July 7, 2021 • 42 mins
In 1912 in Villisca, IA - a family of six, plus two guests, were brutally slaughtered by an axe murderer. The case remains unsolved, and the house where the crime took place remains a hotbed of potentially dangerous paranormal activity.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky listener Discretion is advised.
In nineteen twelve, in Vliska, Iowa, a family of six
plus two of their guests were the victims of a
horrible axe murderer. This unspeakable crime took place as they
(00:24):
slept in their beds and horrified the small town of
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.
(00:49):
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
(01:14):
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
(01:36):
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.
(02:00):
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
(02:24):
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
(02:47):
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
(03:09):
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
(03:29):
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
(03:51):
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
(04:14):
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
(04:35):
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
(04:59):
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.
(05:20):
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,
(05:42):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:28):
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
(06:49):
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.
(07:13):
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,
(07:35):
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
(07:55):
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
(08:16):
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
(08:37):
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
(08:58):
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
(09:20):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:02):
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.
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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.
(11:11):
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
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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
(11:52):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:38):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:07):
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.
(14:29):
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
(14:52):
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,
(15:15):
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
(15:35):
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,
(15:58):
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
(16:19):
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
(16:39):
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
(17:02):
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.
(17:24):
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
(17:44):
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
(18:05):
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,
(18:26):
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
(18:47):
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,
(19:09):
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
(19:29):
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
(19:51):
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
(20:12):
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
(20:32):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:14):
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
(21:38):
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,
(21:59):
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
(22:20):
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
(22:42):
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.
(23:04):
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
(23:24):
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,
(23:46):
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.
(24:07):
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,
(24:29):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:12):
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
(25:35):
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
(25:57):
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
(26:18):
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,
(26:40):
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,
(27:01):
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
(27:24):
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
(27:44):
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,
(28:05):
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,
(28:27):
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
(28:49):
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
(29:11):
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,
(29:34):
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.
(29:56):
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,
(30:16):
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,
(30:39):
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
(31:00):
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,
(31:21):
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.
(31:44):
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
(32:06):
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
(32:28):
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
(32:49):
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,
(33:11):
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
(33:31):
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,
(33:56):
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
(34:17):
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
(34:40):
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
(35:05):
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
(35:26):
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,
(35:47):
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.
(36:08):
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
(36:30):
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
(36:50):
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
(37:12):
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
(37:35):
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.
(37:56):
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
(38:18):
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
(38:40):
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
(39:01):
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
(39:25):
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
(39:45):
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
(40:06):
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
(40:30):
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
(40:51):
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
(41:12):
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,
(41:36):
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
(41:57):
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
(42:18):
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.
(42:41):
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.
Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky listener Discretion is advised.
In nineteen twelve, in Vliska, Iowa, a family of six
plus two of their guests were the victims of a
horrible axe murderer. This unspeakable crime took place as they
(00:24):
slept in their beds and horrified the small town of
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.
(00:49):
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
(01:14):
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
(01:36):
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.
(02:00):
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
(02:24):
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
(02:47):
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
(03:09):
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
(03:29):
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
(03:51):
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
(04:14):
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
(04:35):
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
(04:59):
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.
(05:20):
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,
(05:42):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:28):
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
(06:49):
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.
(07:13):
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,
(07:35):
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
(07:55):
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
(08:16):
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
(08:37):
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
(08:58):
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
(09:20):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:02):
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.
(10:25):
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
(10:48):
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.
(11:11):
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
(11:31):
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
(11:52):
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
(12:15):
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
(12:38):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
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
(14:07):
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.
(14:29):
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
(14:52):
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,
(15:15):
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
(15:35):
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,
(15:58):
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
(16:19):
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
(16:39):
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
(17:02):
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.
(17:24):
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
(17:44):
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
(18:05):
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,
(18:26):
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
(18:47):
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,
(19:09):
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
(19:29):
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
(19:51):
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
(20:12):
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
(20:32):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:14):
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
(21:38):
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,
(21:59):
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
(22:20):
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
(22:42):
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.
(23:04):
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
(23:24):
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,
(23:46):
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.
(24:07):
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,
(24:29):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:12):
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
(25:35):
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
(25:57):
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
(26:18):
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,
(26:40):
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,
(27:01):
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
(27:24):
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
(27:44):
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,
(28:05):
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,
(28:27):
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
(28:49):
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
(29:11):
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,
(29:34):
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.
(29:56):
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,
(30:16):
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,
(30:39):
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
(31:00):
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,
(31:21):
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.
(31:44):
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
(32:06):
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
(32:28):
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
(32:49):
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,
(33:11):
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
(33:31):
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,
(33:56):
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
(34:17):
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
(34:40):
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
(35:05):
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
(35:26):
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,
(35:47):
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.
(36:08):
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
(36:30):
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
(36:50):
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
(37:12):
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
(37:35):
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.
(37:56):
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
(38:18):
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
(38:40):
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
(39:01):
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
(39:25):
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
(39:45):
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
(40:06):
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
(40:30):
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
(40:51):
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
(41:12):
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,
(41:36):
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
(41:57):
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
(42:18):
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.
(42:41):
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.
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