LaBinnah Bistro

A restaurant located inside an 1870 Victorian home on Millionaires' Row in Hannibal. The elegant bistro serves dinner in the ornate rooms of this grand historic home, which has witnessed over 150 years of Hannibal history.

The LaBinnah Bistro occupies a stately 1870 Victorian home at 207 North Fifth Street in Hannibal, Missouri, along the historic Millionaires' Row where the town's wealthiest citizens once lived in elegant splendor. Today the restaurant serves fine Mediterranean cuisine in candlelit rooms filled with antique furnishings, but one of its most persistent guests has been dining here for well over a century -- and he was murdered before the house became a restaurant.

The haunting is connected to the unsolved murder of Amos J. Stillwell, a respected Hannibal businessman who was killed on the night of December 30, 1888. That evening, Stillwell played cards at a party in this very house, which was then the home of Captain Munger. Among his card-playing companions was Dr. Joseph C. Hearne, who would later be accused -- though never convicted -- of orchestrating Stillwell's murder. After leaving the party, Stillwell returned to his own home, where he was stabbed to death in his bed. His wife and Dr. Hearne were both suspected, but the case was never resolved.

What makes the haunting unusual is its origin: after Stillwell's murder, paranormal activity was first reported at his own residence, not at the Munger house. The disturbances at the Stillwell home became so frequent and so frightening that the house was eventually demolished in the hope of ending the haunting. But rather than finding peace, Stillwell's spirit appears to have relocated to the place where he spent his last happy hours -- the card room of Captain Munger's home, now the LaBinnah Bistro.

Arif Dagin, co-owner of the restaurant, has lived in the apartment above the establishment and has experienced numerous unexplained events. Doors open and close without any human assistance, sometimes several times in a single day, then cease for months before starting again. Most unsettling, Dagin has heard his own name spoken aloud by an unseen voice when he was alone in the building.

A tenant in the second-floor apartment witnessed a translucent figure moving hurriedly across the dining area one evening -- a figure that passed through the room and disappeared. The closet off the living room in the upstairs apartment is a particular focus of activity, with its door opening and closing on its own in a pattern that seems deliberate rather than random. Paranormal investigators who have visited the building report consistent electromagnetic anomalies centered on the areas where card parties were once held, as if the energy of Stillwell's final evening of leisure has been permanently imprinted on the space.