The Most Mysterious Place in Every State: the Midwest

Most sites are fully open to the public, allowing tourists to take a stab at solving the mysteries themselves. Some destinations have ties to historical events, while others are places that science simply can’t explain (yet?).

These are the most mysterious sites in every state in the Midwest, along with how and when to visit — if you dare.

• Location: 1045 S High St, Columbus, OH 43206
• How to visit: Open daily, noon to 6 PM

Housed in a sprawling 19th-century brick building, the Greater Columbus Antique Mall is a labyrinth of antiques packed from floor to ceiling with relics from bygone eras, like faded photographs, creaking furniture, Victorian dolls, and ornate mirrors that seem to hold more than just reflections. It isn’t so much a creepy historical relic that you’re visiting, but a collection of creepy historical relics stored in one place that make the entire setting seem odd. It’s the spot to bring a group of friends with diverse trigger points, because something in here will get them — be it the creaking wooden floors, dim lighting, or the uncanny aura of hundreds of objects with untold histories.

The building itself is rumored to be haunted, too, and is a hotbed for paranormal activity investigations. Many a peruser has reported the feeling of being watched as they stroll the property.

Photo: Roberto Galan/Shutterstock

• Location: Kokomo, Indiana
• How to visit: Kokomo is about an hour north of Indianapolis

The Kokomo Hum is a baffling low-frequency noise first heard in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1999. Those who can hear it describe it as a low, constant rumble, though it’s only audible to a small portion of residents. Those people, called “hearers,” have complained of a host of health complaints ranging from headaches to nausea, sleep disturbances, and nosebleeds.

The city government took the phenomenon seriously enough to commission an investigation in 2003, which found that two industrial fans at nearby factories were causing the noise. The factories made changes, but locals continue to complain about the hum to this day. Interestingly, it’s one of several places around the world where some locals have reported hearing the mysterious sound. While scientists usually posit that it’s caused by tinnitus or some type of mechanical device, no one’s ever figured out a definitive, universally accepted explanation that explains the hum.

• Location: Bete Grise Rd, Eagle Harbor, MI 49950
• How to visit: Bete Grise Beach has no fee and is open year-round, with public parking and easy beach access

Bete Grise Beach on the Keweenaw Peninsula in Lake Superior hides an eerie marvel: the “Singing Sands of Bete Grise.” It’s a normal-looking stretch of sand, except that the fine, pale granules emit clear, melodic squeaks. When walked on barefoot or swirled with your hands, it almost sounds like a strange, natural song.

According to an ancient Ojibwa (Chippewa) legend, the sounds are the calls of a heartbroken spirit trying to find her lost paramour. But science has also weighed in: researchers think the noise is due to friction and vibrations from the nearly perfectly round and uniform grains of sand. If removed from the beach, however, the sand typically stops “singing,” further feeding the shore’s supernatural reputation.

• Location: 1 New State Park Rd, Cave-In-Rock, IL 62919
• How to visit: Cave-In-Rock open to the public year-round with no entry fee

One of Illinois’s most mysterious locations is Cave-In-Rock State Park, a natural riverfront cavern with a centuries-old reputation for eerie and unexplained phenomena. The legends haunting Cave-In-Rock are based in fact. It was once a base for local pirates, and later served as a hideout for the Harpe brothers — America’s first serial killers.

In the mid-1800s, visitors regularly reported hearing eerie moans and mysterious cries from inside the cave. These reports have continued into modern times, with amateur ghost hunters reporting everything from unexplained voices to coughs, sobs, and objects moving on their own. While scientists suggest the explanations could be due to the cave’s acoustics or echoing animal sounds, many visitors still consider the cave one of the most mysterious and creepy places in the Midwest.

Photo: Cavan-Images/Shutterstock

• Location: Osceola, WI 53011
• How to visit: Stare at the skies from the Long Lake Recreation Area or book a site at the Long Lake Campground

Dundee Mountain and Long Lake in Kettle Moraine State Forest have earned a reputation as the UFO capital of the Midwest, following nearly a century of unexplained sightings and sky phenomena. Since the 1940s, residents and visitors have witnessed glowing orbs, objects moving in strange formations, and crop circles, with one local collecting more than 250 reports of UFO and UAP encounters near the town of Dundee.

Notable sightings include two extended sessions of unexplained lights and moving objects in 2004 and 2005, both seen by multiple witnesses. Additionally, a 2001 incident of an object in the sky was reported by more than 10 independent witnesses. UFO reports go back to 1975, with nearly all of it centered around Long Lake. While some experts have theorized the visuals could be caused by atmospheric or optical effects of light reflecting off the lake, the continued sightings do raise questions.

• Location: 226 Pearl St, Council Bluffs, IA 51503
• How to visit: The jail is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 AM-4PM, with various additional events throughout the year

The Squirrel Cage Jail was a truly bizarre place to be incarcerated. It was a three-story, human-powered rotary jail that spun its inmates like squirrels in a wheel. Unlike Iowa’s most famous haunted spot, the Villisca Axe Murder House, the Squirrel Cage’s eeriness comes from not just ghostly tales, but the truly bizarre mechanics of the place itself.

The jail opened in 1885 and was designed for maximum security with minimum staffing. A single guard used a lever to rotate the pie-slice-shaped cells to change which cell opened to the hallway at any given time. Despite the Victorian appearance of the building, it has an iron core, making prisoners’ lives dark and cold. Visitor accounts and paranormal investigators report unexplained footsteps, cold spots, disembodied voices, and apparitions of figures that look like both jailers and prisoners. It closed in 1969 after 84 years of use, even though it was condemned 22 times before that. At least five prisoners died while incarcerated, and the building still retains the spinning apparatus, cells, doors, and graffiti from people who were locked up here.

Photo: Joseph Creamer/Shutterstock

• Location: 215 Wabasha St S, St Paul, MN 55107
• How to visit: The caves are open for public tours and events like swing dancing nights, but no unaccompanied exploration is permitted

The man-made Wabasha Street Caves have a fascinating history. They were carved in the 1840s for silica mines, but became the world’s earliest commercial mushroom farms in the early 1900s. During Prohibition in the 1920s and ‘30s, the caves acted as a speakeasy and nightclub called Castle Royal, where infamous gangsters like John Dillinger reportedly hung out. There were multiple shootouts and murders in the caves during this time, and those bullet holes are still in the walls. In the decades after, it was used for everything from general storage to aging cheese.

There have been multiple investigations into the reported paranormal and eerie activities at the caves, and visitors still notice unexplained temperature changes and weird shapes and figures to this day.

• Location: 119 10th St E, Harvey, ND 58341
• How to visit: The Harvey Public Library is, well, a library and is open for regular hours

Mysterious places are not often hidden in plain sight. But one of North Dakota’s is, in a building designed to be one of the most public in town: the Harvey Public Library. The building is on the site of a 1931 tragedy, when local woman Sophia Eberlein-Bentz was bludgeoned to death by her husband as she prepared for bed. He then put her body in a car, set it on fire, and sent it into a ditch. In 1990, after their home was long gone, the library was constructed on the site. The librarian’s office was placed directly above Sophia’s old bedroom, and staff soon began reporting inexplicable activity.

Visitors and long-time, respected employees have described flickering lights, books mysteriously disappearing and reappearing, and unexplained pockets of cold. Multiple visitors have claimed to feel the spirit of someone in the building. Fortunately for fans of the mysterious and supernatural, librarians have gone on the record to say anyone is welcome to check out the library and try to connect with its ghosts. As it’s a public library, visitors can “do what they want,” a former librarian told a local Fargo newspaper in 2009.

Photo: Brogaty/Shutterstock

• Location: 44950 Park Road, Sisseton, SD 57260
• How to visit: Pay the parking fee at the kiosk and access Sica Hollow year-round. The main attraction is the Trail of Spirits footpath.

Seeing South Dakota’s famous Badlands is a surefire way to feel like you’ve left Earth, and the many frontier ghosts of the town of Deadwood loom large. But for a paranormal experience rooted in deep natural and Native American lore, few places rival Sica Hollow State Park. Named from the Dakota Sioux word for “bad” or “evil,” the park’s Trail of Spirits winds through forested ravines where springs rich in iron bubble red. While some of Sica Hollow’s eeriest effects, like the glowing stumps and red water, are scientifically explained by iron minerals and swamp gas, the mix of Sioux stories and unexplained disappearances in the park give it an ongoing aura of mystery.

Legend holds that the red water and red-tinted logs are the blood and flesh of ancestors now protecting the space. Visitors have long reported phantom drumbeats, bubbling red-tinted bogs, and ghostly cries echoing through the trees. Some people even say that Marshall County is home to a Bigfoot-like creature, with the occasional unexplained trail cam video posted online.

• Location: 1110 Douglas St. Omaha, NE 68102
• How to visit: The Museum of Shadows is open Wednesday through Sunday, with after-hours paranormal investigations hosted throughout the year

The Museum of Shadows in Omaha is an intentionally created mysterious place, housing a collection of more than 3,000 haunted artifacts. It’s owned and operated by two paranormal experts, and displays explain the history of each object, ranging from haunted dolls to actual murder weapons. The owners claim each object has passed tests to confirm it is indeed embedded with supernatural forces.

The museum is dimly lit and intentionally creepy and unsettling, and visitors navigate the museum with the aid of flashlights on self-guided tours. In one room of the museum, visitors are invited to sit alone with haunted objects, while cameras record the experience to monitor for unexplained activity.

While other places in Nebraska claim to have their own ghosts, or be the home of urban legends, the Museum of Shadows is a rare location where unexplained and mysterious objects have intentionally been gathered. That makes it a hot spot for otherworldly activity and experiences on the fringes of science — if you’re open to believing in that sort of thing.

• Location: Ellinwood, Kansas
• How to visit: The tunnels can be seen by reservation through the Wolf Hotel, with 3-6 hour tours or an overnight stay

Located under Main Street, the Ellinwood Underground Tunnels were built in the 1800s as a way to get around town and do legal business away from summer heat and brutal winters. Seedier operations started to pop up over time, particularly during Prohibition, when saloons and gambling dens took over. Most of the passages were sealed and forgotten except for a small stretch under the Dick Building and the Wolf Hotel.

Today, the accessible sections of the tunnels have reopened as a historic attraction, and some visitors insist the past hasn’t entirely left (even if the crime stories haven’t been entirely vetted). Guests on guided tours report uneasy feelings, sudden drops in temperature, and fleeting shadows darting between brick archways. The Wolf Hotel, with a history that goes back to Ellinwood’s frontier days, serves as the entrance point for tours and has its own share of spectral rumors.

• Location: 777 Ridge Rd, Ellisville, MO 63021
• How to visit: The trail is open until 10 PM, with free parking at nearby Ridge Meadows Elementary School, linked above

Just west of St. Louis lies one of Missouri’s most haunted trails: a two-mile wooded path originally built in the 1860s to access the Meramec River and adjacent railroad lines. It was once called Lawler Ford Road, though now it’s a paved public trail officially called the “Rock Hollow Trail.” Those inclined to more mysterious thinking simply call it Zombie Road, one of the most haunted roads in the country.

Despite its daytime charm, rumors run deep. Zombie Road’s haunted reputation is bolstered by a range of stories. One woman whose husband worked in the area was killed on the tracks in 1876, and rumors of paved-over Native American burial sites abound. It served as a “lovers’ lane” in the 1950s and 1960s, with rumors of “shadow people” living on the road starting soon after. Visitors frequently say they feel the sensation of being watched and have reported seeing faces in the woods and feeling sudden cold spots. Adding to the lore is the legend of the “Zombie Killer,” a towering figure said to have escaped from an unconfirmed mental hospital nearby and stalk couples in the 1950s. Perhaps because of all this, trespassing on the trail at night will often result in a steep fine from local police.