US RAT Sites RAT Sites Home Mystery Spots America Unhinged Weird Museums Haunted Places
MO Betties Restaurant. If you ask about
their web site they will probably just
think you mean one of the spiders that live there. Old time restaurant.
Smoke covered ceilings pie case and all. Real mashed potatoes. Daily Blue
plate for 3.79. Just as you came off the old Cape River Bridge.
Cape Girardeau,MO
MO Everyone should visit Rush's childhood home at least once.
Most people here drive by and bow their heads at least once a week. (in
shame?)Cape Girardeau, MO
MO Cinematic Town of Eastwood,MO".
MO Daniel Boone's Grave, MO? More info
MO Drug check point warning sign, eastbound I- 44 ,Rolla, MO
MO Giant Praying Hands,Webb City,MO ![]()
MO: Grave of Jim the Wonder Dog. The famous dog that could read minds, count,
knew many languages & more. Marshall, MO
MO Grass Roots BMW. 28 South Spanish street. A bike shop, not a BMW company
franchised sales outlet. Cape, Girardeau,MO
MO Home of the White Squirrel, Marionville, MO
MO Home of the worlds largest Pecan ( 12' long, 7' wide and 12,000 pounds.)Brunswick, MO
MO Giant Chair, Highway 21, Caledonia, MO
Jesse James Home -- Saint Joseph, MO More Info
MO Old Drum Statue, Johnson City Courthouse lawn, Warrenburg.
MO
MO Pete's Cafe, Boonville, Missouri
MO Precious Moments Chapel, Carthage, MO
MO Praying Hands, Webb City, MO
MO Diner 63 5801 Highway 763 N. Columbia, MO
MO Silo X, Peerless Park,MO More Info
MO The Beverly Hillbilly's Car at The Ralph Foster Museum, MO
MO The original throwed rolls. Actually very good food and more than you can. Sikeston, MO
eat. Not a buffet but they just keep bringing more stuff as long as you can
eat it. MO
MO The "wall of Fame" A block long painting on the flood wall of famous
Missourians. Includes Calamity Jane and Rush Limbaugh, our town
spokesperson and hero.You find it. Cape Girardeau, MO
MO World's Largest Coal Shovel, Rich Hill,MO
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These places have strange powers. Approach with great caution!
Trio State Spook light, Nosh, MO
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Half Size Stonehenge, U of MO campus, Rolla, MO. More Info
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| Jefferson City, - Missouri Veterinary Museum: This is a small museum that showcases veterinary instruments, such as balling guns, emasculators and trocars for large animals, trunks filled with horse dental tools, bleeding instruments, horse pills and lots of huge syringes. There are three operating tables for small animals. There are specimens in glass jars, like Siamese piglets and an eight-legged piglet, hairballs from pigs and other farm animals, a colossal kidney stone found in a horse and interesting objects found in animals. The museum is free |
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| Bridgeton -
Payne-Gentry House - 23 ghosts at last count inhabit this building. Independence - Old Jackson County Jail - sounds, cold spots foot steps are observed here. Kansas City - Hotel Savoy - the ghost of Betsy Ward haunts room 505 where she died in the bath tub. St. Louis - Edgewood Children's Center - ghost of a 10 year old girl is seen floating near a tree here. St. Louis - Lemp mansion - was turn into a restraunt and during Holloween season turned into a fake amusement house but patrons of the restraunt have heard and felt strange things going on. Some people have felt someone sit on there laps when no one was there. Marceline - Mom's Restaurant - Over the years, customers and employees have felt strange drafts of cold air, plates have "jumped" from shelves, and furniture and other objects have been found tipped over or placed upside down. There have been occasional reports of an apparition of a young woman, and the ghost is known to the townspeople as "The Lady in White." Fulton - Community Hospital - The girls in lab says there is a ghost that walks the hall by surgery. Also smells of sweat in areas were there are no people. Nevada - Cottey College - is haunted by 2 ghosts: (1) Vera: a student from long ago that was making candy in Rosemary Hall when her nightgown caught fire, and resulted in burning down the hall. Now she haunts the entire college, comforting some girls and tricking others (2) a man in black (or a black man) that haunts the college from slavery days, as the story goes, possibly looking for Vera. Lebanon - Lonesome Hill Graveyard - Blue mists coming out of the woods following you. Columbia - Stephens College - Senior Hall, A young lady watched her Confederate soldier lover that she was hiding be discovered and killed. She hung herself in the bell tower of her dorm and haunts it today, searching for her lost love. St.Joseph - The St. Joseph School District offices - are reported to be haunted. Doors open and close by themselves. Cuba - Cuba Middle School gym - A ghost supposeily by the name of "Joe Beisly" haunts our school. He was a very loyal janitor and he fell off a ladder and now people say that if you call his name 3 times he will appear. Maryville- Northwest Missouri state
University Dark Hollow Road Cape Girardeau-Heartland Health
Care Center- Ellisville- Zombie Road - Mount Vernon-Spanish Fort Cemetery-
Verona-Lees Cemetery- St. Louis-Our Lady Of Sarrows
School- Cape Girardeau- Powell Symphony Hall, the Sheldon
Concert Hall (both in downtown St. Louis) Ozark High School Stage- Barnhart- Knob Noster- Horton/Oklahoma State Line- St. Louis-St. Louis University- Columbia-The Missouri Theater- St. Charles-Lindenwood University- Dumas- Brunswick-St. Boniface Cemetery- Malden- Dexter- |
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| MO Glore Psychiatric Museum, St. Joseph,MO The smell of ancient insanity would still hang in the corridors of the Glore Psychiatric Museum, if this unusual collection hadn't been moved to an expansive newer building a few years ago. It once inhabited a ward of St. Joseph State Hospital called the State Lunatic Asylum #2 until 1899 a fortress-like mental health complex. Modern medication has returned nearly all the patients to society, making way for the state to turn the facility into a prison. The museum sits right outside the prison fence, in a complex of brick buildings. The original museum was started in 1967, by George Glore, a lifetime employee of the Missouri mental health system. George retired in the mid-1990s due to failing health, but the museum, named after this tourism visionary, carries on. We miss George's personal tours and stories, and the museum seems, well, more respectable. But still worth a trip to St. Joseph. Past the bronze bust of George, the collection now fills four floors, and you can find
all your Glore favorites. Dioramas span the history of treatment for mental illness
witch burnings and devil stompings; the "Bath of Surprise," a
gallows-like platform that dumped a patient into icy water; and a working model of
O'Halloran's Swing, in which strapped-in patients spun at up to 100 RPMs. Before retiring,
George completed the giant patient treadmill a locked mega-gerbil-wheel
montrosity where frisky residents could walk off their excess energy. On an earlier visit, Glore told us patients could spend up to six months in the "Tranquilizer Chair." It was invented by Benjamin Rush, "The Father of American Psychiatry," a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a big believer in leeches and bleeding. The museum has a reproduction of Rush's bleeding knife that was distributed to promote a drug manufacturer; they were recalled after a patient grabbed one off his psychiatrist's desk and stabbed him to death. Many of the devices are shown in use on an assortment of female glamour mannequins donated by a department store. Three mannequins are chained to the wall of his Bedlam Asylum scene. "Bedlam used to charge admission -- people would visit as recreation," Glore would say, shaking his head, as he led tourists through his museum.
The mid-20th Century exhibits include items used during the early days of Glore's own tenure: hydrotherapy and the wet sheet pack (patients rolled in wet sheets), lobotomy instruments, Fulton, MO's hospital cage, electroconvulsive treatments, and a fever-cabinet used for heating syphilis victims. Artistic legacies of certain patients are on display, too. There is an imaginative
arrangement of 1,446 items swallowed by a patient and removed from her intestines
and stomach. She died during surgery from bleeding caused by 453 nails, 42 screws, safety
pins, spoon tops, and salt and pepper shaker tops. One fellow stuffed 525 disjointed notes into a working television set in a ward. Found by a repairman in 1971, many of the scraps appeared to be answers to questions the patient had been asked by psychiatrist over the years to determine his mental state. "Another patient swallowed a Timex," said Glore. "When she passed it, it
was still ticking. " Another patient collected 100,000 cigarette packs under the
delusion that the cigarette companies would redeem them for a new wheelchair for his ward.
The Glore Museum's new management continues to collect artifacts and add to the exhibits. One gallery showcases contemporary patient art; in the basement, you can examine cars customized by teams of patients, or glimpse a functioning morgue. (Glore Psychiatric Museum: East of St. Joseph. Take I-29 to Exit 47, head west about 1 mile. After 36th St. Glore sign and building visible on left. Be careful not to drive into the prison entrance -- they're a little touchy.)
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| St. Louis: An eccentric millionaire recently opened a place called The City Museum in downtown St. Louis, and if you're driving through this area you shouldn't miss it. It's housed on several floors of an old industrial building in the former garment section of town, and everything in the place is made of salvaged material. There's a huge forest/cave-like area where you can crawl around, old logs that run the length of the ceiling that you can cross the room in, a giant whale you can walk through, an architectural salvage museum, a very cool beatnik bar with a giant pair of underpants, a floor full of artists, and at one time, an art car display. You won't believe how amazing this place is. And with all of its nooks and crannies and unusual materials, you'll wonder how it ever got past the insurance hurdle. Go on a weekday when there aren't so many kids. It only costs $6. 701 N. 15th |
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| He was the first desperado who rose to fame in the age of mass media. The exploits of Jesse James, former Civil War hero turned bank robber, were carried in detail by the new penny press in America`s biggest cities in the 1870s. His name became known across the country but his appearance was a closely guarded secret and frequently he would size up a job himself, arriving in town under the pretense of being a cattle buyer and going about his business unrecognized. In St. Joseph he went by the name of Mr. Howard and lived quietly, although many of his neighbors were aware of his real identity. A former gang member, Bob Ford, attracted by $10,000 reward money, gunned him down at home on April 5, 1882. The house has been moved several times since then and is now part of a museum complex. Exhibits relating to the James gang, and the original wall still bearing the marks of the bullets that killed him are displayed. |
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Daniel Boone is hardly a folk hero superstar -- in fact, a lot of people get him confused with Davy Crockett -- but he's been popular enough over the years to merit a Hollywood movie, a lunch box and a postage stamp. And one thing is certain about folk heroes, even second-stringers: Everybody wants their old bones. |
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| Oklahoma for example, dug Will Rogers out of California's Forest Lawn Cemetery and buried him in their own memorial park. South Dakota not content with its Crazy Horse ubermemorial, sote sitting Bull's bones from North Dakota and reinterred them on their own soil. Even "Mad" Anthony Wayne, an Indian-fighter and a popular subject of pre-interstate monuments, was yanked from his Erie, PA grave by his son, who boiled the flesh off of the corpse and headed for home (Paoli, PA) with the bones in a bag. Then the bags were stolen. Who knows where Mad Anthony is today? |
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| Daniel Boone has suffered similar body-snatching shennanigans but with a
twist: He appears to have ended up in two graves. Everyone agrees that Boone died at his son's home near Defiance, MO, in 1820. Everyone also agrees that he was buried nearby, near the grave of his wife, Rebecca. But then the story gets muddled. The folks in Frankfort, KY would have you believe that Rebecca and Daniel were exhumed 25 years later and reinterred in Frankfort Cemetery. The marker near Defiance mentions the reinterrment, but... |
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| According to Defiance, Frankfort dug up the wrong body. The grave next to
Rebecca's was already occupied when Daniel died, they say, so he was buried at her feet.
Daniel's relatives were angry at Frankfort and didn't tell them about his true burial
plot. They let Frankfort cart away the body next to Rebecca's, the body of a stranger. Scientific scrutiny seems to support Defiance's claims. A forensic anthropologist studied a plaster cast of the skull in Frankfort's "Daniel Boone" grave in 1983 and said that it really belonged to a large black man. Frankfort, of course, pooh-poohed those allegations. Both graves have worthy monuments. Frankfort's is bigger (that was, ostensibly, the reason for the move in the first place) but it's in a big cemetery and must share its surroundings with other dead people. The memorial near Defiance is out by itself, and it's worth remembering that Daniel Boone's own reason for leaving Kentucky was that it was "too crowded." We say, since the marker is all you get to see anyway, it's a toss-up. Daniel Boone is buried in the spot easiest for you to get to on your next trip. Case closed. |
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| A very little bit of Druid Europe exists in sweltering south-central Missouri, on historic Route 66. This half-sized Stonehenge replica was built by the high- pressure water lab at University of Missouri's Rolla campus as a way to showcase their stone carving skills. "In ancient times, carving these stones would have taken years," a plaque explains. "These stones were carved in a month." Rolla boasts that its Stonehenge is the only one in America (there are four others ) that can be accurately used as a clock. Oops, we see that we're running late and leave before we can ascertain whether this odd monument ever drummed up new business for the water lab. (Savvy Traveler Note: If you stop at Stonehenge in Rolla, don't feel sad if you can't get over to Memoryville, U.S.A.) |
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| Silo X, Peerless Park, MO. This
apocalyptic attraction, voted the best haunted house in St. Louis for three years running,
is only open during the weeks surrounding Halloween. Just off I-44, exit 272, it is
eye-catching even from the interstate. With its crash wreckage of real marine helicopters
and its camouflage-covered observation towers, this place is probably as dangerous as it
looks. Just up the road, a billboard for "Balloonatics" features a red-eyed
specter of death delivering a balloon bouquet. _______________________________ |
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