In the quiet farming town of Villisca, Iowa, the Moore family lived a simple, respectable life in the early 1900s. Josiah Moore, a successful implement dealer, shared a modest two-story white frame house at 508 East Second Street with his wife Sarah and their four children: eleven-year-old Herman, nine-year-old Katherine, seven-year-old Boyd, and five-year-old Paul.

On Sunday, June 9, 1912, the family attended the local Presbyterian church’s Children’s Day program. Two neighborhood friends, Ina and Lena Stillinger, aged twelve and eight, joined them for the evening service and accepted an invitation to spend the night.

The group returned home around 9:30 p.m., laughing and tired from the festivities. They locked the doors, blew out the lamps, and went to bed. No one heard the intruder slip into the house under cover of darkness. No one woke as he climbed the narrow stairs with an axe in hand.

Sometime after midnight, the killer entered the master bedroom first. Josiah and Sarah never had a chance. The axe crashed down repeatedly, caving in their skulls with wet, sickening thuds. Blood sprayed across the white sheets in thick arcs, pooling under their bodies and dripping through the mattress onto the floorboards. Bone fragments scattered like shattered porcelain. The force was so brutal that Josiah’s brain matter splattered the ceiling in gray-pink clumps. Sarah’s face was unrecognizable, one eye gouged out by the blade’s backswing.

The murderer moved to the children’s room next door. Herman, Katherine, Boyd, and Paul lay in two beds, sleeping soundly. He raised the axe again and again, each blow landing with crunching finality. Skulls split open like melons. Blood soaked the pillows and ran down the walls in rivulets. Katherine’s nightgown rode up in the struggle; defensive wounds on her arms showed she woke briefly, flailing against the inevitable. The youngest, Paul, took multiple strikes to the head, his small body twitching with the last impacts before going still.

Downstairs, the Stillinger girls shared the guest room off the parlor. The killer saved them for last. He struck Lena first as she slept on her side, the blade embedding so deeply in her skull that it took force to pull free. Ina woke to the sounds and tried to fight. She made it halfway out of bed before the axe caught her across the neck and shoulders, nearly decapitating her. Blood gushed from severed arteries, soaking the sheets and spraying the wall in a fan pattern. Her arms bore deep gashes where she raised them to shield her face.

When the slaughter ended, eight people lay dead in pools of cooling blood. The killer covered every mirror and window with clothing pulled from dressers, as if unwilling to see his reflection or let the outside world witness the carnage. He took a slab of bacon from the icebox, laid it beside one body, then washed his hands in the basin, leaving bloody prints on the pitcher. He locked the doors from the inside, took the house keys, and vanished into the night.

The bodies were discovered the next morning by neighbor Mary Peckham, who grew worried when no one emerged to feed the chickens. She called Josiah’s brother Ross, who unlocked the door and stepped inside. The metallic stench of blood hit him first. Then he saw the Stillinger girls. He ran screaming into the street.

Investigators found a scene of unimaginable gore. Blood had soaked through mattresses and floorboards, forming dark stains visible from the rooms below. Ceiling plaster bore chunks of brain and hair. The axe, belonging to Josiah, stood propped in the guest room, blade crusted with dried blood and bits of scalp. Flies swarmed in thick black clouds, laying eggs in open wounds. One victim’s face had been so mutilated that identification required dental records.

No motive ever surfaced. Nothing was stolen. The family had no known enemies. Suspicion fell on traveling preacher Reverend Lyn George Jacklin Kelly, a mentally unstable man obsessed with the crime who later confessed falsely before recanting. Others pointed to a transient or a hired killer tied to a business rivalry. Bloodhounds traced a scent to the nearby Nodaway River and lost it. The trail went cold.

The house stood empty for years, doors locked, windows boarded. Neighbors reported lights flickering inside at night. Children dared each other to approach, only to flee at the sound of footsteps creaking across upstairs floors. Visitors who entered illegally described overwhelming dread, the smell of old blood lingering in the air, and sudden drops in temperature that left breath visible in summer.

In 1994, the house was restored and opened for tours. Overnight guests and paranormal investigators have since captured chilling evidence. EVPs whisper children’s cries and a man’s low growl. Doors slam without cause. Motion sensors trigger in empty rooms. One group watched an axe displayed in the barn swing on its own before crashing to the floor. Guests wake with unexplained scratches bleeding down their backs. Others report being pushed down stairs by invisible hands.

Today, the Villisca Axe Murder House remains one of America’s most haunted locations. Tourists walk the bloodstained floors where eight innocent souls met a savage end. Some leave shaken after hearing soft whimpers from the children’s room. Others see shadowy figures in old-fashioned nightclothes standing at the foot of beds.

The killer was never caught. Whatever drove him to butcher an entire family and two guests in their sleep took its secret to the grave. But something stayed behind. On quiet nights, if you stand outside 508 East Second Street, you might hear it: the faint creak of floorboards overhead, the distant thud of something heavy being raised and lowered. The axe may be gone, but the rage lingers. And it remembers every scream that went unanswered that June night in 1912.