OPINION: The best and worst haunts near here

After over two years of living here, I finally visited the one location I’ve been excited about since I heard of it. On Friday, my mom and a family friend came to town and we drove out to tour the Villisca Ax Murder House. That wasn’t the only spooky stop we made, either. In fact, we visited three reportedly haunted houses over the weekend.

Today, I’m going to talk about our experiences at each location and rate them from least to most interesting. I’ll start out by saying I am not someone who believes in ghosts or the supernatural. I enjoy learning about the history and the creepy stories are fun, but I don’t hold them in any actual standing. At the top of the list for being a waste of your money is the infamous Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas.

Visiting the Sallie House was a last minute decision for us. The first night, we were rewatching a few videos to get ourselves hyped up for the ghost houses and remind us of some of the history. I casually mentioned that the Sallie House was only about two hours from Creston, and suddenly we had tickets booked to see it.

We were thinking of the many stories of the supposedly demon-infested house as we drove to Kansas. Not only that, but spoiler alert, we had great experiences the day before at the two Iowa locations we visited, so we were anticipating something similar. We were sadly disappointed.

Inside, the house was set up more or less like it would have been the last time it was actually occupied, which was in the ‘90s. The activity mostly took place in the nursery. However, there’s also the remnants of some satanic rituals in the basement, including a leftover pentagram.

We were able to go into the nursery, but not the basement. Throughout the entire two-story house, maybe six pieces of paper were taped to the walls with information, some of which had been proven to be wrong by historic research.

The house didn’t make any of us feel gross or dark like other places. The only thing making me shudder wasa the green carpet and the quantity of wicker furniture. At $20 a person, the Sallie House was an absolute waste of time and money.

In the middle of my ranking is the Villisca Axe Murder House, the cheapest location at $10 a person. The history factor of this place is a 10 out of 10, but the creep factor was much lower. Our tour had two other small groups with it, with a total of nine people including the guide. With how small the house is, I wouldn’t have wanted any more people involved. I’ve definitely gone over the history of this house before, so I won’t repeat the details.

While I knew most of the information the guide told us, it was interesting to hear it while seeing the actual locations everything happened in. Additionally, he shared his theory as to who the murderer was, one I hadn’t yet heard online but sounded pretty plausible.

We were given plenty of time to explore the small building after his spiel. As mentioned before, while it was really cool to see the actual locations so often talked about online or seen in ghost hunting shows, the house itself didn’t feel that dark. We even rented EMF detectors there, which did go off at pretty specific areas. However, not once did we feel scared or nervous.

Moving onto my favorite of the spooky locations, Malvern Manor. While the least famous or popular of all the locations, this building was by far the best one we went to. The purpose of Malvern Manor has changed throughout the years, starting out as a hotel when the city was first founded in the 1860s.

Eventually, the building became a nursing home and later a place for those with mental disabilities. The place was shut down in 2005, where it sat abandoned until a team of ghost hunters bought the facility. When the location was shut down, almost everything was left in the building. The team that bought the location has left everything as is, only removing the actual medical information found in a nurses station.

At $15 a person, we got a personal tour of the 10,000-square-foot building, after which we had as long as we wanted to explore the facility. While there are many creepy areas with interesting history, the scariest area was “Shadowman Hallway.”

This was the last area we tried to see for ourselves before leaving. We tried to walk to the end of the hallway arm-in-arm, but we weren’t able to finish the stroll before chickening out and leaving. Though I’m someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts, there is definitely something going on with this building. Malvern is the city to go to if you want to visit an actually creepy haunted house.