McPike Mansion

No one has lived in the McPike Mansion in Alton, Illinois since the 1950s. The owners who bought the condemned house at auction in 1994 say it is far from empty — by various counts, somewhere between a dozen and fifteen spirits stayed on.

The worst of it is the basement. Down in the airtight stone wine cellar, in 1999, a researcher named Renee Kruse had a camera running during a tour. The tape caught a mist — described as white in some accounts, purple in others — that rose in the vaulted room, drifted toward the group, and wrapped around them. "I could feel it," Kruse said. "Even through my clothing I could feel it. Felt like feathers were brushing against my body."

The house was built starting in 1869 for Henry Guest McPike, a two-time mayor of Alton who named the estate Mount Lookout and sat it on one of the highest points in town. He died in the house in 1910, and the owners are certain he never left.

His family is supposed to still be here. The owners, Sharyn and George Luedke, say they've identified McPike, his mother Lydia, his first wife Mary — "She loves children," Sharyn says — his son James, and James's wife Jenny, who they call the trickster. Jenny is the one who tugs visitors' hair. The Luedkes didn't know any of this when they bought the condemned place at auction; they've since spent more than a million dollars fixing it up.

The cellar has never quieted. Investigators report footsteps and whispered voices, and the heavy metal door swinging open and slamming shut with no one near it. A 2001 group recorded that door opening on its own. The owners run lights-out "dark sessions" down there with a medium.

As recently as this past February, an investigator said his recorder caught two voices at once in that cellar. One was pleading to be freed from the property. The other was telling him to stop.