In 1867, Jeremiah Constance, a god-fearing true Christian and father of five, left his Missouri homestead to visit his local church. He never returned home. Two days later, after his wife was taken ill with fever brought on by grief, she claimed to have been visited by a “Night Spectre” who took the youngest of her children away. Two days later, and this time in a more sensible mind, she reported the same event, the next youngest child had been taken. Two days after that a posse of twenty men and the local sheriff were waiting at the Constance household for the Night Spectre.

This event was reported in the Missouri Post, most of it hearsay and conjecture by this point, though there were several eyewitness reports of the state of the house the next day: “bathed in blood, riddled with shot holes and half-burned to the ground” was the general consensus. No-one ever saw a member of the posse, the sheriff or any member of the Constance family again. To this day no-one will live on that particular area of ground. It’s known as Constance’s Folly and has been simply left to grow wild.