Missouri's Haunted Route 66: Ghosts Along the Mother Road

by Janice Tremeear

Overview

Ride shotgun with the author of Haunted Ozarks on this scary road trip across Missouri's stretch of the "Main Street of America."
 
Alongside the nostalgic appeal of Route 66 lurk ghostly roadside hitchhikers, the Goatman of Rolla, amusement park spirits, the Civil War–dead, and the shadows thrown by the mighty Thunderbird. Spanning three hundred dangerously curving miles, the stretch of the Mother Road in Missouri earned the title of "Bloody 66," and some of its stopping places are marked by equally grim history. The Lemp Mansion saw family members commit suicide one by one. Springfield's Pythian Castle was an orphanage before becoming a military hospital and housing World War II prisoners of war. Follow Janice Tremeear as she takes a detour down Zombie Road, peers into the matter of the Joplin Spook Light and even stays overnight in Missouri's most haunted locations to discover what makes the Show Me State such a lively place for the dead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781614234227
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	10/20/2018
Series:	Haunted America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	131
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Born in St. Louis, Janice has lived most of her life in Missouri. She is a second-generation dowser. In tune with the paranormal from an early age, she now directs her interest and research into investigating the unknown with her team Route 66 Paranormal Alliance. She has three grown children and four grandchildren. She currently lives in Springfield, Missouri.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

Popular theory in paranormal television shows states spirits are drawn to or able to manifest themselves if certain conditions are met. Lightning storms give off energy, allowing the ghost to draw energy to manifest. Batteries are drained from equipment for the same reason. Electricity in the human body is a source as well. Water, limestone and quartz or buildings of brick and stone can all harbor ghosts because of stored energy. Violent crimes can spark a haunting, causing the person to remain earthbound. Areas where several people died can hold spirits, such as battlefields and hospitals.

St. Louis bears all the appearances of a prime breeding ground for earthbound spirits. The ground is limestone and shale. Most paranormal researchers agree that water and limestone play a big role in the physical manifestations of spirits. St. Louis crouches atop a vast maze of limestone caves; perhaps more caves exist beneath this city than any other, and St. Louis County is perched over a recorded 127 caves. The Mississippi runs the length of the city bordered by the Missouri and Big Rivers.

The Hopewell Indians settled the land as early as 400 BC and built earthen mounds for their homes. These mounds still remain in Cahokia, Illinois. They are huge — the Midwest's own version of Mayan grounds or pyramids. Gazing up in awe at the mounds, I've marveled at their construction.

The Mound City, as St. Louis is called, saw a fire that burned four hundred buildings and fifteen city blocks in 1849; in the same year, the cholera epidemic killed nearly 10 percent of the population. On May 27, 1896, the third-deadliest tornado in American history touched down six miles east of Eads Bridge, moving from the northwest edge of Tower Grove Park into East St. Louis and leaving hundreds dead and at least one thousand injured; it also caused about $ 10 million in damage.

On September 29, 1927, the twenty-fourth-deadliest and second- costliest tornado struck, with 79 dead and 550 injured. On February 10, 1959, 21 died and 345 were injured from the sixty-sixth-deadliest tornado.

I visited the 1959 tornado devastation when my parents took us into what remained of the portion of St. Louis affected by the storm. I remember sheared-off sides of buildings, furnishings hanging from apartments, clothing draped on torn walls and people digging through the rubble. I could see inside the rooms and wonder at the portions untouched a few feet beyond the destruction — debris everywhere made the area appear like a place out of an apocalyptic movie. Images were burned into my six-year-old mind.

In 1993, a five-hundred-year flood affected nine states, with fifty dead, seventy thousand evacuated and fifty thousand homes destroyed. A large part of the St. Louis area was underwater, and many people I knew volunteered to sandbag near homes and businesses. A five-hundred-year flood is one that has a one-in-five-hundred chance of happening in any given year, a one-in-ten chance over a period of fifty years or a one-in-five chance of occurring in a century.

Along with natural disasters, St. Louis was home to at least five gangs during Prohibition — with gang-style executions taking place within the city.

Named after a seventeen-mile section of the Mississippi River that produces white water rapids over a series of rocks in the river, the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge is 5,353 feet. Built in 1929 at a cost of between $2 million and $3 million, it is one of the longest continuous steel-truss bridges, connecting St. Louis to Edwardsville, Illinois.

The bridge has a twenty-two-degree angle in its middle, allowing southbound riverboats to avoid the water towers and pillars supporting the bridge. The toll was a mere five cents in the beginning, rising with the times and ending after the bonds on the bridge were paid off.

Route 66 was part of the bridge in 1936 until 1968, when the toll-free bridge of Interstate 270 opened.

Once in Missouri, travelers could visit the Chain of Rocks Park, later known as the Chain of Rocks Fun Fair.

I don't remember the bridge toll, but I thought the water intake towers were cool. Holiday Hill Park, Chain of Rocks and the Forest Park Highlands were some of the most wonderful fantasylands a kid could play in while I was in town visiting grandma and grandpa in the big city of St. Louis.

Today the park is gone, a victim of two major fires within four years and the public wooing from the upstart amusement park out in Eureka, Missouri — Six Flags over Mid America. Chain of Rocks Fun Fair closed its doors on the day the Screaming Eagle roller coaster was inaugurated at Six Flags.

The Chain of Rocks Bridge closed and was left to rot until 1981, when the movie Escape from New York with Kurt Russell filmed scenes in St. Louis on the bridge and inside the abandoned Grand Hall of Union Station and Fox Theater. At the time of filming, areas of St. Louis — and East St. Louis, Illinois, in particular — had become extremely run down. East St. Louis had suffered a fire that burned out several blocks, and the empty buildings of St. Louis fit John Carpenter's idea of a setting for New York City as a post-apocalyptic city turned prison.

Sixteen years after Kurt Russell and Isaac Hayes raced across the bridge, it began life anew as a walking and bike trail. Bridge hours are limited because of dangerous access on the Illinois side and the April 4, 1991 murder of the Kerry sisters by four men.

St. Louis is the Grand Dame of Missouri. It is a city of firsts. It has the first cathedral west of the Mississippi, Old St. Louis Cathedral; St. Louis University, first university west of the river; the first commuter community in the suburb of Kirkwood; the first corporation in the United States to engage in retail sales, Simmons Hardware Company; and Susan Blow, who began the first public kindergarten in the nation in 1878.

Francis Field was the first concrete stadium in the United States, built for the 1904 Olympic Games, also a first in America. Eads Bridge is the first arched steel-trussed bridge in the world and the first railroad bridge over the Mississippi. The first skyscraper took shape as the Wainwright Building. And it's said the first edible, walk-away ice cream cone was invented at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

SS ADMIRAL

In 1907 in Dubuque, Iowa, Dubuque Boat constructed a steamboat with four large boilers housed in a hull 308.0 feet long, 53.8 feet wide and 7.6 feet in depth.

Above the hull, the ship measured ninety feet wide to accommodate the single paddlewheel. Known as the Albatross, owned by the Louisiana and Mississippi Valley Transfer Co., it sailed to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to carry sixteen railroad cars.

In 1920, it sailed back to Keokuk, Iowa, to be placed in dry dock. The Ripley Boat Co. made the Albatross a marvel of the times by extending its hull to 365 feet.

Streckfus Steamers bought the Albatross in 1937, turning it into a river excursion boat. It sailed to St. Louis. In 1940, it dry-docked for an upgrade — its design borne from the mind of Mazie Krebs, a fashion and advertising illustrator for Famous Barr.

Mazie had designed another ship for Streckfus Steamers, the President, which took to the river in 1933. She wanted a change from the wooden gingerbread of riverboats and the art-deco style met with the approval of Captain Joseph Streckfus, who was looking for a radical new design.

After two years of construction, the new ship was still a mystery. It was renamed the Admiral and, when unveiled, boasted another expansion to its hull. It measured 374 feet long, the length of a city block. The steel hull had seventy-four compartments; eleven could be flooded with the ship remaining afloat. The Admiral had five decks, carried 4,400 passengers and was recorded as the largest inland cruise ship in the world. It was the first cruise ship to be fully air-conditioned.

I rode the Admiral when I was twelve. It was beautiful, sleek and silver. I spent the two-hour tour exploring every inch of the ship I could get to. I watched the huge arms pumping, propelling the ship through the water. The arcade beckoned. Above decks we stood at the rail, watching St. Louis fade on the horizon. The dance floor was amazing; it was the largest floating dance floor — all gilt and glitz — with padded blue doors, pink and blue pipe lighting. The ladies bathroom had famous movie stars' names on the doors and was something out of a posh movie set.

We ran all over the ship; Mom and Dad relaxed in the ballroom. On the dance floor in my white go-go boots, peacock pattern minidress and waist- length, green and blue disk necklace, I twisted, did the jerk and the swim and I boogied with the best of them to Tommy Roe's "Hanky Panky."

Bob was on the dance floor with me while Pat ran up and down the stairs. Pat called Mom and Dad over to watch us. Bob became quite shy and stopped dancing. Sliding across the floor in my slick-soled boots, I wound up on my tush. Bouncing back up, I pretended I meant to do that.

I only wish I still possessed a fragment of that youthful energy.

We came home loaded with souvenirs, memories and the desire to return. Unfortunately, I never sailed on the Admiral again.

Declared unsafe for the river it was turned into a casino — its engines stripped. Its glory faded as did the heyday of Route 66.

I wasn't aware of the Admiral's resident ghost. A man named Fred Williams was the porter in the men's restroom on the first deck, starboard side amidship. His job was to keep the restroom clean and man the shoeshine stand.

When Fred died, his position was filled by another man. Not long after Fred's passing, a strange thumping came from behind the bulkhead.

The bathroom and shoeshine stand no longer exist, and the Admiral itself is slated to close its doors for good. What will happen to Fred?

UNION STATION

In 1946, the movie Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland, brought national attention to the waitresses of the Fred Harvey Restaurant inside the Terminal Hotel, part of the train station in St. Louis. The young ladies had to be of high moral fiber, between the ages of eighteen and twenty and chaperoned by a housemother. They took a vow to remain single for a full year after their employment terminated with the restaurant. The restaurant is now the Station Grille inside the Marriott in the area called the Headhouse, with seating for 130.

Designed by German-born Theodore Link, Union Station was completed in 1894 and was once the largest train terminal in the world. The station was built over a pond that served as a trysting spot, while also being used by many for doing laundry. Suspicions are that this very pond was the source of the cholera epidemic that killed many in St. Louis. Built of Indiana limestone, the terminal fits the bill of drawing possible paranormal activity.

It has a sixty-five-foot barrel-vaulted ceiling in the Grand Hall with the Allegorical Window over the main entryway. The window is handmade stained glass with hand-cut Tiffany glass featuring three women representing the main U.S. train stations of the 1890s — New York, St. Louis and San Francisco.

The Grand Hall is a Victorian-engineered train shed totaling more than eleven acres with a cost of $6.5 million.

The Headhouse is a mix of Romanesque styles. The station's interior and exterior detail combines Richardsonian Romanesque and French Romanesque or Norman styles. Theodore Link modeled the station after Carcassone, the walled medieval city in south France.

The Midway once serviced more than 100,000 rail passengers a day. At its height the station combined passenger services of twenty-two railroads, the most of any single terminal in the world. The concourse was 610 feet long and 70 feet wide and connected to the train shed, where passengers lined up to board trains through one of the thirty-two boarding gates. The Midway was constructed of a light steel-trussed roof of glass and iron.

In 1903, the station expanded to accommodate visitors to the 1904 World's Fair. Amtrak ceased operations at the station in 1978, and soon it fell into disuse.

Now the station houses a shopping mall and the Marriott Hotel. Charlene Wells worked at a couple of stores within the mall during her two years attending the Patricia Stevens College in St. Louis. During that time she heard fellow employees tell tales of ghosts that had been handed down through the years. "You won't find the stories online but all the employees knew about the ghosts," Charlene says. "Especially the shadow guy who hung our near the Fudge Factory at the time. We always talked about the ghosts when we were on breaks."

The shadow is an unknown, tuxedoed man who roams the corridors at odd times of the day. And then there's George, who kept the keys to the Clock Tower. The tower is 230 feet high and holds the vaults, where thousands of coins were once stored during the heyday of trains and passengers; it also contains the giant valve controlling the station's sprinkler system. Employee lore says George loved Union Station so much that he still hangs around making noises near the building's offices.

The inevitable lady in white shows up. She keeps to the hotel area, appearing on the balcony overlooking the Grand Hall.

There was Ed Post, who murdered his wife, Julie, in the bathtub of their Union Station hotel room in 1986. Post, a real estate agent from New Orleans, told police he'd gone jogging and returned to find his thirty-nine- year-old wife unconscious in the tub. Investigation into the incident turned up evidence of the husband's attraction to another woman and the increase in his wife's life insurance before her death. Suspicions were raised by the calm, pleasant demeanor the husband displayed following his wife's death plus bruises found on her head, leading authorities to believe she'd been held underwater.

The medical examiner wouldn't declare Julie's death a homicide; the jury found Post guilty of first-degree murder after only a day of deliberation. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, a year later, a sheriff's deputy admitted that the sequestered jury had held a party with a police detective present and that another deputy had sex with one of the jurors. The sentence was reversed, and Post was granted another trial. This time, his oldest daughter talked about her parents fighting and drinking.

The second jury found him guilty, sentencing him to life without parole. This was later reversed, and Post pleaded guilty of second-degree murder, claiming he was on weight-loss drugs and had not been himself. His release date is scheduled for 2014; he will have served twenty-five years and be seventy years of age.

Charlene, a member of Route 66 PAL, and my daughter stood with me in the Grand Hall. Near the entrance is the Whispering Arch with a secret. If you stand against the marble wall and whisper, your voice will be heard on the other side, forty feet away. Upstairs we gazed down on the spot where passengers mingled — which is where Escape from New York was filmed — and ghosts come out to play.

THE CAVES OF ST. LOUIS

Missouri has 6,300 registered caves, some of sandstone and others of limestone and carbonite rock. Missouri's landscape is known as karst, meaning the earth is full of caves, springs, sinkholes and losing streams where the water disappears into a swallow hole and reappears elsewhere. There are over 3,000 reported springs in the state. Greene County, where Route 66 was conceived in Springfield, lists more than 2,500 sinkholes.

The caves of St. Louis were storage for food and lager beer. Folgelbach Cave served as a water runoff and sewer system. Klausmann's Cave boasted a beer garden and held concerts and carnivals. On the future site of Union Station, a cave existed beneath Chouteau's Pond — the water hole blamed for the cholera outbreak. During the widening of Market Street, the cave showed remains of the Winkelmeyer brewery and mushroom beds.

Uhrig's Brewery expanded its cave with brick walls, arched ceilings and a narrow-gauge railroad to transport its beer between brewery and the cave. It was a spot for the people of St. Louis to gather for glasses of beer and listen to music. The cave became military headquarters during the Civil War. It was used as an opera house, roller rink, bowling alley, mushroom farm and an arena for sporting events and revivals. The world's largest indoor swimming pool existed here. Many notable events took place, including the Veiled Prophet Ball that later gave way to the Fourth of July Spirit of St. Louis event.

Anheuser–Busch utilized a cave, building a small brewery on the ground above. Most breweries came into being in St. Louis because of the presence of the caves.

Cherokee Cave is the site of the Lemp Brewery; it also held beer from the Minnehaha Brewery. Adam Lemp first used the caves. Stone arches and brick ceilings were installed to prevent water seepage. The cave floors were paved, staircases and walkways placed and large kegs built to hold the beer. During the Civil War, the military stored munitions in the caves.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Missouri's Haunted Route 66"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Janice Tremeear.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
1. St. Louis, Missouri,
SS Admiral,
Union Station,
The Caves of St. Louis,
Chase Park Plaza Hotel,
Soulard Market,
Laclede's Landing,
Lemp Mansion,
Hitchhike Annie,
The Feasting Fox,
Forest Park,
Old Courthouse,
Zombie Road,
Shaw's Garden,
Webster Groves,
Jefferson Barracks,
2. Eureka and Pacific, Missouri,
Six Flags Over Mid America,
Pacific,
The Diamonds–Tri County Truck Stop,
3. Defiance and Union, Missouri,
Daniel Boone Village,
Union,
4. Morse Mill, Missouri,
5. Stanton, Missouri,
Meramec Caverns,
6. Sullivan, Missouri,
Harney Mansion,
7. Rolla, Missouri,
Goatman's Grave,
Devil's Elbow,
Fort Leonard Wood,
8. Springfield, Missouri,
Gillioz Theater,
Landers Theater,
Walnut Street Inn,
Pythian Castle,
Maple Park Cemetery,
MSU,
Springfield National Cemetery,
Wilson's Creek National Battlefield,
9. Buffalo, Missouri,
Rack It Pool Hall,
10. Carthage, Missouri,
Grand Avenue Bed and Breakfast,
Kendrick House,
11. Joplin, Missouri,
Freeman Hospital,
Peace Church Cemetery,
Prosperity School Bed and Breakfast,
Joplin Spook Light,
Bibliography,
About the Author,