In October 1898, a traveling salesman named Jeremiah Holloway vanished without a trace from a hotel in the Ozarks mining settlement of Thorn Creek, Missouri. His disappearance, never officially solved, spawned more than a century of disturbing accounts, hidden documents, and unexplained phenomena that continue to surface today. Holloway, a 38-year-old representative for West Morland Mining Supply Company of St. Louis, was known as a methodical and reliable salesman who had served the company for 11 years.
He arrived at the Epstein Hotel on October 13, 1898, to finalize a substantial order with the Thorn Creek Mining Company, and was expected back in St. Louis by October 20. On the morning of October 17, he failed to appear at a scheduled business meeting, prompting the company secretary to send the hotel porter to check on him. The porter found Holloway’s room impeccably clean and orderly, with his clothes, wallet, business cards, and gold pocket watch all present.
The only anomalies were two stopped clocks, both frozen at 3:17. Guests in the hotel that night reported hearing strange sounds around 3:00 a. m. , including what sounded like a heavy object being dragged across the floor and whispers coming from the walls.
One guest described a peculiar odor of damp earth emanating from the hallway. Holloway was never seen again, and his body was never found. The hotel was owned by Montgomery Epstein, a 63-year-old businessman from Philadelphia who had built the property in 1880 during the lead mining boom. Epstein had arrived in the Ozarks after a mysterious period during which he vanished from all public records between 1865 and 1877.
He was known for keeping to himself, dressing formally in a black suit, and rarely speaking to neighbors. Sheriff Bartholomew Quinn closed the investigation after only three days, concluding that Holloway had likely left to pursue another business opportunity. The case was filed away, and room 217 was promptly cleaned and made available for new guests. A telegraph sent to Holloway’s employer was met with disbelief, with company officials declaring it impossible that their reliable salesman would abandon his post.
Holloway’s journal, discovered at the scene by the porter, was never annexed to the official case file. It remained missing for decades until 1964, when a carpenter renovating an old courthouse in Thorn Creek found the notebook hidden inside a false wall. The document was eventually delivered to the history department at the University of Missouri, where it was filed in restricted archives and remained inaccessible for years. The first entries in the journal were ordinary notes about sales meetings and dinner conversations.
But over the following days, Holloway’s handwriting became increasingly tremulous as he described unsettling experiences at the hotel. He wrote of vivid dreams where he wandered corridors that opened onto brick walls, of hearing his name called from empty hallways, and of waking to find his possessions mysteriously rearranged. He also described encountering a woman in a white nightgown in the corridor at night, though Epstein insisted no female guests were registered. Holloway recorded hearing whispers in the walls that seemed to speak a language he did not recognize, yet somehow felt he should understand.
He noted that Epstein watched him constantly and that his eyes never seemed to blink. In his final complete entry, written late on October 17, Holloway expressed his intention to investigate the cellar and a small locked door he had noticed there. He wrote that he suspected Epstein was not what he appeared to be and that the walls themselves seemed alive. He said he feared for his safety but could not bring himself to leave before understanding what was happening.
The final page of the journal contained only a few scrawled words, followed by a single sentence written in surprisingly clear handwriting, so different from the previous text that it raised questions about whether it was written by the same person. That sentence read, “I finally understood what he wanted from the beginning. ”
The deeper investigators looked, the more troubling details emerged. Records from the old Springfield Medical College revealed inconsistencies in the death of Epstein’s wife, Millisent, who died in 1896.
The official death certificate listed cardiac arrest from typhoid fever, but a more detailed medical report described the patient alternating between extreme agitation and lethargy, reporting disturbing visions, and insisting there was something in the walls watching her. The report noted that she occasionally spoke in an unknown language during episodes of delirium and begged not to be returned to the hotel, claiming it “waits for me there. ” The report included an addendum stating that she died at precisely 3:17 a. m.
, at which moment all the electric lights in the ward flickered, and a nurse reported hearing whispering in a foreign tongue. The attending physician also noted unusual post-mortem characteristics and that Epstein arrived within 30 minutes of her death despite no telegram being sent. A passenger manifest discovered by a later researcher showed that Epstein had traveled from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to New Orleans in 1895. Millisent Epstein had reportedly mentioned in her final illness that her husband acquired an ancient artifact during that trip, an object he kept in a special compartment in the hotel and which she claimed communicated with her through the walls.
The hotel changed ownership after Epstein’s death in 1904, but a series of subsequent owners all left within short periods. Randolph Sullivan, a banker from Kansas City, purchased the property and invested heavily in renovations, only to sell it five months later at a significant financial loss. Sullivan reportedly said the building was not suitable for a family with peace of mind. Sullivan described inexplicable events during his brief occupancy, including objects that disappeared and reappeared in different places, strange sounds in the walls, and a persistent odor of damp earth in the master bedroom.
His wife began reciting phrases in her sleep that a governess identified as Haitian Creole, a language she had never been exposed to. A final incident involving a mysterious photograph appearing in their room prompted the family to leave immediately. In 1969, Professor Abernathy Crawford, a historian with training in psychology, obtained authorization to study Holloway’s journal. The document disturbed him so deeply that he abandoned his original research on the social history of the Ozarks and dedicated himself exclusively to investigating the case.
Crawford found that witnesses described a tall, thin man in dark clothes and a wide-brimmed hat who was seen visiting Epstein after nightfall in the months before his wife’s death. A boarding house resident who lived near the hotel in 1898 reported seeing a similar figure leaving the hotel at dawn on the morning Holloway disappeared, carrying something wrapped in dark cloth. She never reported the sighting to authorities, saying that Sheriff Quinn was in Epstein’s pocket and that some things are best not noticed. The professor also learned that the hotel had unusual architectural features, including a cellar that occupied only half of the space it should have, with a small dark wooden door in the dividing wall that Epstein always kept locked.
When questioned during the initial investigation, Epstein claimed the area contained only old furniture and personal effects. In one notebook, Crawford recorded a disturbing personal experience that began after months of investigation. He suffered from insomnia, heard scratching in the walls of his own home at precisely the same times each night, and experienced recurring dreams of a corridor with numbered doors identical to Holloway’s description. In his last known notation about the case, he described a dream in which Epstein spoke to him directly, and upon waking, he found a matchbox on his desk.
The matchbox bore a pre-1900 label showing the steamship line logo of the vessel Epstein had returned from Haiti on. Inside was a single match and a scrap of yellowed paper with the words “The walls have eyes” written in what preliminary analysis suggested was Holloway’s handwriting. Crawford formally abandoned his research after this incident. He insisted on burning all his notebooks related to the case, developed an aversion to enclosed spaces, removed all photographs from his home, and repeatedly had contractors examine his walls for irregularities.
A journalist who attempted to reopen the investigation in 1960 died of a heart attack three months after publishing his article. A colleague later told researchers that the journalist had become increasingly paranoid in the weeks before his death, had begun covering his mirrors, and had shown him an old photograph that he claimed kept appearing among his research notes. The colleague said the image showed a man seated at a desk with a tall, thin shadow standing behind him that did not look quite right. The hotel was demolished in 1952 after sitting empty for nearly a decade.
During the demolition, workers broke up the cemented cellar floor and discovered a small wooden door sealed with black wax. Inside the hidden compartment, they found a box of matches, a broken perfume bottle, and a faded photograph showing an elderly man with completely black eyes, with a message on the back that was too faded to fully read. A worker also reported finding a small box carved from bone containing a thin layer of dark powder. He burned the object that same night.
The site where the hotel once stood now houses a small department store. Employees report strange occurrences, including merchandise that changes position, footsteps on the upper floor when the building is empty, and a persistent aroma of old perfume. These occurrences reportedly intensify in October. Some employees refuse to close the store alone and no employee works after sunset.
During a recent renovation, workers found a small silver medallion embedded in the concrete bearing the inscription “ME 1898. ” The object was donated to the town’s historical museum, where the security cameras reportedly failed at precisely 3:17 a. m. on the night after it was placed on exhibit.
When the system began functioning again seven minutes later, the medallion had rotated 180 degrees inside its locked display case. A museum employee also reported hearing scratching from inside the walls on several occasions. Crawford died in September 1978 before completing his research. Much of his collected material on the case inexplicably disappeared during a reorganization of the university archives in 1972, with only a few notebooks and correspondence remaining.
In one of his final notes, Crawford speculated about the case, discussing an Ozark folklore concept called a soul-broker, an entity that makes agreements and eventually returns to collect a payment much more valuable than the beneficiary initially perceives. He noted parallels with certain Haitian folk traditions and observed that Epstein’s trip to Haiti was followed by his wife’s illness and death, followed by Holloway’s disappearance. He concluded with a warning: “Some knowledge is too dangerous to pursue. Some entities should not be acknowledged, for attention is a form of invitation.
There are mysteries that once noticed begin to notice you in return. ”
The truth about what happened to Jeremiah Holloway in October 1898 remains unknown. His body was never found, and official records continue to list his case as a disappearance.
The final sentence of his journal, “I finally understood what he wanted from the beginning,” has never been explained.