First Unitarian Church

In 1934, Reverend Phillip Mercer was found hanging in the Sunday school room of this 1905 Alton church. No suicide note, no explanation, and a 2013 ghost box session captured an EVP saying "I was murdered." The basement, which once served the Underground Railroad, has its own separate haunting.

Phillip Mercer arrived from England at 18 years old, worked for a railroad in St. Louis, preached across Minnesota and the Dakotas, and landed in Alton in 1928 as pastor of the First Unitarian Church. He was good at the job. People traveled from across the region to hear him speak. Then in 1934, he came back from vacation a different person. He'd lost weight. He was weak, agitated. During his final Sunday sermon in November, he sweated through the service. Days later, on November 21, his friend James MacKinney found Mercer's body hanging by a cord in the doorway of the Sunday school room. No suicide note. No explanation from his family in England, who never even claimed the body. It went to a mausoleum instead.

That room is now called the Wuerker Room, and it's where most of the activity centers. Visitors describe a male presence that clearly wants them gone. There are cold drafts, footsteps, a shadowy silhouette visible through the stained glass. The smell of men's cologne shows up in rooms where nobody is wearing any.

The church sits at 110 East 3rd Street in Alton, on the same plot where St. Matthew's Catholic Church burned down in the early 1900s. Unitarians had purchased the land back in 1854, incorporating leftover stone from the Catholic structure. When their building also burned, they rebuilt in 1905. Below the sanctuary, passages in the lower level served the Underground Railroad, funneling escaped slaves northward across the Mississippi. Paranormal investigator Troy Taylor discovered a small hidden room in the basement in 2003, reinforcing the theory that the church was a station on the network.

The basement has its own reputation, separate from Mercer. Visitors and investigators describe a heavier energy down there, voices, and a feeling of being unwelcome. The Ghost Research Society ran a formal investigation on March 2, 2013, with seven members and a full equipment kit: EMF meters, a ghost box, an Ovilus device, and digital recorders. Investigator Bob Davies was physically touched in the basement. The ghost box produced "Emancipation" and "Jefferson Davis" as unprompted words, fitting for a space that once hid people fleeing slavery.

Upstairs, the responses got more personal. Near the minister's office, a deep male voice said "Mercer" through the ghost box. In the sanctuary, the team captured an EVP that said "I was murdered." Another said "I am dead." When someone asked "how many of you are down here?" the response was "four."

That "I was murdered" recording is the detail that keeps Mercer's story alive in Alton's ghost community. His death was ruled a suicide, but the circumstances were always odd. No note, a sudden personality shift, and a body that nobody in England wanted to claim. The recording doesn't prove anything, but it adds a layer that makes Mercer's story harder to dismiss as a simple tragedy.

Alton markets itself as the most haunted small town in America, and the church is a centerpiece of that claim. American Hauntings, run by Troy Taylor, offers overnight ghost hunts from 8 PM to 1 AM at $48 per person. The pitch is straightforward: no hype, no distractions, just you and a 121-year-old church where a pastor died under circumstances nobody has fully explained.

The Wuerker Room is still there. The basement passages are still there. And Mercer's cologne, according to people who spend enough time in the building, shows up when you least expect it.