Date: June 20 - 21, 2025
Location: Historic Morgue, Ozark, Missouri

If there is anything the SPI team loves just as much as ghost hunting, it is antique hunting, and Ozark, MO offers the best of both worlds! When I came across the Historic Morgue listing on Airbnb, I knew we had to visit because we had been looking for an opportunity to return to Ozark and browse the many antique stores since we drove through there a few years ago on our way to Villisca, IA.

The Historic Morgue property sits just off the town square and is in the rear part of a historic church that has been converted into an antique store. The morgue space now features a variety of eclectic skeletal decor as well as old photos and advertising associated with the past business and an embalming table in the bathroom! We didn’t get any real evidence in terms of EVPs or apparitions caught on camera during our stay, but we had some very interesting experiences, so we left feeling confident there is something or someone residing at the morgue.

For us, activity in the morgue was centered on the bathroom. Shortly after settling in, I decided to get a shower, and just as I was getting out I heard a series of 3 or 4 muffled bangs that sounded like someone was pounding on the main entrance door. No one else heard a thing. Similarly, later that night when my mom was wrapping up her shower someone whistled in the bathroom, but again, no one outside the room heard anything. 

A short while later, while John was showering the rest of us were relaxing in the living room/sleeping area. My dad was lying on the double bed, which faces towards the entry hall and bathroom, which has a frosted glass panel in the door. John was still in the shower, but my dad saw a blue-tinted human shape (from about the chest up) form in the glass. The shape persisted for a while and seemed to move around before eventually losing shape and the entire glass panel taking on a blue tint. We did our best to recreate the phenomenon with people moving around the bathroom with various light combinations on and off, but we couldn’t get the same effect to repeat.

Overnight, our teen daughter, Lilly, was awoken by the sensation of someone sitting on her bed. This was her first personal experience of something like this, and it left her a little rattled and unable to return to sleep for a while so she and my dad got out the KII meters and did some further investigating. Much like it had earlier in the night, the KII meter registered significant spikes only in the hallway outside the bathroom. 

It was during these early morning hours that my dad had an interesting auditory experience, again in the bathroom. He was doing an EVP session near the embalming table and asked for whoever was there with us to share what happened to them. In response was a series of loud, quick pops that sounded almost like gunfire. We all tried to recreate the sound by walking around the space to see if any floorboards popped, but we couldn’t even get close. Maybe someone really was trying to give us a clue?

If you’re ever in southwestern Missouri and need a place to stay, we think you’d find the Historic Morgue very comfortable and unique. The hosts are very responsive and happy to make suggestions if you need anything, and they even provide some fun paranormal investigation tools for guest use in case you want to connect with those who seem to call the Airbnb space home full time.

Hayley.