A private house in Atchison, Kansas, said to be haunted by a girl called Sallie. We found no record of her; the first trace is a 1990s tenants' account.
The story
The Sallie House is a town house in Atchison, Kansas. Wikipedia dates it to the mid-nineteenth century, while other sources we could not recheck give 1867 to 1871, or 1871 for a Michael C. Finney and his family, and an amateur site says the early 1880s. We read no permit, land record or census that settles it. The house is tied to a Dr. Charles Finney. Wikipedia says some people believe he practiced medicine there, but the floor plan does not support it, and we could not confirm in any register that he lived there or was a doctor.
The documented part is thin and recent. In 1993 (a Ghost Adventures summary says 1992) a couple of tenants moved in with their baby, and the events they report began soon after; they later told their story on television and moved out. Over the following years the house had several private owners who did not stay, and at one point it was rented as a haunted bed and breakfast, according to an undated amateur site. Wikipedia says it has been vacant since the 1990s, which sits badly with that rental. According to Wikipedia it went on sale in February 2016 at 1 million dollars, was cut to 499,000 that August and was withdrawn in November 2017. We could not find who owns it today.
The legend
The ghost is Sallie, a girl of about six. In the story, her mother brought her to the doctor with severe abdominal pain, he suspected a burst appendix and began surgery before the anesthetic took effect, and she died. We found nothing that documents this. Wikipedia says there is no physical evidence that a Sallie lived or died there, and Scripps News says some researchers hold that no girl of that name lived in the town. Another rarely seen version, from an urban-legend site we did not read, makes her the daughter of a former slave, which contradicts the Finney version. None of the sources we read explains where the name comes from.
The activity is reported especially by male visitors and tenants, some of whom said they were scratched until they bled. This gave rise to the nickname of the man-hating ghost, an interpretation added afterwards. A darker entity behind Sallie is an idea from an episode of Paranormal Witness, for which we found no evidence. Wikipedia mentions a claim that the mayor invented the story to promote Atchison, but the claim is marked as needing a citation and we found nothing to support it, so we do not state it. One person from the local chamber of commerce is reported as mentioning headaches in the house.
The oldest dated trace of the legend is the 1993 tenants' account, broadcast during the 1990s. We found nothing earlier. A search of American newspapers up to 1963 for Sallie House and for Dr. Finney of Atchison returned no results. We found no hoax shown, no formal denial and no record.
The television history, as listed by Wikipedia: Sightings in the 1990s, A Haunting in 2006, Paranormal Witness in 2013, Ghost Adventures on 17 January 2015, and BuzzFeed Unsolved in 2016 and 2021. Books by Rayborn (2021), Granato (2015) and Colclasure (2019) are cited by Wikipedia and were not read. An Atchison Globe article of January 2015 was also not read. The legend therefore depends on tenants' reports from the 1990s, repeated by television, with no earlier source for the girl.
What remains today
The house is private and described as vacant. Scripps News describes a local investigators' group going inside with its reporters, but the present ownership and status are unknown.
Visiting
The Sallie House is private property and we found no current public visits, so we give no address. Please do not approach or disturb it. If you are curious, the television episodes listed above are the legal way to see inside.
The ghosts
Sallie
Said to be Said to be a girl of about six who died during an appendix operation; we found no record of her.
A child said to haunt the house, supposedly after an operation begun before the anesthetic worked. The most frequent report is of men being scratched, which gave her the nickname of the man-hating ghost.
- Apparitions
- Being touched
First reported: 1992 or 1993 (tenants' account), nothing earlier found. Reported by: A couple who rented the house in 1993, then television investigators
Where it is
The circle shows the general area only. Open on the full map
Sources
- USGS 1:125000-scale Quadrangle for Atchison, KS 1885 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1885 · Public domain (USGS)
- USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Kansas City, MO 1956 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1956 · Public domain (USGS)
- USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Atchison, KS 1926 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1926 · Public domain (USGS)
- The Ghost of Sallie House — stronghold-nation.com
- The hauntings of the Sallie House — Scripps News
- Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.
Spotted a mistake? Report an error