They’re creepy. They’re weird. They’re scary. If you’re adventurous, some them will make you want to go exploring, but others might keep you up at night.
These are St. Louis’ most notorious urban legends. Most of these tales have been around for decades, freaking out generation after generation of Midwesterners. And though some of the details might seem outlandish, many of these accounts are at least partially based on a true story.
Hitchhike Annie
4947 W Florissant Ave., St. Louis, MO 63115
Hitchhike Annie is the name of the ghost that roams Calvary Drive, between Calvary Cemetery and Bellefontaine Cemetery. Her legend has been around since the 1940s and is very well known by the people in the area. She’s described as a young woman in a white dress. Annie has long brown hair and pale skin and she usually makes her appearance right as the sun is setting. And though she might be creepy, she’s described as harmless. Apparently she flags down cars and asks for a ride up the street, but she always disappears when the car reaches the entrance to Bellefontaine Cemetery, never quite reaching her destination.
Photo courtesy of Yupa Watchanakit / Shutterstock
Lemp Caverns Haunting
3322 Demenil Place, St. Louis, MO 63118
The Lemp Manson is haunted. Visitors apparently have heard screams and had their hair pulled and experienced all other manner of odd interactions at the site — so much that it became a haunted sleep-over destination with rooms for rent. But the infamous caverns below the mansion that spider throughout the neighborhoods on the south side of the city near the river have a whole different level of haunting. Originally used by William Lemp as a place to store his lager, as well as his own personal party cave, now the caves are rumored to be haunted by all of those ghosts from the surface and more, including monsters and mutants.
Photo courtesy of screengrab via YouTube
Zombie Road
Ellisville, MO
This old stretch of road in Ellisville carries a heavy story. The legend says that a man was struck by a train and that sometimes people will see him walking near the tracks and reenacting the moment he got hit. This story is made more believable by the fact that there is constantly fog covering the little dips and valleys of this dark, winding road near Bluebird Park. There are also old, dark buildings just visible from the road that look like something straight out of a horror movie. Any scary story seems reasonable when you’re on Zombie Road.
Photo courtesy of Sergey Shubin / Shutterstock
Bubblehead Road
Carrico Road, Florissant, MO 63034
Legend has it that a family of genetic mutant “bubbleheads” lived at the end of this long, winding road near the banks of the Missouri River. It’s just a street in a densely wooded neighborhood, but it’s almost entirely downhill and creepy in the way that only quiet woods can be creepy. The rumor was that if you drove too far down the road and got too close to their property, the “bubbleheads” (sometimes described as victims of government chemical testing) would come out of the woods and scare you off. There are (multiple) no trespassing signs on this road to try to deter teenage visitors, but the legend lives on.
Photo courtesy of Jaime Lees
Laughing Lake
Clayton Road, St. Louis, MO 63124
Probably the most well-known urban legend in west county, the tale of Laughing Lake is a sad one. It’s said that a couple of children drowned in a lake off Clayton Road. The legend goes that their father, an artist, painted a vision of them on the side of a house there. It supposedly appears that the viewer is looking at them from as they’re underwater, laughing and having a good time in the afterlife. Creepy.
Photo courtesy of Sergey Edentod / Shutterstock
Mollie Crenshaw’s Grave
St. Charles, MO
Depending on who you ask, you’re likely to get a different story about Mollie Crenshaw. She was usually either a witch whose body was buried in separate graves, leaving the pieces to try to wiggle back together over time, or she was a woman who committed suicide after she lost her hearing. Either way, the story is sad, but her various legends have inspired west county teenagers to seek out her grave for more than 50 years.
Photo courtesy of Aleksey Stemmer / Shutterstock
The Exorcist House
located near UMSL
The Exorcist wasn’t just a movie. Apparently, some real shit went down in St. Louis involving a possession and they had to call priests in from SLU. In the real version of the story, it was a young boy who had been possessed. His family came to stay here at this house at 8435 Roanoke, where he was visited by priests and where they witnessed his bed shaking and objects flying across the room. The priests received permission from the archbishop to perform an exorcism and they began here before moving to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in south city.
Photo courtesy of Google Maps
Old State Mental Hospital Chains
5300 Arsenal St, Louis, MO 63139
It’s said that the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center on Arsenal between Hampton and Kingshighway is the site of an state mental hospital and that chains still hang in the basement — a grim reminder of barbaric ancient mental health-care standards. There is also a crematorium right there, which is always the easiest way to upgrade the creepy-factor. We hear they give tours of the old rooms if you ask politely.
Photo courtesy of Romanovska Liudmyla / Shutterstock
Seven Gates to Hell in Collinsville, IL
Collinsville, MO
These “gates” are graffiti-covered railroad bridges and it’s said that if you drive under all of them in a specific order and pass beneath the seventh gate exactly at midnight that it will open a portal to hell and you can momentarily glimpse the lake of fire. Suburban kids looking for a thrill have been crossing the river to chase this devil since at least the 1990s, and as far as we know, nobody has seen the dark side quite yet.
Photo courtesy of screengrab from YouTube
Equadome
Highway 94, St. Charles, MO
Rumored to be the place where a satanic cult had its ceremonies and did animal sacrifices, this abandoned building was creepy as hell. And aside from goosebump factor, it was in such a deteriorated state that thrill-seekers could find any manner of trouble there, including injuries from falls through holes in the floors. Many of the buildings on this site have been brought down since its heyday, but one structure still stands. Visit if you dare.
Photo courtesy of get screengrab from youtube
Koch Road near Oakville
Koch Road, St. Louis, MO 63125
From a reader: “A hospital from the late 1800s used to be located there and was mainly used for quarantining patients with highly contagious diseases. The legend was that there were patients in hospital gowns still roaming the property and you could hear their cries for help.” True or not, it’s a creepy area and stoned high school kids have been freaking each other out there for generations.
Photo courtesy of Paolo Sartorio / Shutterstock
Crematorium at the White House Jesuit Retreat
7400 Christopher Drive, St. Louis, MO 63129
Every crematorium is going to have a legend built around it by the kids in the neighborhood. But this one is particularly tantalizing because it’s on the property of a Jesuit retreat. Silence is encouraged here, which just seems to help the legend grow even stronger. Many outsiders claim that the people here just don’t want anyone inside to gossip about the multiple hauntings on the grounds.
Photo courtesy of BonNontawat / Shutterstock
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