A Haunted House on West Seventh Street In Sioux City

(This story is based on an article from the Sioux City Journal published on February 23, 1896. The narrative is accurate to the story. The quotes are the actual quotes from the story. Enjoy!)

There was something strange going on at 223 West Seventh Street in Sioux City, Iowa.

 

At least, that’s what people were saying. Doors opened and slammed shut in the middle of the night. Strange noises came from empty rooms. And the kitchen stove had a nasty habit of falling over when no one was around to push it.

 

Not once or twice, either. Three times in a single day.

 

The house was a cheap, weather-beaten building at the corner of West Seventh and Bluff streets, a story and a half tall, with faded brown paint and five rooms. Nothing about it looked particularly frightening.

 

But the people living there were starting to wonder.

James McCriss had rented the place the previous October. Mrs. McCriss ran a small dressmaking business out of the front room. They had no children, and most of the time the house was quiet.

 

Except when it wasn’t.

 

The trouble started with strange noises. Doors opened and close by themselves, sometimes slamming hard enough to be heard outside. Then there was the stove.

 

It was becoming a real problem.

 

It kept tipping over, spilling hot coals across the floor. Sometimes the doors flew off and landed several feet away. More than once, the McCrisses narrowly escaped having the whole place burn down.

 

William Swanson, McCriss’s brother-in-law, told a reporter from the Sioux City Journal what had been happening.

 

“Nearly every night the sleep of the McCriss family is disturbed by sounds in the house. Three times in twenty-four hours the kitchen stove has been overturned in some mysterious manner.”

 

The strangest part was that nobody ever saw it happen.

 

Mrs. McCriss was usually somewhere else in the house when the stove went over. She’d hear a tremendous crash, rush into the kitchen, and find the stove lying on its side with burning coals scattered across the floor.

 

One night was particularly memorable.

 

“I was sitting quietly in the front room the other night. The house was deathly still. Suddenly there was a terrible crash in the kitchen.”

 

She said it sounded like someone had dumped a ton of coal onto an iron boiler.

 

When she ran into the kitchen, there was the stove, tipped over again. The doors had come off, and the fire was on the floor.

 

She couldn’t explain it. Neither could her husband.

 

McCriss didn’t believe in ghosts. When the reporter asked him about the strange happenings, he laughed and suggested rats might be responsible.

 

“Rats,” he said. “I guess they might make the noise, but I do not think Will would say anything to the newspapers. I wanted to investigate the matter first myself.”

 

But even McCriss had to admit something wasn’t right.

 

“I don’t believe in haunted houses or ghosts, but I must say things have been rather queer about these premises of late.”

 

He described sitting with Pete Swanson one Wednesday night when a tremendous crash came from the cellar.

 

It sounded like someone had dropped a 300- or 400-pound weight into a pile of glass.

 

Pete was emptying a scuttle of coal into the stove when the noise hit. It startled him so badly that he dropped the coal and threw both hands into the air.

 

McCriss ran downstairs to investigate.

 

Nothing.

 

He couldn’t find a broken window, a fallen object, or anything that might explain the noise.

 

And then there was the stove.

 

“Yes, the stove has been acting up capers. It has fallen down several times, and the peculiar part of it is, it always falls the same way.”

 

McCriss said he’d set it back up, making sure everything was solid. Then he’d leave the room, and down it would go again.

 

“I know very well the stove was put up solidly enough, and that it should fall down leads me to believe there is something wrong.”

 

His wife was tiring of the entire business. Every time the stove fell, she had another mess to clean up. Coal and ashes covered the floor, the stovepipes came loose, and soot filled the kitchen.

 

And the danger was real. If nobody was home when it tipped over, the house could burn to the ground.

 

Mrs. McCriss said her husband had finally had enough. If the stove fell over one more time, he was going to throw it outside.

 

Problem solved.

 

Maybe.

 

But the stove wasn’t the only thing causing trouble.

 

At night, after the McCrisses went upstairs to bed, they’d hear doors opening and closing downstairs. The door between the dressmaking shop and the parlor was particularly noisy. It had a squeak that made it easy to recognize.

 

Sometimes McCriss got out of bed and went downstairs to check.

 

Every time, the door was closed. Just as he’d left it. And the McCrisses weren’t the only ones hearing things.

 

Patrolman John Eberly had been walking his beat one night when he heard doors slamming inside the house. He was standing on the sidewalk, and as far as he could tell, nobody was moving around inside.

 

When a Journal reporter came looking for the place, Eberly pointed it out.

 

“There’s something wrong in that building, sure.”

 

Then he leaned closer and lowered his voice.

 

“Do you know that one night I stood on the sidewalk in front of this building, when all was quiet, and heard the doors on the inside open and shut with a slam? Strange, isn’t it?”

 

The reporter thought it was. Then he asked Eberly whether he’d like to come inside with him.

 

“No; you see I have a long beat and I will have to be moving on or I’ll miss a call.”

 

And off he went.

 

Apparently, investigating haunted houses wasn’t part of his police duties.

 

The reporter went to the house alone. He knocked several times at the front door, then tried the side door. Nobody answered.

 

He was about to give up when someone spoke from behind him. It was one occupant, who invited him inside.

 

The place looked ordinary enough. The rooms were neatly furnished, everything was peaceful, and there wasn’t a ghost in sight.

 

The reporter even inspected the troublesome kitchen stove. It was a plain, small range, and nothing seemed wrong with it. It stood firmly on the floor and couldn’t be easily shaken.

 

So why did it keep falling over?

 

Nobody knew. But there was another detail that made the story even more interesting.

 

The house had a history.

 

People familiar with the property said a man had committed suicide there about twelve years earlier. Nobody could remember his name, but the story was that he’d hanged himself from a bedpost in the room the McCrisses used as their parlor.

 

Some people believed his spirit was still hanging around.

 

And he wasn’t happy.

 

Before the McCrisses moved in, an elderly woman known as “Grandma” Lynch had operated a small store in the building. She reportedly heard the same strange noises. So whatever was happening hadn’t started with the McCriss family.

 

By the time the Journal began asking questions, several local spiritualists had taken an interest in the place. One offered an explanation.

 

“The noises heard at the home of Mr. McCriss signify that some spirit who has left this world desires to right some wrong.”

 

The spiritualist believed spirits were attracted to people with strong personal magnetism. Those spirits sometimes tried to communicate with the living by making noises or moving objects. And whatever was living at 223 West Seventh Street wasn’t particularly friendly.

 

“The spirit or spirits who are infesting the McCriss home are malicious in nature, and by dumping over the stove and opening and shutting doors give vent to their feelings.”

 

That’s one explanation.

 

McCriss still wasn’t convinced. He didn’t believe in ghosts, and he wanted to figure out what was really happening before the story got out of hand. But it was hard to ignore a stove that kept throwing itself onto the kitchen floor.

 

The newspaper never established what caused the disturbances. Maybe the old building had structural problems. Maybe the stove was defective. Maybe the strange noises had perfectly ordinary explanations.

 

Maybe.

 

But imagine lying in bed at 223 West Seventh Street, listening to a door squeak open downstairs.

 

Then slam shut.

 

Then hearing a tremendous crash from the kitchen.

 

You’d probably have a hard time sleeping, too. And if you went downstairs and found that stove lying on its side again?

 

You might start believing in ghosts.

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