A&E's 'Ghost Hunters' scours Cape Girardeau's Glenn House

Christy Mershon did not want to believe Cape Girardeau’s historic Glenn House was haunted. Even though Mershon leads haunted tours of Cape Girardeau landmarks, she approached ghost stories more like folklore than fact, and didn’t want to admit the odd occurrences she’d experienced — repeatedly, sometimes in the presence of other people — could mean the house had actual paranormal activity.

Then one day in 2019, a Glenn family descendant, Sarah Glenn Marsh, contacted the home’s Facebook page after finding an ancestor’s photo with the house’s address inscribed on the back.

Marsh made a trip to visit the house, and, Mershon said, that’s when she couldn’t deny something paranormal had to be happening.

The dining room at the Glenn House in Cape Girardeau is seen Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017, during a holiday-themed tour. The downtown home was recently featured on A&E's "Ghost Hunters" television program.BEN MATTHEWS

Mershon then reached out to the “Ghost Hunters” television program for help, and Wednesday night, some of the results of that investigation aired in a one-hour episode on A&E.

Long history

According to the Southeast Missourian archives, the Glenn House was built around 1880 at 325 S. Spanish St. by architect Edwin Deane for his daughter, Lula, and her husband, David Glenn. The couple had six children, and occupied the home until 1915.

Their story isn’t free from tragedy. Three of their six children died in early childhood. David Glenn, who had chartered the First National Bank of Cape Girardeau in 1891 and served as its president for many years, saw his fortunes decline after the turn of the century, and their home was sold at auction in 1915. It was first conveyed to Henry Rozier, later to John Hunter. The Hunter family resided there until 1953, and the house was later sold to Dr. and Mrs. Sylvester Doggett, and it then came into possession of the Erlbacher family.

In the late 1960s, the Historical Association of Greater Cape Girardeau took possession of the home, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 1979.

While those are some of the people and dates associated with the house’s history, Mershon said, the house has a rich oral tradition as well.

The shoot

“It (‘Ghost Hunters’) was shot over multiple days, in September, when it was right at 100 degrees,” said Mershon, who is co-president of the Historical Association of Greater Cape Girardeau, which is responsible for the Glenn House’s maintenance and operation. “You can tell how hot it was by how glistening we all were.”

Since it was recorded over so many days, to preserve an illusion of continuity, everyone wore the same clothes every day, she said.

That was not pleasant.

But, she said, one question she’s gotten from a lot of people since the episode aired is, how much of what was in the episode was manufactured for the cameras?

Not much, it turns out.

“Obviously, the network wants a scary ghost show,” Mershon said, “but the team that works with Grant (Wilson, show host) does not seem like they’re trying to generate experiences for the camera.

“There is nothing I saw in that episode that did not actually occur,” Mershon said.

The Glenn House has a bell system, originally installed to let servants know where assistance was required. The system had a tendency to go off on its own, when no one could have been operating it, Mershon said.

The bell system footage didn’t make it into the episode, Mershon said, and she suspects that was because the team brought in an electrician and another expert who found problems with the bells’ wiring.

That dedication to ruling out physical explanations impressed Mershon.

“The first day they were on site, I don’t remember if they shot footage, but they did use all of their instruments,” Mershon said.

The team was looking for EMF (electromagnetic frequency) bleed from wiring, for drafts and loose floorboards, that kind of thing, she said.

That way, they had a baseline reading so anything that came up during the investigation could be isolated and reviewed.

Also, Mershon said, the story that unfolded for the team was not the story they necessarily thought they were going to get.

The original hypothesis was that the increased activity in the house was being triggered by Marsh, but after the team spent several nights investigating, their conclusion was far different: Marsh might actually be calming the activity, not worsening it.

Mershon said one of her biggest hesitations with contacting the show was, if they actually found evidence the house is haunted, that’s its own issue, “but equally as bad, what if they find nothing and think I’m a crazy person?”

That’s not a baseless fear. Mershon said she got the sense “Ghost Hunters” visits more sites than they make episodes about.

“They don’t want to waste their time,” she said. “They do a lot of due diligence.”

Homes without inexplicable activity don’t make it on television, she said, which is why the show’s teams seem to always find something.

Production

Mershon said the process is long, with months of production work ahead of actual filming, more than 40 hours of footage condensed to less than one hour of programming, and months of follow-up from the team after the investigation.

“Even as they review the footage, I’d get phone calls six months later. They’d found anomalies and wanted my take on them,” she said.

Mershon said one recurring experience she’s had for several years is the house’s alarm system going off. An app on her phone shows motion in the house.

“Someone’s walking around in there, but I’m looking, and no one’s come in or out,” Mershon said. “That’s typically in the middle of the night.”

That technology gave the team more information, Mershon said.

“They looked at that at length, trying to figure out airflow, or what else could be moving that could trigger those detectors,” she said.

The team’s follow-up has also included checking in with Mershon herself, and how she’s doing.

“Grant and his wife were both very concerned about how nervous it makes me, and how my reaction could be feeding what’s going on in the house,” she said.

That, she said, and off camera, Mershon got “quite a bit of a lecture about my behavior.” Not that she minded, although it was uncomfortable, she said, “but from Grant’s perspective, if I walked into your house and repeatedly tried to talk to you and you ignored me, then I told stories about your family that maybe weren’t so flattering, you would potentially have every reason to be angry with me. That’s a valid point.”

Mershon said the team encouraged her to acknowledge verbally, out loud, that the house is haunted, when she enters.

“That is very hard for me to do,” Mershon said. “We volunteers kind of know that the house is haunted, but it’s different as a professional, rational person. ‘This house is haunted’ is a very hard thing to say.”

Mershon said Marsh and her sister are now on the Glenn House’s board, and a current photo of the extended Glenn family is now in the children’s bedroom — a room with, historically, a lot of activity.

That seems to help, she said.

Activity

When the rationalizations of events started to sound crazier than the possibility the house might be haunted, it got real for her, Mershon said.

One night, she was in the house with a tour group and all of the house’s interior doors slammed at the same time.

“Could a train have come by and vibrated the house just enough to close all the doors at once?” she said.

“When your explanations start making you sound like a crazy person, it makes you reframe what’s actually more probable,” Mershon said.

But, she said, it’s all well and good to know that human knowledge is limited, but opening her head up to the possibility was a challenge.

“The Glenn House has, especially in the last several years, really thrown some curveballs at me,” Mershon said.

And, she said, she doesn’t want the Glenn House to be thought of as a haunted attraction.

“Let me be perfectly clear: The Glenn House does need money,” Mershon said, noting that it takes $950 each month just to pay the house’s bills. But, she said, while there are places that manufacture ghost stories to drive tourism or general interest, that’s not the case at the Glenn House.

“I guess we’re lucky,” she said.

The Glenn House has generated ghost stories since at least the 1970s, she said, and on a personal level, she would rather not believe the stories are true.

But, she said, manufactured stories tend to be flashier, while the Glenn House experiences tend to be smaller, cumulative things that simply don’t have an explanation.

“At first, you can explain the little things that happen, as in, ‘That was weird, ha ha,’ but then an hour later, you’re in the house and a door slams. ‘Probably just a breeze.’ But if enough things happen in a series, your ability to continually explain starts to slip a bit,” she said.

Mershon said the “Ghost Hunters” team used a clip she felt was a bit sensational — a team member got confrontational and was scratched, apparently out of thin air.

“I am glad they explained their feelings around it,” Mershon said. “When people have been touched, or marked, they’ve crossed a threshold of safety. But rather than go for shock value, which they could have, they explained, ‘I sort of had this coming; as a team, we went too far.’”

The future

Mershon said she is now even more mindful of being respectful toward the Glenn family.

“Nothing we were telling was objectionable to the current (Glenn) family,” Mershon said, “but maybe I don’t need to tell the stories in the dining room. Maybe it’s on the lawn.

“I think we can’t shy away from telling those stories,” Mershon said. “We don’t want to be a haunted attraction, but these stories are part of the oral and community history of the house. The crux of why we preserve the house is not the ghost stories, but if they’re a way people can connect, becoming interested in preservation and community history, we’ll have those conversations.”

And, Mershon said, the Glenn House’s operations took a major hit from COVID-19. Events, tours and other income sources simply haven’t happened this year.

Donations and volunteers are welcome, she said.

While the show made clear the Glenn House has lost volunteers, Mershon said more of that is likely due to attrition than fear. Volunteerism is suffering across the board, but, she said, it takes all shapes. Volunteers don’t have to lead tours.

“There’s something for everyone to do here,” Mershon said.

Updates on tours for the Glenn House will be posted to the group’s Facebook page, @TheGlennHouse1883.

The episode may be viewed at http://play.aetv.com/shows/ghost-hunters.

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