GUY FROM ‘HAU NTED HOSPITALS’ THE STEP BY ESTEP GUID E TO THE PARANORMAL WITH THAT
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Reader discretion advised.Disturbing account depicted.
From the pen of Richard Estep
H
e came into town on the train, just one more anonymous face among the hundreds that came through Villisca, Iowa, each year. The drifter traveled from state to state, riding the rails, going wherever the mood took him. He left a trail of carnage in his wake. After scouting the town, he soon found the ideal house. A simple two-story affair in a quiet neighbourhood, the property belonged to Josiah (J.B.) Moore and his wife, Sara. The Moores’ had four children of their own, and after returning from a late church function on the evening on June 9, 1912, two of their daughter’s friends accompanied them for an impromptu sleepover. Some believe that the man was watching them from the barn, through a hole in the wood that would be discovered later. Others think that he was already concealed in the house, having broken in earlier that evening, and was hiding in the attic, waiting for the family to go to bed. Josiah and Sara slept in the master
bedroom at the top of the stairs, while their children slept in a single room at the opposite end of the house. Downstairs, in a bedroom that belonged to their daughter, Katherine, 8-year old Ina Stillinger and her 11-year-old sister Lena were sleeping. Shortly after midnight, now that the lamps had been doused and everybody was asleep, the man emerged from hiding. He carried J.B. Moore’s own axe into the master bedroom and, seeking to eliminate the greatest threat first, bludgeoned Josiah and his wife to death in the bed they shared. So, frenzied and savage was the attack that the backswing of the axe head left a series of gouges in the bedroom ceiling. With the adults now dead, the killer turned his attention to the kids. All four of the Moore children met the same fate as their parents, their skulls crushed as they lay in bed. Downstairs, Lena, and Ina Stillinger were the last to die.
HAUNTED MAGAZINE
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