The Authentic Haunted Nightmare Mansion In An Old Missouri Town

Gentle Reader, you probably enjoy a good ghost story just as much as I do.

And no, it doesn't matter to me that it's not Spooky Season. You have to be prepared to face ghoulies and ghosts at every opportunity. If I have a chance to combine a good ghost story with some Missouri History, you know I'm down for that.

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So, let me tell you the story of the Guibourd Valle House. Let's. Get. Ghostin!

The Story Of A Haunted House In the Oldest Missouri Town

Our Ghost Central today is in St. Genevieve. Our story begins in the 1800s. Or, more accurately, the 1700s.

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St. Genevieve is, by all historical accounts, the first "organized" settlement west of the Mississippi at the time, and it's the oldest town founded in Missouri. Now of course, when we're talking about all this, we're talking about White Settlers. We're not talking about the real first settlements, the Native Americans. We're talking about the French and the Spanish. Keep in mind that's why they call it "organized", it's probably a term meant to differentiate between them*.

So back in the day this was "New France". But it wasn't settled entirely peacefully. It took the the French and Indian war to get there. In 1762 and 1763, France gave land from the west of the Mississippi to Spain, and the land to the east to England. So while there was a lot of influence under British and Spanish rule before the land was bought during the Louisiana Purchase (which led to the Missouri Compromise in the 1800s), the French influence remains very strong. I bet you can see that in several areas all throughout Missouri... Versailles, I'm lookin' at you.

So anyway, the Spanish were all up in this area, and this house was built to house Spanish officers. In fact, this part of Missouri didn't...become part of Missouri until the Missouri Compromise.

Spanish dudes are boppin around, doing whatever they do, and apparently record keeping wasn't high on the priority list. So we don't know a lot about it. But we do know that Jacques Guibourd and his family owned the house for about a hundred years in the 1800's. They were slave owners, so I get that kind of puts a damper on it, but Jackie had himself a very interesting story.

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Gibby was working at a plantation in Haiti, and needed to beet feet on the double because of a slave uprising. So, he escaped with his slave, Moros. Moros literally put this dude in a barrel and wheeled him out of there. They snuck out and went back to France, where some really nasty business was going down called the Reign of Terror. Basically, it was the time right after the Revolution where they killed just about anyone, publicly, and people would come and watch. So Mo and Gibs were having none of that. They heard there were a lot of French people doing well in the States, so off they went. Of course they had some issues. Every good story has issues, you guys. They weren't floating with the sharks, but..... they did get shipwrecked at some point, and when Jackieboy officially arrived in St Genevieve, dude was flat broke. From what I can find, there's not much mention of Moros and what happened to him. But I think he stayed with JG until he died.

Jack married a local girl named Ursula and ingratiated himself. He got involved in local politics and used her family's money to buy land and get a tannery business going. Jacques died in 1812, and his sons took inheritance of the house. They kept it in the family til the early 1900's.  Clovis G. Boyer bought it, and kept it for about thirty years, before selling to the Valles. Jules and Annie Valle renovated the house and she lived in it for decades, until she died in 1972. When she died, she donated the house to be used as a museum.  And now, it's open for you to tour.

Of course, now... it's HAUNTED AS ALL GET OUT.   Think about it. So you have the possibility of slave ghosts, Native American ghosts, Spanish soldier ghosts, French soldier ghosts, Jackie's family and their ghosts, the "musical family" aka the Boyer ghosts (apparently they like to play music in the house even now), and then all the ghosts with Annie and Jules.  And I'm sure they all have some very, very justified grievances. SO MANY GHOSTS.

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One of my favorite stories about the house I read on Haunted Houses.com. So Jules kicked it in the late forties, which, you know, was somewhat normal in those days. The husband always seems to check out early in comparison to the wife. So Ann is in the house about two months after Jboy died. She's minding her own, havin a nap, when she gets woken up too all kinds of trifling noise. Breaking glass, furniture being tossed....and it was all coming from Jules' room. Now this is the part in the movie where the delicate flower of a lady flees, crying while running, pleading for a man to save her. She's probably going to fall over.  Screaming, you get it.

Not Annie.

She went into the hall outside the door, and yelled, “You are not going to frighten me, or drive me from my home. Now, get out!”

 

And...that was it.  I wonder if she used her Mom Voice.  The ghost apparently was scared enough to STFU.

Well. Just that one. There are so, so many more, and I want to see them all, you guys.  What are some of the Haunted Missouri stories you've heard?

Hauntingly yours,
Behka

*Sounds kinda racist to me, but that's just me. Like, just because they didn't build mansions, the Native Americans weren't "organized"? They were "organized" pretty fine on their own for ages!