you in the attic or the cellar right now?” I ask, and my mom swats the air. “Don’t ask that!” she chides. We need to ask where her missing rings are, she explains, having arrived late this afternoon because she couldn’t find them at home. (Obviously, she finds them the next day in the Ziploc bag where she keeps her bracelets.) To ensure that I don’t mess with the ~spirits~, we avert our eyes from the board, which results in the painfully slow replies of “WK” and then “HC,” which I can only assume stand for “who knows” and “Heather cheats.”
Two of the three bedrooms in the house offer king-size beds, but we somehow find ourselves sharing the third room with two double beds—an agreement based in equal parts “It’ll be fun!” and “Just in case.” We turn in near midnight and, in spite of all our jokes about things that might go bump in the night, quickly fall asleep.
It’s my mom’s birthday when we wake up, and she admits that she slept wonderfully—much better than the previous night, when she’d read a bunch of articles about this house. It’s true for me, too, I realize: The night before coming here, I’d had a terrible nightmare that my husband told me he hated me, and then I’d spent the majority of my train ride into town compiling a list I’d titled “Horrors,” which included having failed to pee before I left.
But today is bright and beautiful. We head to a birthday breakfast before parting ways; there’s a classic old diner nearby where the menu lists brains—yes, um, actual brains—served with scrambled eggs and zero explanation. My mom shakes her head and widens her eyes. “In my entire life—and I have lived a long time,” she waggles her eyebrows, “I have never seen brains on a menu.”
Yesterday, I would have seriously considered ordering them as a gruesome joke. But today? “Lucky you lived through the night,” I reply—and opt for a cinnamon roll.
Heather is a lecturer in English at Washington University in St. Louis. She's written for 'Rolling Stone,' 'Tracks,' 'Time Out NY,' and 'Alive Magazine.'
