The murdered Villisca Children have been dead for over 100 years, but their pleas can still be heard through the hallways and bedrooms of their Iowa home with the help of modern technology and a vigilant paranormal team (PRISM). You can hear the results of their investigations at the end of this article, but to understand the true nature of their cries it’s important to understand their tragic history first.
One night in June 1912, between midnight and 5a.m., someone with an axe mercilessly hacked his way through 508 E 2nd St., in Villisca Iowa,, killing 8 people as they slept; six of those people were children. There are many theories as to the identity of the killer, but to this day it remains a mystery.
The crime may be unsolved, but 100 years later, thanks to some incredible Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), the children still speak as if they are reliving that night over and over again.
The murder victims are parents Josiah Moore and Sara Montgomery Moore, and their children:
Herman Moore, 11 years old
Katherine Moore, 9 years old
Boyd Moore, 7 years old
Paul Moore, 5 years old
Two houseguests were also killed; badly mutilated and unrecognizable:
Lena Gertrude Stillinger*, 12 years old
Ina May Stillinger*, 8 years old.
It is the younger children that seem to be more active in the house, they are drawn to the living and want only to be comforted; their voices sometimes reveal that the killer is there with them and they desperately want to hide from him 100 years later.
The highly respected Paranormal Research and Investigative Studies Midwest (PRISM) and ORBS research team, have caught some of the most chilling evidence of the haunting on tape. With today’s technology, the team can remove ambient noises during the recording, clean it up, and enhance the children’s voices to an almost conversational clarity. The ORBS evidence of the children screaming inside the house while the crew was outside will make your skin crawl.
PRISM paranormal founder David Pierce Rodriguez, compiled some of the best audio evidence of these children and their desperate attempts to communicate with the living. In fact, if you listen to the children’s voices in the video and EVP recordings, you can hear them talking to each other. The, “He’s going to get us Paul” EVP is one of the most chilling.
EVP is a paranormal research technique that uses recording devices to capture otherworldly beings either intentionally or by mistake. Some skeptics say that this form of evidence is merely the brain interpreting sounds as voices and putting them together as words.
Whatever you might think of the paranormal, Rodriguez’s compiled evidence is very compelling, and the voices are very clear. He first gives you the recording as it was recorded, then slows it down and removes the static in order to make the children’s pleas more isolated.
Skeptics that think the whole EVP phenomenon is a hoax, can stay overnight at the Villisca Axe Murder House and collect evidence for themselves. But for now, you can make up your mind by listening to the EVPs below:
To take a virtual tour of the Villisca house you can visit here, click the icon in the upper left-hand corner called “Display Navigation Map” and choose the room you wish to investigate. The PRISM investigation team’s videos can be found on their YouTube page here. The official page for the Villisca Ax Murder House can be found here.
*A very astute reader has pointed out that in fact the two house guests were Lena Gertrude Stillinger and Ina May Stillinger, not their sisters Edith and Blanche as origianlly written. Thank you “
