Morse Mill Hotel

A pre-Civil War farmhouse built around 1816, claimed to be the oldest haunted bed and breakfast in Missouri. Former guests include Jesse James, Al Capone, Charles Lindbergh, and Clara Bow. The hotel sits on a site used as a Native American burial ground and later a Confederate hospital.

The Morse Mill Hotel in Jefferson County, Missouri, has one of the darkest and most layered histories of any building in the state. Built as a farmhouse in 1816, the structure was later expanded into a hotel and tavern by engineer John Morse, becoming a popular stopping point for travelers along the roads of rural Missouri. Its guest register would eventually include some of the most infamous names in American criminal history -- from outlaw Jesse James to serial killer Bertha Gifford -- and its walls absorbed centuries of suffering that began long before the hotel existed.

Before it was a hotel, the building was part of a slave-holding operation, and the property's history includes use as a station on the Underground Railroad, where enslaved people risked everything for the chance of freedom. During the Civil War, the building served as a field hospital, adding another layer of bloodshed and death to premises already soaked in human anguish. The confluence of slavery, wartime suffering, and the violence that would follow has created what paranormal researchers consider one of the most spiritually charged locations in Missouri.

The hotel's most notorious connection is to Bertha Gifford, Missouri's first identified female serial killer. Bertha and her husband Graham purchased the inn in the 1920s, and soon after their arrival, a pattern of deaths began that would eventually claim at least seventeen victims, primarily young children and men whom Bertha deemed undesirable. Bertha poisoned her victims with arsenic, often under the guise of caring for them during illness. Her 1928 trial was a sensation, and she was found not guilty by reason of insanity, spending the rest of her life in a state asylum.

Guests at the Morse Mill Hotel have reported a chilling array of paranormal phenomena. Some say Bertha's ghost still roams the inn, offering candy to ghostly children -- a terrifying echo of how she reportedly lured some of her victims. The moans of a male ghost, thought to be Graham Gifford, have been heard in the corridors, his spirit seemingly seeking revenge on the wife who destroyed their lives. Disembodied voices carry through empty rooms, doors slam without cause, and the smell of cooking food emanates from the kitchen when no one is present.

The most beloved ghost is Annabelle, a child spirit who plays in the attic. Visitors have left toys for her, and the toys are reportedly found moved to different positions throughout the rooms, as if a small girl has been playing with them. The Morse Mill Hotel stands as a monument to the darkest chapters of Missouri's history -- slavery, war, and serial murder -- and the spirits trapped within its walls seem unable or unwilling to move beyond the building that witnessed their suffering.