AxeMan Avenger

Looking at her friends gathered around the table, Jill begins to tell her great grandmother's story of her stay at a rural haunted house. The first time my great grandmother talked about the axe murders in St. Joseph, MO, I was on the front porch, with a train whistle echoing nearby. The rumors are the axe murderer passed right by her place here on 290 So. 5th street. She loved telling stories and on this Halloween night, this was one of her best.

It is a cold and breezy night on October 31st, 1910. The twin sisters Sally and Melissa Baxter were getting ready to go trick or treating in their ghost costumes with cutouts for eyes, nose, and mouth. The sun had set and the trick or treaters were out running from house to house, knocking on doors and shouting trick or treat. The girls hit the street and went to their right and around the corner to the first house. New neighbors moved in two weeks ago, but no one has seen them since last weekend. Sally and Melissa knock on the door and when it opens, on the other side, there stands a six and half foot tall, husky figure with a goolish monster mask on and he is yielding an axe with something dark dripping from the blade onto the floor. The girls looked at each other and were ready to turn and run when the man put down his axe and picked up a bowl of candy. Hesitantly, the girls observed the man as he extended the bowl out to the girls.

Sally looks at him and extends her pillow case out to him and he drops in a Hershey candy bar, and she thanks him. Melissa extends her pillow case and receives the same treat and thanks him. Before Sally turned to go, she looked at the monster and asked, "where is Betty Jo, the girl that moved in with her family two weeks ago?" "She was supposed to go trick or treating with us?" The figure grunts, picks up his axe, and closes the door. Sally looks at Melissa and shrugs her shoulders. Not thinking any more about Betty Jo and her family or the figure they just encountered. They head off into the night to collect more candy in the neighborhood. Short and tall kids are running around dressed up as Frankenstein, Dracula, the evil witch, and the devil, when all the sudden Melissa screamed. Sally looked at her and Melissa pointed to the tall, husky figure with the dripping axe. Sally and Melissa both screamed and scuttled to hide behind the thick bushes. The figure was walking their way down the middle of the street, his axe blade dragging and leaving trails of dark fluid on the street and stepping up on the walkway, heading towards them. "Sh," said Sally to Melissa, don't breathe, we don't want him to hear us. Melissa whispers, how can he hear us over that loud scraping of the blade on the sidewalk? The other kids were running and walking to other houses on the block, and were oblivious to the axe man scraping his axe on the sidewalk. Sally and Melissa watched him disappear into the darkness as the scraping became fainter in the distance.

Sally jumped up and said "Come on," Melissa let's find out where he is going.

"Are you nuts?" I don't want to follow a monster with an axe. 

"Issy" said Sally, her given nickname when they turned three. He isn’t a real monster, but a tall kid dressed up for Halloween. I want to see where he is going because I find it peculiar that he handed us candy from the house without seeing the family that just moved in. 

Issy says, "What if he murdered the family and no one has discovered their bodies?" And now he knows we know!

"We better get going Issy," he's turned the corner toward the railroad tracks.

"Okay, but you are downright crazy girl, but exceptionally fun on Halloween," Said Issy.

The girls take off running as fast as they can and reach the corner of the street. In the distance, they can hear the 8pm train whistle, warning not to cross the railroad tracks until after it travels through. They turn the corner and see the shadowy figure stepping off at the end to cross the street to the railroad tracks. There was just enough street light for the girls to make out his shadow while dragging his horrendous screeching, bloody dripping axe on the street. The figure stops and stands at the edge of the tracks. The girls reach the end of the block just across from the tracks where the figure is standing, faced away from them. The train slowly rolls in from the left and as they watch, the figure lifted on air, more like floated up to the entry door and floated through it. They could no longer see his figure. They both gasp and shriek. "That's not possible for a human to do." 

The girls sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and, without wasting time, each grabbed their candy bags. Sally took out a Hershey bar and Issy took out her Mr. Goodbar. Each began ripping open the paper and breaking away a piece of the chocolate bar. Sally was excited with delight, "this is so delicious." Issy breaks off a piece of her good bar and takes a bite, giggling with happiness. Forgetting what they had just encountered, the chocolate appeared to ease all their suspicions until they suddenly heard the train horn blowing in the distance. Each was halfway through their candy bar when the train slowly rolls in from the right. It slowed down while both of them are watching, they see a shadowy figure appear across the street before them, near the train tracks. He moves to the center of the street toward them, dragging the bloody axe. His mask hides his face, so they can't tell if he sees them. Evidently not, Sally thinks, because he walks right by them with the axe clanking loudly along the street.

Sally says, "even with this feeling too spooky, we have to follow him again!"

Issy says "girl, you are flippin' out of your mind, he's obviously a ghost with no carnal soul."

"Come on, it will be fun to see where he goes now."

They reach the corner of the street perpendicular to their street at the other end. They see the shadowy figure more or less floating along the top of the street, heading back to the house where he handed out candy to them. Only his axe touched the street, clanking the entire way to the front door. 

The girls walked quietly by the house. They could see the house was as dark inside as it was outside. They both stood out front, looking at the front door. The porch light was off, so this meant that no candy will be handed out. The girls cut across the greenway to their home. When they turned around, they could see the back of the house at 66 W. 6th street. Through the back window, the essence of the light illuminated through the curtains. Just then, a large shadowy figure walked across and back again before standing in front of the window and pulling back the curtains. Just then, someone jumped out from behind the door and screeched, BOOOOOO! Both girls jumped back screaming, spilling their candy from their pillow sheets onto the ground. It was their father playing his regular Halloween prank. After they picked up their candy, they headed back into the house and before sitting down, each looked back to the window and it was dark. Nothing was moving. They both sat down at the kitchen table with their parents.

"Papa, didn't you see that gigantic shadow standing at the window at the back of the house catty corner to us? "It was an actual monster, and he gave us candy when we first started our trick or treating this evening," both girls said together.

"You saw a monster, and he gave you candy?" said their father.

"Yes, he was tall and husky and carried an axe." He opened the door from the home around the corner of us. You know where the new family moved in two weeks ago! Except I saw no one else other than him. The house was dark inside and I couldn't see past his big frame. But that's not all, we saw him again further down the street with the axe blade and a dark fluid dripping from it, as he let it drag on the sidewalk so it would make a horrible scraping clanking sound.

"What did you say, Sally?" said her father.

"He walked down the middle of the street with the blade of the axe dragging on the ground and it had a dark fluid dripping from it." Issy and I noticed him and hid as he walked by. We then followed him to the west side of the railroad tracks.

"You did what?" shouted their dad. "Just because it is Halloween, you don't follow strangers in a mask carrying a bloody axe. "Did he see you?"

"No," said Sally. He disappeared into the train that came by going north and ten minutes later the train reappeared heading south when he reappeared outside the train, exactly where he first entered, but his feet were not walking, instead they were floating on top the surface with the axe clanking behind him.

"Oh my gawd Sally, I believe you saw the ghost of Lee Harry, the identical twin of ,"Billy the Axeman" murderer. Billy and Lee Harry grew up here in St. Joseph in the house right around the corner from our home. After Billy murdered his parents on October 31, 1910, he disappeared and was never seen again. His twin brother Lee planned on living in his parents' house, hoping that his brother would one day come home. Because they are twins, they each know what the other one is thinking. But he never saw Billy’s Halloween scare before he killed his parents while Lee was sleeping over at a friend's house on the other side of town.

In his dreams, he sees Billy in the places he travels with an axe. In each dream, Lee reaches out to his twin to save him from being a killer, but Billy looks at him and laughs as he raises the axe and swings it down into their father's head. A loud thud with blood and brain matter splattering across his face and on the wall and ceiling. Without a second to waste, he swung the axe hard on his Mother's head, smashing it ten more times so that her face and eyes were gone. Lee can feel his fear; he trembles from the pain and injustice Billy creates murdering his family while they sleep." Gasping for air, he wakes up sitting in bed. Cold sweat is running down his back and chest, and he is out of breath. It's the same nightmare night after night after night.

The next morning, Lee discovered his parents bludgeoned bodies in their beds with a bloody axe nearby and blood dripping from the blade. When the police came to investigate, they quickly arrested Lee for his parents' murders. They couldn't find Billy anywhere, so they speculated Lee had murdered him and hid his body. Though his body was never found, Lee was sentenced to die by electrocution on the following Halloween in 1911. At the eleventh hour, the governor gave him a stay of execution. His sentence was commuted to life in prison plus three hundred years.

Joe, their father, tells this Halloween ghost story every year to them on Halloween night. He looks at the girls and says, "the ghost of Lee returns to his home to avenge the killings by his brother Billy," the axeman murderer who traveled the country after killing his parents. Not only did he kill his parents, but he killed his sister Betty Jo and her two twin sister friends that were spending the night.

Their Mother was sitting quietly next to their father, when Joe stands up and heads down the walkway, and returns with a big oval object that has a sheet draped over it. Both girls sat together in the middle facing the table while Joe places the tall oval object with the sheet over it on the other side in front of them. He proceeds to take his chair and places it slightly behind Issy to her right. Their Mother stands up and picks up her chair and places it slightly behind and to the left of Sally. Sally and Issy look at each other bewildered, but their father comforts them and says, "we love you both so much" and Halloween night was hell for all of us on Oct 31st, 1910, and he gently pulls the sheet off the mirror.

The girls look in the mirror and scream in horror. Sally sees the top of her head smashed open, with brain matter dripping from the left side. Her front skull is bashed in and one eye is missing. She looks at her sister and noticed her entire face was gone and she sees her skull only dripping in blood. Sally looks in the mirror towards her Mother and sees an angelic aura with bright light filled with love and sorrow. Issy looks in the mirror at her father and sees him embraced with a white aura filled with love and sorrow.

Looking back to the center of the mirror, both girls are happy to see the same white aura around them both, with a tablet before them displaying written words.

Our darling angels, "you each were stolen from us on a hellish night to never let us hug you again. We will never get Halloween night again you, neither will we get to play bat mitten yard games, or get to watch you grow up." In honor of your memory, we celebrate this one time each year because we don't want this to be our last holiday with you both. Mama and Papa love you both and pray we meet in the heavens where our spirits shine.

The note continues:

We, your parents, miss and love you eternally. Our journey for love has never stopped to bring you both back home safe and sound from Halloween night."

This is when, great-grandmother tells me she wakes up from her dream, spending the night in this rural haunted home. Where each family member and a neighbor's twins were killed with an axe. The murderer has never been caught, but for those who stay at this house, each one has reported paranormal activity. The girls can be heard laughing and squealing and calling for their Mother when they play too rough. Or, she said, she would stand in the bathroom and feel someone poke her on the shoulder, then laugh. She would turn around and smile and acknowledge the young spirit teasing her. The girls never frighten no one when they stay the night, but many report hearing the clanking of an axe on the street just outside the window from a few feet away. Supposedly, Lee was falsely accused of the murders by the police and he haunts the streets and trains in search of his brother to avenge his wrongdoing. The reason the twins see him being nice to them, it yields up hate and remorse for what his brother did. So, year after year, he appears here to search for his brother and avenge his wrongful death and to clear his name.

I'm looking at my friends' faces, and they are wide-eyed, or so it appears from the black light lamp we are sitting under. So which one of you wants to stay the night in the Billy Axeman home with me next Halloween? An axe clanking on the ground is heard on the street below. Jill looks out the window and she see's a tall, husky figure dragging a long-handled axe, clanking on the street. Everyone takes a long chug of their beer before changing the subject.