St. Louis Ghost Tour

16. McDowell Medical College

St. Louis, MO

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Founded in the 1840s, McDowell Medical College at Kemper College was the first medical training school west of the Mississippi River. But the school’s esteem had a darker side, complete with tales of torturous terror and corpse stealing. The school no longer stands, and has been built over, yet some spirits choose to remain. Within seven years of its founding, medical school dean Dr. Joseph McDowell left the school after Kemper College could no longer support the facility. A resourceful McDowell was determined to remain teaching, and constructed a new building. Located at Ninth and Gratiot Streets, the building housed medical students learning to save lives through the tumultuous times of the Civil War. One of McDowell College’s specialty training skills was in the surgical arts. Dr. McDowell focused heavily on teaching his students anatomy, and in turn, the young doctors learned by dissecting the deceased. But, dissection at the time wasn’t an easy feat. There was no regular practice of donating bodies to science, and the general public didn’t fully understand the scientific benefits of dismemberments. Dr. McDowell taught his students to find corpses wherever they could — namely, local cemeteries that had closed for the evening. Recently buried loved ones were not laid to rest long as their families believed, instead ending up on the cold slab dissection tables of McDowell College. Sometimes, McDowell would go to the lengths of snatching barely-cold bodies from homes, instigating riots and search parties throughout the town in an effort to retrieve loved ones. But once the Civil War struck, the building served a renewed purpose. McDowell allowed the building to be used as a prison to house Confederate soldiers, spies and soldiers on both sides accused of treason or desertion. The poor state of the hospital, infested with pests and dirty from the packed conditions, caused sickness to spread throughout. But, if a soldier died from illness, their fate would be far better than having experienced the torture of guards. The prison’s keepers would randomly shoot inmates for minor offenses or for fun, and beatings were commonplace. Numerous men and women died within the building, stuck forever in the prison’s crowded chambers. Following the Civil War, McDowell remodeled the building, but chose to keep some portions untouched to please his strange fixation on death. By 1868, McDowell was dead, and over the next few decades, portions of the college were condemned. By the turn of the century, the building was torn down. But, while the walls are gone, the spirits of the imprisoned remain. Visitors to the site describe both cruel laughs and agonizing screams and other strange sounds of torture that have yet to disappear.