S1 – 1: Slay Utterly

two thousand people. Since then, the house has been dubbed the Valiska Axe Murder House and is the site of many paranormal happenings, attracting paranormal investigators from around the globe. Robert Larson is one such paranormal investigator from Rhinelander, Wisconsin. In fourteen, he was investigating the Valiska Axe Murder House with his parents. He told them he wanted to attempt an experiment where he would recreate the scene the murderer

left following the horrible crime that took place there. He asked them to leave him completely alone, but to monitor the building from outside from their DVR cameras. Robert proceeded to stage the home exactly as it had been found the morning of the murders, including covering all the mirrors with cloth, drawing the curtains, leaving a bloody bowl of water in the kitchen, and even laying a large pile of bacon on the kitchen counter. We'll talk about the

meaning of that later. The only thing Robert didn't have was an axe, so he may do with a knife. Robert lay down in one of the beds in the downstairs bedroom and clutched the knife in his right hand. Robert proceeded to call out to what he believed to be the ghost of the killer in the dark. He hurled horrible names and insults at the killer and provoked unrelentingly. The last thing Robert remembers is a strange light anomaly emerging from the closet in the room he was in

and heading straight for him. When he came to, the knife he had been clutching was buried in his shoulder. He was screaming, and his parents were calling for help. Robert was severely injured. He was actually life lighted to the nearest hospital, where he coated due to blood loss, but thankfully revived. The police ruled that Robert did this

to himself, but to this day he swears otherwise. He claims the knife was in his right shoulder at an angle that would have been impossible for him to do himself, and that even then he is right handed and had the knife in his right hand. Try that for yourself. Hold something in your right hand and try to reach your right shoulder with enough force to bury a knife in it. We will never know the answers as to

what happ been that night. Robert's actions were just out of the camera frame, and his parents were so horrified by what they heard on the recorder Robert was running at the time that they destroyed it. Now I actually interviewed Robert face to face. I expected to walk in and find a man who may not be entirely truthful, but I believe him. Whatever happened there that night has left him a different person. And it was to this day probably one of the most powerful interviews I've ever

conducted with someone. I think that was the first time I had ever met someone who had had a paranormal encounter. That made me question whether paranormal activity can actually be dangerous, because I had never heard a story like this, and the look in his eyes was one of just complete and utter terror. Eventually we were able to to get Robert to return to the house, and I think that was incredibly therapeutic moment for him that he needed. But it was also in the middle of the day and

he was surrounded by people. I don't think you could pay him enough to ever re enter that home by himself. I'm Amy Brunei and this is Haunted Road. Built in eighteen sixty on Lote t The house at five o eight East Second Street in Viliska, Iowa is known by a few names, the Josiah B. And Sarah Moore House, the Vliska Axe Murder House, or just the Murder House. Josiah by Moore and his family bought the house in nineteen o three. Now Josiah was a pretty well known

businessman locally. He owned and operated a farm implement store and was a successful and well regarded person. Also known as Joe, he was a moderately prosperous and small town businessman, raising a large family and a small play house. Joe was a cheerful, well liked simple man who, in the words of the Iowa Attorney General, was at peace with everybody. Also in the home was his wife, Sarah Montgomery, who was thirty nine. Herman Montgomery eleven, Mary Catherine ten, Arthur

Boyd seven, and Paul Vernon five. Now let's go back to the summer of nine. You know, Vliska, Iowa was this small town with a little over two thousand people, and at that time in early June, the street lights had actually been turned out due to a dispute between the city and the power company over the cost of electricity. So between that and overcast guys, Vliska was said to

have returned to a medieval darkness. Now that night in June, Mary Catherine invited two of her friends, sisters Lena, Gertrude and i Am. Lena was twelve and Eam eight, to stay over at their house that night. The eight of them got home between n and ten pm. In the late hours of the ninth or the early hours of the tenth of June, one or more persons entered the More home and killed all eight people inside, the six

mores and the two still injured girls. The weapon of choice or convenience was Josiah's axe, which had been left outside. The killer walked past the two rooms where the children were sleeping and bludgeoned Josiah, then Sarah with the flat end of the axe while both were still sleeping. The next room the killer visited was of the four More children. Evidence indicates that all were asleep when they two were bludgeoned. The ceilings and the parents and the chill Daurn's rooms

had gouge marks from the upswing. The final stop was the room where the two still in Your sisters slept. Lena maybe the only one who awoke before she was killed. Early the next morning, neighbor Mary Peckham went about her morning chores, but noticed that the Moors weren't doing the same. When she knocked on the door and received no response, she found it was locked. Peckham called on Ross Moore,

Josiah's brother. He tried to look into the house and supposedly shouted, trying to alert his brother's family to his presence, but there was no response. After finding the right skeleton key, Ross entered the home and first found the bedroom on the main floor where Lena and Ana had been sleeping.

According to testimony from Dr J. Clark Cooper, a physician who was called to the More home that day, all we could see was an arm of someone sticking from under the edge of the cover, with the blood on the pillows, and I went over and lifted the covers and saw what I supposed was a body, some entire stranger and a mere child at the back of the bed. I did not recognize them at all, nor did anyone else at the scene. The Marshal Henry Hank Horton was

called by Ross. Horton found somebody murdered in every bed. Each body had been bludgeoned with the blunt side of the axe roughly twenty to thirty times. Strange things stood out to those who were first on the scene. According to Johnny Houser, the current caretaker of the home and a paranormal investigator, all the mirrors and windows in the house were covered. The oil lamps were placed at the

edge of the beds. The moor's drawers had been ransacked in order to find coverings for the mirrors and windows. All the windows except for two had their curtains drawn. The two remaining ones did not have curtains, so we're covered with material found within the house. The kitchen table held a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water, probably where the murderer washed. The axe had been partially cleaned and was found in the room where

the Stillinger sisters had slept. Next to the axe, there was a nearly two pounds slab of bacon. A second slab was in the ice box. Now. As far as suspects, remarkably, the Vliska murders remain unsolved to this day. However, that's not to say there weren't plenty of suspects. Most notably was a man by the name of Reverend Kelly. He had actually attended the Sunday school service that took place the evening of the murders. He left on an early

morning train before the bodies were even discovered. He acted strangely in the weeks following the murders, including returning to Vliska two weeks later and pretending to be an investigator with the Scotland Yard. It wasn't until five years later that he was tried for the crime, and while he did confess twice, he was ultimately acquitted. But what strikes me most about him is his confession. He claims to have had insomnia the night of the murders and to

have walked to the nearby Presbyterian church. While alone in the church, I heard a voice. It said, go further. I went out and walked to the end of the street, where I saw a shadow, which beckoned me to follow. The shadow led me to the rear of the moor house. I saw an axe on a rubbish heap. I picked the axe up by the handle. The voice again spoke, saying,

go on, follow the shadow, slay utterly. At some point during the confession, Kelly explained the text slay utterly had been in my mind before the murders and has been ringing in my ears ever since. I have had a hard time resisting the impulse to slay. My soul is relieved now for the first time in five years. Slay utterly. Now think about that, He describes being almost in a trance like state, and for some reason, that reminds me

so much of what happened to Robert Larson. I spent multiple nights investigating the Vliska Axe murder house, and I have to say it's one of those places that quite literally still haunts me to this day. I just had a lot of trouble going into the space, merely because of what happened there and the ages of the victims. But it's honestly kind of a serene little house when you're there during the day, the light beams in, it's

very bright. And the way I handled it was I kept reminding myself that the way the family and the still and your sisters died did not define them, that they spent a lot of time in that home with wonderful, happy memories, because I do feel like sometimes we go into a place where a terrible tragedy has happened, and we focus so much on that that we forget that people actually lived in that space before, and how much

more powerful living is than the moment of death. And so that's how I was able to cope with it. But I do feel like something very strange is going on there. I am not sure if it is the ghost of the murderer revisiting the space, or if it is something somehow created by all of the investigators and visitors and people who kind of go there and infuse it with thoughts of the murders, or if it's the ghosts of the family themselves. But I will say that it is one of the only places that I do

question whether it is entirely safe for everyone. So I do caution any investigators going into that house to respect it. It's incredibly important to always have respect when investigating, but especially in the Vliska Axe Murder House, because none of us want to end up the way Robert Larson did. After a quick break, I'm going to interview Johnny Houser. Johnny is a paranormal investigator and is actually the caretaker

of the Vliska Axe Murder House. He has a lot of great stories about the place, but also has some intriguing ideas and insight as to why the house is still haunted. So I am now joined by Johnny Houser, who is the I guess resident paranormal investigator at the Veliska House. Would that be your title? Yeah, I'm kind of a all titles with the hex House, the tour guide, the overnight guy, the website guy, the lawnmowering guy. Like, oh yeah, jack of all trades, Jack of all trades

for that house. I'm the Norman Bates of the Axemer House. And so you actually live right next door? Is that correct? Yeah? I live right next door um in Mary Peckham's house. And she, of course was the neighbor that initially found or noticed something was wrong at the house next door, which is interesting because the more children used to play over in my house. I mean Mary was like a grandma to them. Oh, so there's a major connection there.

We we kind of have found that interestingly enough at the Lizzie Borden House as well, because there were children that lived next door to the Lizzie Borden House that used to play in the Lizzie Borden House that knew Lizzie. So it's interesting these kind of coralations between these two very brutal Axe murders. Absolutely, you know, And there are some stories that have happened at my house with my daughter and stuff that kind of made me wonder if

they can go, you know, back and forth between the houses. Um, and I just to tell the story real quick, my daughter text me. I don't know why she texted me, but at like three am, and I happened to wake up and hear my phone to the dad. I'm stuck in the bathroom and I'm hearing humming and crying. I thought, what not get up And the door was stuck, but

it probably was from humidity or whatever. And the next day I was like, I'm going to get ahold of the overnights at the Ax house to see if they were outside and that's what she was hearing, and them being ghost runners, they had everything logged down to the minute, you know, and they're like, no, we were in the attic at this time. It's like, Okay, it wasn't them. But then they came back with the house was super active,

except for right then it was strangely quiet. So I thought, could that have been the kids coming over here because it's familiar to them, right. That's interesting now, that kind of gamut of activity. Do you find that the activity in the house is more extreme at certain times or is it with certain people? Like what do you think triggers what goes on there. I've spent decades at the house, you know. I've done over fo overnights alone, and right

off the bat, I was looking for patterns. There has to be a pattern in this somewhere, and I've looked for patterns in birthdays, anniversaries, moon phases, the eclipse. While everybody's outside staring at it, I'm doing an e VP session in the axe house, you know, trying to see if that does anything, and I found nothing. I found no rhyme or reason to it. I do see that

there is a correlation with people sometimes. Interestingly enough, nurses and teachers seem to have a lot of good luck in there, and I think it takes a certain person to do those jobs. I couldn't do it. I couldn't be a nursery teacher. You know. It's not for the money, obviously, like it's for the passion, and they're passionate people, and they're very loving people, and I think that resonates with

the spirits. So I think probably the hardest part for me investigating Veliska is that it gets in my head a lot just kind of what went on there. Um. You know, obviously I'm a mom, but I don't think it's just mom's I think anybody is completely bothered at the idea of a number of children being killed so brutally. And how do you kind of separate yourself as you work in that space every day? How do you separate yourself between what went on there and and then also

what your job is there? You know, it's I totally get it. I totally get how horrible it is. It's terrible. I wish it, like I hate the Axe Murder House more than anyone, you know, I hate what happened there. I wish it didn't even exist, but it does. And I think that these these kids should have laughed and played and grew up and fell in love and had their own children, but they were robbed of that. If I can tell their story and keep them alive in

that way, I think it's totally worth it. Um well, not worth what happened, but worth what I do for a living. One thing that gives me a lot of excitement, it's probably twice a month I'll have the thirteen year old little girl. It's never the little boys. It's always the little girls that come up and they tell me when I graduate high school, I'm going to this college

for forensic science because this inspired me. And I'm like, wow, if a tragedy can be turned into a positive and it lights a fire under this young mind to stop one crime, that's amazing. But also, you know, it's if I wasn't there doing it, I'm afraid somebody else would be there that would make it a joke, make it a circus attraction. And I know that I do it with love and compassion for the crimes that happened was

poor little kids in that family. But on the flip side, I'm not convinced they're even there, right, And that's something I wanted to ask about as well. So I have. Um, I've investigated there for a few nights, and I didn't really find any evidence of the children, but I do know that many people have. Uh. And then we did have an experience that we felt might have been with something more I don't like to say negative, but some some someone or something that was a little more angry

and a little more malicious. And you know, your thoughts go to, this must be the ghost of the murderer, you know, but what what do you think that is? Who do you think that is? I think that everywhere on this planet where something horrible has happened, it leaves that negative imprint. It's just like you walk into a room where someone had an argument. You feel that negative energy. It's very real, and it lingers. This place had an

atom bomb of negative energy dropped on it. Could that negative energy manifest as whatever it wants to be a little kid? You know, there's a lot of things that happened to me aren't something a little kid from nine twelve would be doing. Assuming we keep the same personality and death as we do life, you know. Um, But then I go even further back to was something here before the murders even happened, the shadow that gave Reverend

Kelly an Ax. Nobody's talking about shadow figures in eighteen you know, I can remember in the eighties they were aliens, then their innerdimensional time travelers, and now they're who knows what. Was there something in the house beforehand? Maybe a shadow gave Reverend Kelly an Ax preyed on him because he wasn't quite mentally stable at the time. I mean, he was schizophrenic and back then with no medicine or under

standing of the the illness. You know, is there something in there that praise on people that aren't firmly rooted in their faith or extremely strong minded when they go into buildings like this and start yelling and screaming and trying to get stuff to happen. And I also kind of feel like the places like a mirror. It just reflects back to you what you put into it. If you go in there positive, it's going to give you positive. If you go in there with the come at me thing,

you know, it's like good luck with that. Because I'll watch overnights and these are legit paranormal investigators that take it serious. They know how to debunk. They know what a wind or what's it a knock? You know, normal house settling noise. The one group will run out terrified at eleven PM, leave half their gear. I gotta mail it back to them. And then the next night they'll be like, Oh, is the most positive experience I've ever had. I felt a little child hugged me and I teared up,

And how is this the same location? Right? I mean, I think that just in general, hauntings react to the vibe in the space, you know, and and that goes for the living and the dead. You know, you can have a really great dinner party happening, and then a guest can arrive who's just a total downer and shift the entire mood of what's happening in the room. And I think if you apply that to paranormal investigation as well, you will get those kind of results from from the

spirits or from whatever that energy is there. So that kind of leads me to experiences that you've you've personally had or that you've heard of in the house. Can you kind of go through maybe a couple just very powerful experiences or things that you would you would describe as as something scary or or you know what I mean. I just I'm curious. I want to I want to give listeners kind of the vibe of the house because I experienced the gamut there. I experienced that kind of

pow at a moment and the negative moments. I'm just wondering if you could kind of pass on some of those. Oh Man, over fifteen years being in this place, I've seen, you know, just the normal footsteps, door open and closing there for like a month. There's a lot of poltergeist activity of things stacking and arranging, which is odd because nobody lives there at all. It's just a empty place. I've seen the positive, I've seen the negative. One of

the most profound things that I've ever experienced. It was a Friday night the overnight's camp sold for whatever reason. So I thought, I'm just gonna go in fix some some things in the upstairs bedroom, lock the kitchen doors and nobody could walk in. And as I'm up there, somebody walks in the house and I'm like, come on, people were closed. It's like, well, obviously, idiot, they broke in, you know, because it's like a nighttime and I thought, they have no idea. I'm upstairs, so I'm going to

have fun with this. And I hid in the kid's room closet, and this plan was to scare this kid jump out, you know, and just do that while you're breaking and if you want to see it, I'll just show it to you. So the walking around downstairs for like ten minutes, it comes upstairs into the room I'm in. I kicked the closet door open to the big blah, nothing, there's nothing. And I couldn't even move, I couldn't talk. The I always heard, you know, I felt a rush

of cold air. I thought, yeah, everybody says that I've never experienced it. At that time, I did. I checked the whole house, the door was locked, and watched a surveillance video. There's nothing. And what really got me was, at no time during this whole thing transpiring did I think a ghost. It was somebody broken the house, because it was so loud and so blatant and so obvious that there was no no debunking that. So, I mean,

somebody walked in the house and up the stairs. And I've seen, you know, a lot of like Amityville quality of the house, of mental mental manipulation, and I've experienced that in there to where and especially in the downstairs bedroom Mine and Lena's were where you just kind of zone and out and pretty soon you're just like out of it. You go out of the house and you know, it's like an hour or two later you like start coming back to normal. And that's a that's a very

scary part of the house for me. I know what it can do, so I don't push it anymore. Well, that leads me to, uh, to Robert Larson, who we were able to interview when Adam and I investigated there, And I walked into that interview ready to not believe him or ready to kind of find a way to

disprove his story. And I guess I just didn't really have any idea how extreme it actually was, because I'm sure you remember when the story started going around in the paranormal circles with what happened with him, it was very oh yeah, this guy cut himself to to get the spirits to come out. And when we actually spoke with him and I found out he actually bled out and had to be you know, life lighted to a hospital and coded like it was so much more extreme

than that, and that happened in that bedroom. So do you think he was kind of a victim of that, like mental manipulation. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's the second time he'd been there, and I get to know these people pretty well, and I mean he he just seemed like a normal dude, you know, just a normal guy. And I remember I remember him saying I'm going to give the house a piece of my mind tonight. I'm like, hey boy, you know, but I hear that like a

million times a year. And so I go home and I wake up and I'm tagged and all this stuff on social media. I walk over there and you know, I find out what happened. I didn't even want to go in the house, honestly. I made two friends come over with me to walk in, and it was I don't know. I mean, that's one of those experiences walking in that house right after it happened. And I'll never forget.

I felt so bad for him because I was reading all these things of he did it to be on TV, or he did it to be rich, or he cut himself to get the ghosts to do stuff, or I read one where he stabbed himself multiple times in the stomach in the yard. I'm like, what, you know, so many rumors, but until you sit and you know, I mean, you guys know to sit in this room and talk

to this guy and feel his sincerity. I don't know what happened, but I know that I've experienced moments in that house to where you're just kind of out of it, and luckily i've left. That really struck me talking to Robert. It's funny because I wasn't aware that other people had that kind of mental moment in that room. And that's really exactly what he described was this kind of he

kind of drifted off. He first, he initially was swearing at the killer and as you know, you know, he set everything up exactly like the killer left it, and he started swearing and yelling at the killer by while he was laying on one of the beds in that room, and he said, he just like a feeling overtook him, and he looked over at the closet and he saw this large light anomaly come toward him, and then he blacked out and the next thing he remembers was waking

up screaming with the knife in his shoulder. And that really just kind of puts into perspective. It really went against everything I'd ever thought about the paranormal, because you know, I I've always it's the one time I've ever been like, this could be a dangerous situation if you don't go into this with a strong mind. Um, not that he doesn't have a strong mind, but just you know that you feel strong as you go in and not put

yourself into a vulnerable position. So after that happened, did you guys have to or did you have to put any rules in place? Or do you warn people before they investigate? Martha actually said, can you put no weapons please on the website? And I'm just like, do we need to do that? Like, you know, I feel like that's pretty self explanatory. Um, as far as myself, we get a lot of I see a lot of young new paranormal investigators popping up, which is really exciting for me.

But they'll come to the AX House and like, we just started a team last month, this is our first investigation, and I'm like, uh, okay, so I'll spend a little extra time with them to warn them, you know, like if somebody starts feeling weird or anything, like, go outside, take a breath, don't push the issue in this place. And I always remind everybody that's investigating, I'll end it with like, just remember what happened here. Little kids were murdered,

you know, come about it with some respect. So I just try and one on one, look im in the face, and you know, just tell them, like, be respectful about it. Don't push yourself this this place is no joke, you know. And I hope that they take a little part of that and roll with it. Of course, you're going to have some people that don't, and there's no way of weeding those people out, you know what I mean, right exactly.

Have you had any other kind of close calls like that, or or or incidents where you felt it could kind of go south again or do you think that was just a one off moment. I believe it could go south at any time. I think it's all the intent of the people going in there. I've had, you know, paranormal investigators that's been there times leave within an hour and they're like it was just off. Something just felt off, like something bad was about to happen, so we thought

we just wouldn't push it. Do you feel like you've kind of developed a relationship with the house over the years. Um, you know, you've been there for so long now, and and where do you see yourself going? Do you see yourself staying there forever? Or like, I mean, do you feel some kind of like you owe it to a house in some way? I mean, at this point, it's been so long, yeah, I mean I have a I found a picture of my son and I in the attic and he barely came up past my knee, a

little little boy. And he's out of college and getting married now, you know. So it's like, wow, I've been there a long time. And then as weird as it sounds, and I've talked to other people that you know, have haunted locations or things of this nature, and they feel very attached to it. I almost feel like big brother in a weird way, like protector of the house, you know. After the stabbing went down, I walked in and I said, hey, like, I gotta work here, leave me alone. I'll leave you alone.

We've gotta have some boundaries going on. And then I was like, you need me here because if I'm not here, you don't have a revolving cast of people to mess around with, you know, it's like trying to bargain a little bit. But I'm just so attached to the history in the house. I'll always have something to do with the ex House in the future. Um, whether it's just

on the back end of it. You know. I'd never say I'm always going to do something for the rest of my life, because opportunities come, what what not, you know, but I'll probably always have something to do with the ex house, if anything, just making sure it's ran the

way it should be ran, right. I mean, Flisk is such an interesting little town, you know, Having been there and spent multiple days there, I love how you can walk into a store or the pharmacy or something and they instantly just ask, oh, are you here to see the murder House, like they know they know who is in town. And why do you think that they're always going to keep it open like that? Do you think it's good for the town or do you think that

at some point it might become a private residence. Again, well, it's on the historic Registry, so it's always going to be a historic landmark. It's not going anywhere. I don't don't foresee anyone ever wanting to live in it. It's great for what it is, but you know, we're talking house built in the eighties. There's gaps above the door, there's no insulation, let alone what happened there. You know. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll ever be a home again. A house, yes,

but not a home. I think it's good for the town, you know, it brings a lot of people here, and those people always go to the gas station or they'll go out to eat while they're here. I've had the people that own the diner say thank you for having this open, because if it wasn't, we would not be able to open on weekends just because we don't have enough people coming in. It quite literally attracts people from all over the world. I mean, people travel from everywhere.

They feel there's a draw to it, and I don't necessarily think it's a negative draw. It's it's a curiosity thing, but it's also just so notoriously haunted that people, you know, like to kind of cross it out. It's it is a bucket list item for many paranormal investigators. But what about just historically, do you get a lot of people who come in for tours during the day as well? Oh. Absolutely. Going back to the people around the world. I just

had a guy from Vietnam come doing overnight. Actually, he was doing a podcast and it was only going to be in the house for like three hours or something. I'm not sure exactly what was happening, but he was talking about how popular the house is in Vietnam. You say, acts and everybody knows. Veliska like what. He's like, oh, yeah, very popular. I'm like, wow, that's cool. You know, it's neat that it's reached over there, that their story is

being told in Vietnam. It's amazing to me. But as far as the people, I mean, our day tours are booming. This year has been horrible, but has been for everyone right. I would say, are people in the true crime Iowa's oldest cold case and it's people get so attached to what happened because of the children. I believe we have this group of senior citizen ladies that every month they choose a crime, a cold case, and they try and solve it themselves. You know, they'll come down to the

house as far as overnights. It's a lot of families, mom, dad, kids, mom and dad or the mom and kids love the paranormal shows. The dad's here to drive and pay for the whole thing, you know, that seems to be a big part of it. We'll get six women that's known themselves their entire lives, and once a year they do something wacky together, just come to the Axe House. And I love that because there's always bottles of wine in the dumpster afterwards. And the reason I love that is

because they're having the time of their life. They're laughing until they cry, you know, they're catching up, they're sharing memories, and that house needs laughing and love and memories in it. You know. That's why I love that. And then we'll get the paranormal groups. But it's it's not all that. I'd say it's fifty fifty A lot of true crime enthusiasts and a lot of people that see Axe Murder House sign on the highway. What in the world is this? I had one guy, and I get this quite a bit.

A guy came down. He was in a company car and a company suit and he just stood there for a while asking questions. I was like, well, you can go on in the house walk around, and he's like, I don't want to, Okay, So what can we do? He goes, well, I just lost my faith in any god or anything, and I wanted to come to the house just to see if I felt something. I thought, wow, that's pretty cool because I sat there and talked about what I believe and you know, and just my thoughts

on life after death. A lot of people that come to the house have lost someone and just looking for something, an answer for life after death. Usually I will start with my tour and I'll give this the history spiel, and then afterwards they come up and we just talk. We just talked for an hour, you know, and I love it. It's interesting that something so tragic can kind of produce so many positives down the line. You know. It's clearly was something very awful it happened, but we're

so far removed from it now time wise. Sometimes things like that just fade into obscurity. And yet here you have this, this story that just keeps going and inspiring people strangely in very different ways. Now, what I'd love to ask you, just because we got some evidence and we investigated there that kind of uh we thought might have some clues as to who actually committed the crime. Who who do you think did it? Who do I think did it? For some reason, I think Reverend Kelly

was somewhat involved. Whether he did it or he happened in the house after it was over, I have no idea. But I've really been on a big kick of an early traveling serial killer because you have so many and you know, we do a lot of early tours before we open, which are Supreme Court judges for continuing education classes law enforcement colleges, so we do a lot of educational as well. But the group of Supreme Court judges were very much on the early traveling serial killer kick

as well. Who was the gentleman who was found? He basically he killed his family later on, um, what was his name, Henry Lee Moore? I believe it is the guy you're talking about killed his mom and grandma two months after this, right, and then he was found. It was found the same way that the mirrors were covered and everything, and he was I feel like he was in Chicago or something. I can't remember exactly, but well,

there was a blackie man's field. But he produced a work punching like handwritten hours he was working ticket as an alibi. But like this is five years after the fact, yeah, why would he have that. There was also a Henry Lemore who killed his mom and grandma in Columbia, Missouri, two months after this, But it was so badly done and he killed his mom and grandma for inheritance money. You know, I had motive all over it. And he

got caught immediately. But yeah, I mean, there's so many suspects, and one thing that I think people don't quite grasp is detectives question people for five years. Five years is a long time, and a lot of gossip in a small town about a murder. There were hundreds of suspects, old man so and so it was weird he did it, you know, which went nowhere? But f Jones, Andy Sawyer,

Blackie Mansfield went nowhere. Nobody went anywhere. And I've gone through twenty years of letters, f Jones wrote his daughter in New York. I've thumbed through his personal bible. I found nothing like these detectives did a great job. There's no leads really anywhere except for Reverend Kelly confessing. H

But and one thing that kind of goes back. It's like in his confession he said that he felt like he was in a dream state and like he was being led to do things beyond his own control, which really creeps me out about the stabbing that happened and everything else, you know, And I think that's why I keep going back to him. I mean, it's just every day. I've thought about this for fifteen plus years, and I

have no idea. Well, I mean, I think even the ghosts could tell us, and we still wouldn't know for sure. You know. I always wonder if we're going to get a name one day, or if we're going to get some sort of communication from them telling us who the murderer was. But even then, you know, would we believe it? You know, I think that without any solid evidence, which I don't think it is ever going to happen, I think this will probably remain unsolved. I appreciate your time.

Thank you for telling us about the house. Thank you for conveying your experiences. I know that the house is currently open for tours, correct. Yeah, well, it'll be open for tours to come probably March for day tours, overnights or year round, so you can book an overnight anytime you want. Okay, great, and then where can people find you? Just Johnny Houser on Facebook Instagram, all the social media is just backslash. Johnny Houser, great well, I can't wait

to see you in person again. Hopefully we'll be back out there at events soon. And thank you so much for chatting with us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Of course, I think that after my own experiences at the veliska Ax Murder House and going further into its history, plus my conversation with Johnny, I can say that while I believe the home is very traditionally haunted, there is something

even more mysterious than that at play there. I also think it's telling that throughout my interview with Johnny he never used the word murder to describe the house, and maybe that is a queue we should all take. Maybe we should start looking at that home for what it was and what it is now and not necessarily let it be defined by one dark day of nineteen twelve. Thanks for listening. I look forward to our next journey

down a haunted road. Haunted Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Amy Bruney. Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Taylor Haggerdorn is the show's researcher. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.