Case File: The Screaming House of Missouri

They Ran from their home Barefoot Into the Night.

Case No.: 63UN-2001-MO
Classification: Haunting – Malevolent Entity / Poltergeist Activity
Location: Union, Missouri, USA
Date of Incident: 2001–2003
Filed by: Steven LaChance (resident and author)
Status: Closed – Phenomena Documented, Explanation Inconclusive

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Incident Summary

In May 2001, Steven LaChance, a recently divorced father, moved with his three children into a charming old rental home in Union, Missouri, seeking a fresh start. Almost immediately after moving in, the family began experiencing intense and escalating paranormal activity. What started with unease and the sound of unexplained footsteps rapidly devolved into a full-blown nightmare of psychological torment, ghostly apparitions, and physical attacks.

LaChance documented his experiences in the book The Uninvited, where he describes being driven from the house by a screaming, unseen force—the same terrifying energy that gave the house its now-infamous nickname.

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Phenomena Overview

• Apparitions and Shadow Figures: The family saw a large dark figure with red eyes, sometimes at the foot of the bed or peering through windows.

• Disembodied Voices and Screams: Blood-curdling screams were heard regularly from within the house, even when no one was present.

• Poltergeist Activity: Furniture moved, doors slammed shut, and objects were thrown with violent force.

• Oppressive Atmosphere: Guests and family members reported sudden emotional shifts, dread, and a feeling of being watched.

• Targeted Attacks: Steven’s son was nearly locked in a room by an unseen force. LaChance himself reported being chased from the house by a supernatural entity.

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Investigation Overview

Initial Encounters and Documentation:

After fleeing the home, LaChance began researching its history and documenting his experiences. He later connected with other former tenants who described nearly identical hauntings.

Psychic and Paranormal Involvement:

Several psychics and paranormal researchers visited the house. One psychic claimed it housed a malevolent, non-human entity, possibly demonic, that latched onto people emotionally vulnerable or experiencing turmoil.

Media Coverage:

The house drew attention from paranormal media and was featured on several radio programs and investigative websites. LaChance’s case helped elevate public interest in severe domestic hauntings.

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Investigation and Evidence

• EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena): Captured during later visits to the property.

• Eyewitness Testimony: Multiple tenants before and after the LaChance family recounted nearly identical events, particularly the screaming.

• Psychic Impressions: Many confirmed the presence of suffering, rage, and something inhuman at the heart of the haunting.

• House History: Reports suggest the home had connections to violence, though specific records remain elusive.

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Press Coverage and Public Reaction

The story gained traction after Steven LaChance began speaking publicly about his experience and publishing accounts online. His book The Uninvited was well-received by paranormal enthusiasts and added a personal, psychological layer to the haunting narrative.

Some skeptics criticized the story for being too sensational, but the number of independent corroborations makes the case harder to dismiss. The house itself became a minor local legend in Union, Missouri.

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Case Status

Though LaChance left the home in 2001, he continued to feel the effects of the haunting for years. He claims that whatever was in the house followed him, at least for a time. Other tenants reportedly also fled or experienced breakdowns while living there. The house is now privately owned, and its current status is unknown.

File Archived: Activity Documented – Explanation Inconclusive
Location: Union, Franklin County Archives (Missouri)

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The Story

In the spring of 2001, Steven LaChance was like many newly single parents—trying to rebuild a life, provide for his children, and find stability in the midst of personal chaos. Union, Missouri, was quiet and affordable, and when he found the charming old house on Christina Avenue, he thought he had discovered a hidden gem. The rent was low, the home spacious, and the neighbourhood seemed welcoming. It had the air of a fresh start.

But the house had secrets. And it didn’t want to be a home.

Steven and his three children moved in quickly. There was little time to dwell on the age of the place or its odd quirks. Yet almost immediately, subtle details tugged at his attention. The walls seemed too thin, as if they strained to hold in more than just insulation. The house creaked not from age but like something was shifting—pacing, perhaps. The air in the living room was cold, but not like a draft. It was a presence, and it was watching.

The first few nights were calm. But the silence had weight. At times, Steven would find himself frozen in place, certain someone was standing just behind him. The children spoke of voices at night, but Steven chalked it up to nerves. Until the voices grew louder.

On the seventh night, the screaming began.

It erupted from nowhere—raw, guttural, and agonising. It sounded like a woman being torn apart, echoing down the hallway in the early hours before dawn. Steven leapt from bed, thinking someone had broken in. He searched the entire house with a baseball bat in hand. Nothing. No signs of a break-in. The doors were still locked. The children hadn’t woken. It was as if the scream had been meant for him alone.

Days later, it happened again. And again. The screams became more frequent. The children began to avoid certain rooms. His daughter said she didn’t like the closet in her bedroom because it “breathed.” His youngest claimed a tall black man with red eyes watched him while he slept. The descriptions chilled Steven to the core—it was the same figure he had seen only once, fleetingly, at the edge of his vision: tall, wide-shouldered, featureless except for those burning eyes.

Then things escalated.

Lights flickered and died, even with new bulbs. Cabinets slammed open in the middle of the night. The dog refused to enter the house. A bedroom door locked itself from the inside while Steven’s son was playing. The boy screamed until Steven had to break the door down, only to find the lock had been twisted out of alignment from the inside.

The house was no longer hiding. It was attacking.

Steven began to have terrifying dreams—always of fire, or of a woman screaming from inside the walls. Once, he awoke to find scratches down his arm. Another night, he saw his daughter sitting on the floor of her room, murmuring to something in the corner that he could not see. When he asked who she was talking to, she simply said, “The lady. She lives here too.”

But it was the incident in the basement that broke him.

Steven had gone down to check the fuse box after the entire house had lost power. The basement was colder than it should have been, the air thick and damp. He descended the steps slowly, flashlight in hand. Halfway down, the light flickered and died. In the pitch dark, he heard something whisper his name. Not in a voice he recognised, but in a dry, cracking tone, like dead leaves. Then came the scream—this time right beside his ear. He ran, stumbling back up the stairs, and didn’t stop running until he and his children were in the car, barefoot, in their pyjamas, driving away from the house under the grey morning light.

They never slept there again.

But the house wasn’t finished with him.

In the days that followed, Steven began researching the property. He discovered that multiple families had fled the house under mysterious circumstances. Some had suffered breakdowns. Others had experienced nearly identical hauntings—the screaming, the shadow figure, the psychological torment. The house didn’t haunt. It hunted.

Paranormal investigators were eventually brought in. One psychic claimed the home sat on a dark ley line, amplifying a malevolent energy that drew in or produced inhuman spirits. Another said there was something beneath the house—not a ghost, but a parasite, something that fed on fear. When Steven returned with investigators to document the activity, he was nearly overcome by a blinding panic inside the kitchen. One investigator vomited on the porch and refused to enter again. A woman fainted at the top of the stairs. Recordings taken inside captured screams that none of them heard in person.

Steven’s experiences left a mark that never fully healed. Though he eventually moved to a new home, he claimed that for months, he would wake up at exactly 3:15 a.m.—the time the screams had most often occurred—and feel something standing at the foot of his bed. He could never see it. But he could hear it breathe.

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That night, after fleeing barefoot into the dark, Steven parked in a 24-hour grocery store car park and sat in silence, his kids wrapped in blankets in the back seat. He didn’t speak for a long time. He couldn’t. The house wasn’t just haunted. It had will, and worse, it had intention. He had felt it move through the walls. It wanted them afraid.

The next morning, he returned briefly to gather clothes. He didn’t stay long. The moment he crossed the threshold, the silence was wrong again. Too still. His daughter’s room smelled faintly of burning fabric, though nothing was scorched. The closet door hung open. He hadn’t left it that way.

Later that week, Steven reached out to the landlord to break the lease. When he mentioned the screaming, the man’s tone changed.

“You're not the first to run out screaming,” the landlord muttered. “But you signed a one-year agreement, so you’ll still owe through October.”

“Did someone die in that house?” Steven asked.

“It’s over a hundred years old. I’m sure plenty of people have died in that house.”

When Steven tried pressing further, the man simply said, “Some places get like that. They remember things.”

Feeling stonewalled, Steven turned to the local library and historical society. At first, the records were sparse: built in the early 1900s, the home had changed hands many times. Nothing sensational. But then he noticed a pattern—families rarely stayed more than a year. A few moved out suddenly. One entry in the local newspaper from the late 1970s mentioned a domestic disturbance. No charges filed, but neighbours heard screaming. The word “hysteria” came up. No follow-up.

The deeper he dug, the more the house resisted. Records were missing. Names redacted. One archivist, a woman in her sixties, gave him a long look as he described the property.

“That place? You’re wasting your time. My aunt lived down the street in the ’50s. Said she heard voices in the dead trees in winter, always coming from that yard.”

“Did she ever go inside?”

“No one was ever inside long.”

By then, the nightmares had followed Steven to his new apartment. He’d wake in the early hours, heart pounding, the scream still fading from his ears. One night, his bedroom mirror cracked without warning. Another night, the hallway light turned on by itself and stayed that way for hours—even though it wasn’t connected to a switch anymore.

He began visiting the house again. Not to stay, but to confront it. He brought a local paranormal team with him on one occasion. They set up audio recorders, EMF detectors, motion sensors. One medium stood in the living room, eyes closed, and whispered:

“It’s not a ghost. It’s something that grew here. It’s a sickness. It likes families. It feeds on them.”

Within fifteen minutes, the motion detectors were going off erratically. One investigator swore she felt something grab her wrist, though no one was near her. On the audio review later, a whisper was captured at 2:36 a.m., saying simply: “He brought them.”

Steven eventually met a former tenant—an older woman who had lived in the house briefly in the 1980s. She agreed to meet him in a café.

“The back bedroom’s the worst,” she said. “My husband… well, he stopped sleeping. He’d sit up all night staring at the wall. Said someone was whispering to him through the vent.”

“Did you hear the screaming?” Steven asked.

She looked away. “Everyone hears it. That’s the hook. But the worst part comes after.”

He asked what she meant.

“The house doesn’t want you gone. It wants you broken.”

There were things Steven couldn’t explain—shadows that fell in the wrong direction, rooms colder on the inside than the outside air in midwinter, the heavy scent of old smoke with no source. His children eventually stopped talking about the house. He didn’t push them. But once, while driving past the street, his youngest covered his eyes and whispered: “She’s still in the window.”

Even now, years later, the house remains. New families move in, and some stay. But not for long. A few refuse to talk about their time there. One teenage girl who lived there briefly told a local podcaster that her dreams in that house felt "infected." That she saw her mother in them, screaming, but with someone else’s eyes.

The house has never been formally investigated by any institution. There are no public records of exorcisms or deaths within its walls. But among Missouri’s quieter corners of paranormal lore, it is whispered about. And every so often, someone online stumbles onto the tale—“The Screaming House of Union,” they’ll call it—and goes looking for the truth.

What they usually find is silence.

Until the screaming starts again.

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