I spent the night in the infamous Villisca Ax Murder House – this is what happened

I had heard about the Ax Murder House in Villisca, Iowa for years.

The murder continues to baffle investigators to this day: Six members of a beloved family in the small community, as well as two young sisters who were friends of neighbors, were beaten to death while sleeping in their home.

Aside from the murderer never being caught, the house itself is believed to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed inside: Josiah, 43, a local hardware store owner; his wife Sarah, 39; their four children (Herman, 11, Mary, 10, Arthur, 7 and Paul, 5); and two sisters, Lena Stillinger, 12, and Ina Stillinger, 8, who spent the night with the children.

I've always been fascinated by the paranormal myself – and I'm lucky enough to have two close mother friends, sisters Emily Penke and Liz Beedle, who are equally fascinated. We met when our children were in kindergarten, at class parties and field trips, and today we are known on social media as “Ghost Moms.”

Between our daily work and our children's sports and leisure activities, we regularly travel to enchanted places across the country. Still, we were admittedly frightened by the idea of ​​spending the night alone in a house with such a gruesome history.

But the unsolved mystery fascinated us more.

Here's what we knew: On the night of June 10, 1912, at least one suspect attacked the victims while they were sleeping sometime after midnight. The family had returned from a church service on Monday evening and it is believed the killer had hidden in the attic of the house before the murders.

We've actually spent a night in the house twice over the years. The first time in 2020 we had just started ghost hunting and honestly had no idea what to expect.

The house itself is very small. Downstairs there is a simple kitchen, a living area and a bedroom where Lena and Ina had slept. On the upper floor we found two bedrooms where the whole family slept and the attic. We installed a motion detector under one of the beds in the children's room. We also placed an REM pod in the door frame that measures changes in an electromagnetic field.

As we sat in Josiah and Sarah's room in the dark, it was quiet for a while. Then the motion detector was triggered. After recovering from the jump scare, we immediately looked under the bed and couldn't see any reason why it would start.

As we watched the night vision video of that moment, we realized we had also captured an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). Even though we were the only ones in the house, we clearly heard a child's voice saying “Mommy” when we listened to the digital audio. We didn't hear the voice in the room with our own ears.

While we were sitting in the attic, which was scary enough, the REM pod in the nursery door started sounding the alarm. When the battery is low, the green light flashes. Not only had we just installed a new battery straight out of the box, but all the colored lights on the REM pod were blinking non-stop. We then observed how the battery was completely discharged within a few minutes.

On our second visit two years later, we set up shop upstairs in the nursery. In no time, two motion detectors were triggered at opposite ends of the room: one under the bed and one in the attic. A quick check with the flashlight and shaking hands revealed that nothing was wrong.

As Liz stood away from the wall with her back to the closet door, she felt something gently tugging on her long hair. It wasn't aggressive at all, more like just wanting to play like kids do. And as much as she was excited about the activity, she also admitted that she was very afraid of being touched by an invisible force.

Later, as we sat in the attic, we heard our motion detector go off in the stairwell. I can't quite describe the horrible feeling when something you can't see comes up the stairs in the dark.

We also used a device that has a database of words triggered by changes in electromagnetic energy. We always take anything we get with a grain of salt, but we found it interesting that it said “struck” when we asked how the family was killed, and “Reverend” and “Kelly” right after we asked, who had murdered the family family.

A popular theory over the years was that Rev. Lyn George Jacklin Kelly, who was then traveling through Villisca as an itinerant preacher, may have committed the crime. He reportedly left town the morning after the murders and sent a bloodstained shirt to be washed a week later.

Kelly was reportedly acquitted twice in court, although he apparently once confessed to the murders and said God told him to kill the family.

If you love true crime or the paranormal and are brave enough to visit the house, you can book a tour or overnight stay at crimehouse.com.