Union Station

Five men died in a machine gun ambush outside Union Station on June 17, 1933, when gangsters tried to free prisoner Frank "Jelly" Nash and killed him instead. Nash's ghost is the most commonly reported figure inside the 850,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts station, and Ghost Adventures captured footage of a figure with no reflection in the marble floors during a 2012 investigation.

On the morning of June 17, 1933, machine gun fire erupted in the parking lot outside Union Station in Kansas City. By the time it stopped, five men were dead: federal agent Raymond Caffrey, police chief Otto Reed, detectives W.J. "Red" Grooms and Frank Hermanson, and the prisoner everyone had come for, Frank "Jelly" Nash. Two more agents, R.E. Vetterli and F. Joseph Lackey, were wounded. The shooters were there to free Nash, a bank robber and escape artist who'd broken out of Leavenworth. They killed him instead.

The primary gunman was Verne Miller, a former South Dakota sheriff turned freelance hitman. The FBI pinned the rest on Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd and Adam Richetti, though that attribution has been disputed by historians for decades. The massacre became a pivotal moment for the Bureau, giving J. Edgar Hoover the justification he needed to expand federal law enforcement powers. Robert Unger's book "The Union Station Massacre: The Original Sin of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI" argues the incident was more complicated, and more politically useful, than the official version suggests.

Union Station opened in 1914 and covers 850,000 square feet of sandstone, marble, and concrete. It served as Kansas City's main rail hub through the golden age of American train travel. The Grand Hall alone is one of the largest indoor spaces in the country, with a 95-foot ceiling and three massive chandeliers.

The ghost most people claim to see is Frank Nash. His figure turns up in different parts of the station, day and night, wandering through the building he was dragged through in handcuffs on the last morning of his life. Visitors and staff have spotted men in dark suits near the east entrance where the massacre happened. When approached, they vanish.

Phantom footsteps cross the pavement outside and echo through the corridor leading to the old parking lot. A woman in a black dress walks down the main staircase after hours and disappears before reaching the bottom. Other figures carry suitcases through the hallways, dressed for travel in a decade that doesn't match the present.

Ghost Adventures filmed at Union Station in 2012 for Season 7 of the show. The crew tested the Stone Tape theory, the idea that materials like sandstone and marble can absorb and replay emotional energy. They recorded visual evidence of a figure that cast no reflection in the marble floors. The investigation was plagued by miscommunication with station staff, making it one of the most contaminated lockdowns the show had attempted, but the footage of the reflectionless figure stood out.

The station was fully restored in 1999 and now operates as a science center, event venue, and cultural hub. The massacre site in the east parking plaza has no memorial marker. You can stand exactly where five men died and not know it unless you already knew the story.