Vaile Mansion

A 31-room Second Empire Victorian mansion built in 1881 by Colonel Harvey Vaile. The ornate home features painted ceilings, a wine cellar, and 48,000 gallons of water storage. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and considered one of the finest examples of Second Empire architecture in the Midwest.

Vaile Mansion at 1500 North Liberty Street in Independence, Missouri, is a thirty-one-room Second Empire masterpiece that took ten years to build, cost the equivalent of three to four million dollars in today's currency, and was cursed by scandal, suicide, and madness almost from the moment its last brick was laid. It stands today as one of the most haunted mansions in the Midwest, a monument to ambition and tragedy in equal measure.

Colonel Harvey Merrick Vaile began construction of his dream home in 1871, commissioning the finest materials and craftsmen available. The mansion featured nine marble fireplaces, a 48,000-gallon wine cellar, and one of the first flush toilets west of the Mississippi. Vaile had built his fortune as a lawyer, journalist, and co-owner of the Star Mail Routes, a U.S. postal contractor that delivered mail from St. Louis to the western frontier. But his success attracted the attention of federal prosecutors, and in the early 1880s, he was charged with defrauding the government.

Vaile faced two trials, in 1882 and 1883, and was acquitted both times, but the legal battles cost him over one hundred thousand dollars and destroyed his reputation. During the second trial, his wife Sophia was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Alone in the mansion while her husband fought for his freedom in Washington, Sophia Vaile committed suicide by overdosing on morphine on Valentine's Day, 1883. Colonel Vaile returned to find his magnificent home empty and his wife dead. He lived out the remainder of his days as a recluse, rattling through thirty-one rooms alone until his death in 1895.

After Vaile's death, the mansion was sold and converted into an inn, and later into a private asylum and sanitarium -- a use that introduced a new population of tormented souls to the already grief-stricken house. The spirit most frequently encountered is believed to be Sophia Vaile herself. Her apparition has been spotted peering out the mansion's windows, her pale face visible from the street, as if watching for the husband who left her alone to die. Inside, her presence manifests through disembodied voices and the sight of a shadowy female figure ascending and descending the dark mahogany staircases.

A young man, thought to have been a patient during the sanitarium years, has been seen roaming the third floor. His movements are erratic and confused, as if he cannot find his way out of the building that once confined him. The basement harbors an angrier presence -- a male entity who makes himself known through disembodied voices, loud bangs, and aggressive EVP recordings that paranormal investigators have captured during overnight sessions. American Hauntings offers ghost hunts at the mansion, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation has recognized Vaile Mansion as one of the most significant -- and most haunted -- Victorian homes in America.