You never know where you’re going to find your next treasure online. How about a site devoted to investigating haunted houses in the Kansas City, MO area?
Independence, MO, famous as the home of Harry S Truman, lies just to the east of Kansas City. There are several historic Victorian homes in Independence open to the public, one of which is the Vaile Mansion. The Vaile Mansion, named after its original owner Harvey Vaile, was designed by architect Asa Cross and completed in 1882. Its structure is Gothic. Harvey Vaile, an extremely wealthy lawyer and landowner, lived in it with his wife Sophia.
A newspaper article from the Kansas City Times, written in 1882, called the home a Mansion d’Or, or Mansion of Gold. Today the mansion is owned by the City of Independence and is maintained by the Vaile Victorian Society, whose members have restored the interior and exterior of the home, including fully furnishing it with antique Victorian furniture in the home’s original style. And yes, rumor has it that the mansion is haunted.
The team at Ghost Vigil Investigations duly took up the case. No, I’m not making this up. The team did a pre-investigation visit and devoted a page of their site to it. This page includes 49 photographs taken by the team. Of these, 13 are of the exterior, including a close-up of the Victorian doors at the main entrance, and 36 are of the interior.
The mansion has 112 windows and 9 fireplaces. Some photographic highlights include the copper bathtub, the Victorian beds with high headboards, and the ceiling art. On the ceiling of the master bedroom is a life-sized woman in a reclining pose. It was done by an Italian painter who was given free access to the extensive wine cellar. (Harvey Vaile owned vineyards.) Originally the woman on the ceiling was nude from the waist up. Very scandalous! Sophia Vaile was reportedly ostracized by the ladies of Independence because of it, and a lace bodice was added to make the painting more modest.
Ghost Vigil Investigations treats us to a very full description of the life of Harvey and Sophia Vaile, as well as the subsequent history of the house. Well, some strange things happened there. Early in the 1880s Harvey Vaile was accused of being involved in defrauding the government, and in 1883 Sophia took a fatal overdose of morphine. The rest is mysterious history.
In the early 20th century, the mansion was used as a retirement home, where surgery was performed and uncontrollable patients were locked away. I’ll let Ghost Vigil Investigations fill you in with all the details.
I’ve provided two links here. The first is to the pre-investigation page. The second is to the page with the details of the investigation itself. Pretty eerie. A mausoleum with an extra casket and a lot of paranormal activity, which is focused on that master bedroom! It reminds me of a Wilkie Collins novel. We also get a lot more pictures of the mansion and many more intriguing details.
So if you like Victorian mystery along with your antique Victorian furniture, this is well worth your time.
See the pre-investigation here.
See the investigation here. (Some of this appears to be under construction, but there’s plenty that’s complete.)
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