St. Louis' Creepiest Urban Legends

Hitchhike Annie

4947 W Florissant Ave., St. Louis, MO 63115
Hitchhike Annie is the name of the ghost that roams Calvary Drive, between Calvary Cemetery and Bellefontaine Cemetery. Her legend has been around since the 1940s and is very well known by the people in the area. She's described as a young woman in a white dress. Annie has long brown hair and pale skin and she usually makes her appearance right as the sun is setting. And though she might be creepy, she's described as harmless. Apparently she flags down cars and asks for a ride up the street, but she always disappears when the car reaches the entrance to Bellefontaine Cemetery, never quite reaching her destination.

Photo courtesy of Yupa Watchanakit / Shutterstock

Lemp Caverns Haunting

3322 Demenil Place, St. Louis, MO 63118
The Lemp Manson is haunted. Visitors apparently have heard screams and had their hair pulled and experienced all other manner of odd interactions at the site -- so much that it became a haunted sleep-over destination with rooms for rent. But the infamous caverns below the mansion that spider throughout the neighborhoods on the south side of the city near the river have a whole different level of haunting. Originally used by William Lemp as a place to store his lager, as well as his own personal party cave, now the caves are rumored to be haunted by all of those ghosts from the surface and more, including monsters and mutants.

Photo courtesy of screengrab via YouTube

Zombie Road

Ellisville, MO
This old stretch of road in Ellisville carries a heavy story. The legend says that a man was struck by a train and that sometimes people will see him walking near the tracks and reenacting the moment he got hit. This story is made more believable by the fact that there is constantly fog covering the little dips and valleys of this dark, winding road near Bluebird Park. There are also old, dark buildings just visible from the road that look like something straight out of a horror movie. Any scary story seems reasonable when you're on Zombie Road.

Photo courtesy of Sergey Shubin / Shutterstock

Bubblehead Road

Carrico Road, Florissant, MO 63034
Legend has it that a family of genetic mutant "bubbleheads" lived at the end of this long, winding road near the banks of the Missouri River. It's just a street in a densely wooded neighborhood, but it's almost entirely downhill and creepy in the way that only quiet woods can be creepy. The rumor was that if you drove too far down the road and got too close to their property, the "bubbleheads" (sometimes described as victims of government chemical testing) would come out of the woods and scare you off. There are (multiple) no trespassing signs on this road to try to deter teenage visitors, but the legend lives on.

Photo courtesy of Jaime Lees

Laughing Lake

Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO 63124
Probably the most well-known urban legend in west county, the tale of Laughing Lake is a sad one. It's said that a couple of children drowned in a lake off Clayton Road. The legend goes that their father, an artist, painted a vision of them on the side of a house there. It supposedly appears that the viewer is looking at them from as they're underwater, laughing and having a good time in the afterlife. Creepy.

Photo courtesy of Sergey Edentod / Shutterstock

Mollie Crenshaw's Grave

St. Charles, MO
Depending on who you ask, you're likely to get a different story about Mollie Crenshaw. She was usually either a witch whose body was buried in separate graves, leaving the pieces to try to wiggle back together over time, or she was a woman who committed suicide after she lost her hearing. Either way, the story is sad, but her various legends have inspired west county teenagers to seek out her grave for more than 50 years.

Photo courtesy of Aleksey Stemmer / Shutterstock

The Exorcist House

located near UMSL
The Exorcist wasn't just a movie. Apparently, some real shit went down in St. Louis involving a possession and they had to call priests in from SLU. In the real version of the story, it was a young boy who had been possessed. His family came to stay here at this house at 8435 Roanoke, where he was visited by priests and where they witnessed his bed shaking and objects flying across the room. The priests received permission from the archbishop to perform an exorcism and they began here before moving to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in south city.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Old State Mental Hospital Chains

5300 Arsenal St, Louis, MO 63139
It's said that the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center on Arsenal between Hampton and Kingshighway is the site of an state mental hospital and that chains still hang in the basement -- a grim reminder of barbaric ancient mental health-care standards. There is also a crematorium right there, which is always the easiest way to upgrade the creepy-factor. We hear they give tours of the old rooms if you ask politely.

Photo courtesy of Romanovska Liudmyla / Shutterstock

Seven Gates to Hell in Collinsville, IL

Collinsville, MO
These "gates" are graffiti-covered railroad bridges and it's said that if you drive under all of them in a specific order and pass beneath the seventh gate exactly at midnight that it will open a portal to hell and you can momentarily glimpse the lake of fire. Suburban kids looking for a thrill have been crossing the river to chase this devil since at least the 1990s, and as far as we know, nobody has seen the dark side quite yet.

Photo courtesy of screengrab from YouTube

Equadome

Highway 94, St. Charles, MO
Rumored to be the place where a satanic cult had its ceremonies and did animal sacrifices, this abandoned building was creepy as hell. And aside from goosebump factor, it was in such a deteriorated state that thrill-seekers could find any manner of trouble there, including injuries from falls through holes in the floors. Many of the buildings on this site have been brought down since its heyday, but one structure still stands. Visit if you dare.

Photo courtesy of get screengrab from youtube

Koch Road near Oakville

Koch Road, St. Louis, MO 63125
From a reader: "A hospital from the late 1800s used to be located there and was mainly used for quarantining patients with highly contagious diseases. The legend was that there were patients in hospital gowns still roaming the property and you could hear their cries for help." True or not, it's a creepy area and stoned high school kids have been freaking each other out there for generations.

Photo courtesy of Paolo Sartorio / Shutterstock

Crematorium at the White House Jesuit Retreat

7400 Christopher Drive, St. Louis, MO 63129
Every crematorium is going to have a legend built around it by the kids in the neighborhood. But this one is particularly tantalizing because it's on the property of a Jesuit retreat. Silence is encouraged here, which just seems to help the legend grow even stronger. Many outsiders claim that the people here just don't want anyone inside to gossip about the multiple hauntings on the grounds.

Photo courtesy of BonNontawat / Shutterstock

The Piasa Bird

Sam Vadalabene Great River Road Bike Trail, Alton, IL 62002
The history of this mythical Illini native tale continues today. Legend has it that many years ago there was a great winged creature who was so big that he could swoop down out of the sky and snatch up a full-grown deer -- and certainly snack on a human as well. You can find an image the creature painted on the bluffs along the Mississippi River in Alton, IL and read all about him here.

Photo courtesy of Mike Linksvayer / Flickr

MoMo the Monster (Bigfoot)

All over the state of Missouri
"MoMo" is a nickname for the "Missouri Monster" -- otherwise known as Bigfoot. He's supposed to be about seven feet tall, very furry and leaves a trail of stench in his wake, or so some of our drunkest uncles continue to insist. There have been sightings of Momo since the 1970s, with some racist fools insisting that he's actually a solo Native American who had gone off on his own. But sightings and, indeed, footprints have been found and researched by legitimate scientists. There seems to be something to this story, but our little Bigfoot must be shy.

Photo courtesy of Gary W. Jones / Shutterstock

The Ghost on the Stairs at Fort Bellefontaine

Old Jamestown, MO 63034
The haunted vibe at this place is off the charts. First of all, there was an entire cemetery here that was moved. No less than 33 soldiers, officers and their family members were dug up in 1904 and moved to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in south county. That's just asking for some unrested souls to haunt the joint. They say that a ghost appears in the form of red smoke, usually right at the top of gorgeous old area called the Grand Staircase.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

The Bissell Mansion

4426 Randall Place, St. Louis, MO 63107
Bissell Mansion Restaurant & Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre has a reputation. Built by Captain Lewis Bissell on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in 1823, the old house is full of history. Though ownership of the house has changed many times over the years, the one consistent resident is the ghost of Captain Bissell, who is often spotted outside looking over his property.

Photo courtesy of Paul Sableman / Flickr

Campbell House Museum

1508 Locust Street, St. Louis, MO 63103
There have been years of reports of phantom footsteps on the creaky stairs here, but that doesn't compare to the lady in the window. They say she can often be seen from the streets downtown as people pass by on the sidewalk. She's apparently the force that not only treads the stairs, but also moves furniture and opens and closes window shades. Probably just tidying her house, no?

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Creve Coeur Lake

2143 Creve Coeur Mill Road, Maryland Heights, MO 63146
There is a cliff near the entrance of Creve Coeur Park where it's said that a native woman committed suicide long ago by jumping from the cliff into the water below. She was distraught because her husband had gone on a long hunting trip and died on the way home. She flung herself off of the cliff and can apparently still be heard crying there frequently. It's said that on a night with a full moon, looking up to the cliff from a boat in the water, you can see her ghost reenact the terrible leap.

Photo courtesy of miknx / Flickr

The Redhead at the Chase Park Plaza

212 N. Kingshighway, St. Louis, MO 63108
It's said that a readheaded woman wearing white haunts the third floor of the Chase, particularly room 304. The legend is that she flung herself out a window to her death on her wedding night in the 1930s. She often startles people, but other than that, seems to wish them no harm. Guests at the Chase also report seeing the ghost -- a man wearing a tuxedo and a top hat -- strolling by on occasion, just minding his own business. Just like the Chase Park Plaza building, these ghostly guests are appropriately posh.

Photo courtesy of Paul Sableman / Flickr

Great Circle

330 N. Gore Avenue, Webster Groves, MO 63119
It's said that this behavioral health facility at 330 N. Gore in Webster Groves was an orphanage during the cholera epidemic, and that the ghost of a little girl can be seen floating near a tree on the property. This rumor is persistent and backed up by many people in the neighborhood, who always seem to give it an extra look as they pass.

Photo courtesy of Google Maps