A 1784 Creole poteaux-en-terre house in Ste. Genevieve where the harpsichord plays on its own, furniture has been thrown, and glass breaks without cause — among Missouri's oldest buildings
4th St. & Merchant St., Ste. Genevieve, MO 63670
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Small admission fee for museum entry; free parking on site. Contact (573) 883-7544 for hours and current pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Historic 18th-century home; uneven floors and period construction. No touching of artifacts.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1784 · Among the oldest buildings in Missouri — 1784 Creole poteaux-en-terre construction · Connected to Jacques Guibourd's escape from the Haitian Revolution with aid of enslaved man Moros · Part of Missouri's oldest permanent European settlement, Ste. Genevieve · Donated as a museum by Annie Valle in 1972
The Guibourd-Valle House was built in 1784 using the Creole poteaux-en-terre method — vertical posts set directly into the ground — a technique brought by French colonists from the Caribbean and found almost nowhere else surviving in North America. The address is 4th and Merchant Streets in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri's oldest permanent European settlement.
Jacques Guibourd, the original builder, arrived in Ste. Genevieve after surviving two of the most violent upheavals of the late eighteenth century. During the 1791 Haitian Revolution, an enslaved man named Moros helped Guibourd escape by hiding him in a barrel. Guibourd subsequently fled the French Reign of Terror before settling in Ste. Genevieve, where he married locally and operated a tannery.
The house passed through the Guibourd family for approximately a century before Clovis G. Boyer acquired it. Boyer held the property for thirty years before it passed to Jules and Annie Valle. Annie Valle lived there for decades, reportedly holding her own against the disturbances in the house with characteristic directness. When objects were thrown and glass broke in her late husband's room, she confronted the disturbance aloud and refused to be driven from her home. She donated the property as a museum upon her death in 1972, and it has operated as one ever since.
Sources
Reports from the Guibourd-Valle House center on the servant's quarters, where footsteps are heard without anyone present. Beyond auditory phenomena, witnesses have described seeing apparitions, furniture being thrown across rooms, glass breaking without apparent cause, and the house's harpsichord playing on its own.
The most striking documented account predates the building's life as a museum. Annie Valle, who lived in the house for decades into the twentieth century, encountered the phenomena firsthand. When disturbances erupted in her late husband Jules' room — breaking glass, furniture in motion — she confronted the disturbance directly, declaring aloud that she would not be frightened or driven from her home. The account, preserved in local historical sources, carries a quality distinct from later visitor reports: it is the owner addressing her own house.
The building is a featured stop on Sainte Genevieve Ghost Tours' lantern walk, which covers the historic district's documented paranormal sites. The house's age, its physical survival in largely original form, and the breadth of reported phenomena across multiple eras of ownership have made it one of the most-cited haunted sites in eastern Missouri.
Notable Entities
The Guibourd-Valle House is a featured stop on Sainte Genevieve Ghost Tours' lantern tour of the historic district, which visits the most actively reported paranormal sites in Missouri's oldest permanent settlement.
Tour the 1784 Creole poteaux-en-terre structure, one of the oldest surviving buildings in Missouri, including the servant's quarters where paranormal activity is most frequently reported.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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