The Iowa Haunted Trail

Iowa's haunted landscape follows the rivers that built its towns. The Mississippi corridor holds the weight in the east and the Missouri bluffs answer it in the west. County-seat courthouses and rural churches fill in the land between. River towns like Council Bluffs and Dubuque kept their Gilded Age hotels running, and a handful of farmhouses and rural jails have turned themselves into overnight destinations for visitors willing to drive the back roads. Nearly eighty stops make up the current network. One curated corridor through the state's eastern university towns makes the tightest weekend loop for a first visit.