The Missouri Haunted Trail

Missouri's other haunted geography runs along its rivers and rail lines: a brewing dynasty's cave system and a vaudeville hall in St. Louis, a machine-gun ambush and a fur-trade hotel in Kansas City, the nation's bloodiest prison yard in Jefferson City. Smaller river towns and Bootheel crossroads add their own crop of courthouse dungeons and bridge legends, most tied to real Civil War and Depression-era history rather than invented lore. The state's ghost-tour economy is dense enough to support paranormal investigators as a side industry in half its major cities. Ozarks visitors get the featured weekend loop; everyone else gets the rest of the map.