We’ve all heard the stories about the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane. But in Boonslick, people were spoked by ghostly headless horses. In The Haunted Boonslick: Ghosts, Ghouls and Monsters of Missouri’s Heartland, author Mary Collins Barile gives a history of the area, and mentions that these ghost stories are ones that are unknown to outsiders, yet important to the history of the region. The precise boundaries of the Boonslick Trail are vague—it runs from St. Louis to Jackson County and sometimes even to the Ozarks—and Barile does her best to tell tales of ghosts and spirits from many sites around the area. She recouts the stories of Native American and slave spirits, Guinea Sam, the Conjure Man, the ghost music of John “Blind” Boone, and the various haunting of the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou) campus, among many other tales that are sure to keep readers up at night.
You can get a preview of the book here; it's available at local bookstores, and will probably be in a prominent place and easy to find, since Halloween is nigh. For more on Missouri ghosts, click here and here.
