The Sallie House: The Terrifying True Haunting That Drove a Kansas Family Out of Their Home — Ep. 32

A quiet home in Atchison, Kansas. A nursery that never felt empty. Scratches that appeared on skin — fresh, burning, and witnessed in real time.

This is the true paranormal story of the Sallie House haunting, one of the most disturbing and well-documented cases in America’s haunted history.

In this episode of State of the Unknown, we walk through the chilling events exactly as the family reported them: the footsteps, the cold spots, the toys that moved on their own, and the violent attacks that finally drove them out.

Then we step back and examine what investigators actually documented, what witnesses claimed, and what remains part of Midwestern urban folklore.

If you enjoy paranormal encounters, real hauntings, demonic cases, or unsolved supernatural mysteries, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

Listen now and decide for yourself what really happened inside the Sallie House.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Normal House At Dusk
• 3:13 A Name Emerges: Sally
• 5:33 Moving In And First Oddities
• 9:30 The Nursery Begins To Change
• 12:38 Touches Turn Into Scratches
• 16:18 [Ad] How Hacks Happen
• 17:08 (Cont.) Touches Turn Into Scratches
• 17:45 Targeting Tony
• 21:01 Objects Rearranged And Scorch Marks
• 24:59 Daily Attacks And A Breaking Point
• 27:15 Investigators Enter The House
• 30:23 Evidence, A Name, And Retaliation
• 33:14 Smoke, Fire, And Flight
• 35:51 What’s Proven And What Isn’t
• 38:51 Atmosphere, Stress, And Meaning

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

What would you do if you moved into a house that seemed perfectly normal during the day? But the moment the sun went down, little things started happening. Not dramatic stuff. Nothing you could point to and say, that's definitely paranormal. Just odd. A toy sitting in the corner suddenly ending up in the middle of the floor. Your dog barking at a spot on the wall like someone was standing there. Lights turning on in the hallway after you've already shut them off. Cold air brushing past your ankle when the rest of the room is warm. Most people would shrug that off, but what if it didn't stop there? What if the activity followed patterns, like someone small was moving through the house at night? What if objects didn't just move, but were arranged almost deliberately? And what if the touches didn't feel like drafts anymore, but fingers, light pressure, quick, and always when you weren't expecting it. Now imagine this keeps building, little by little, until you can't ignore it. And then one night, something reaches out and scratches you, deep enough that it bleeds. You check the house, you check the windows, you check the doors, everything is locked. So what would you do then? That's the situation one couple found themselves in when they moved into an old house on a quiet street in Acheson, Kansas. A house that, according to locals, investigators, and people who live there decades apart, seemed to hold on to one presence above all others. A little girl named Sally. These days, the Sally House is one of the most famous haunted homes in America. People take tours. Paranormal teams spend weekends there. You'll see documentaries, live streams, and more theories than you could ever track. But long before the cameras showed up, long before the house became something people whispered about online, the stories were already circulating in Acheson. In the version most people know today, the one that shaped everything that came after, comes from the early 1990s, when a young couple lived in the home and documented what they experienced. Neighbors talked about cold spots. Delivery drivers said they heard footsteps when no one was home. Families said the upstairs hallway never felt completely empty. Everybody seemed to have a slightly different version of the haunting, but they all pointed to the same idea. There was a child in that house, and she wanted attention. I'm your host, Robert Barber, and this is State of the Unknown. Tonight, we're stepping inside a quiet house in the Midwest, one that families say changed the moment they moved in. This is the story of the Sally House. Tony and Deborah didn't move into the house on 2nd Street because they were chasing anything unusual. It was practical. Close to work, close to family, and the kind of place that made sense for a young couple starting out. The house itself looked ordinary enough. White siding, a small yard, a narrow staircase just inside the front door that led up to the bedrooms. Nothing that stood out. Nothing that hinted at the months ahead. The first few days were all the things you expect after a move. Half open boxes, missing tape, that one drawer in the kitchen that never seems to fit what you want to put in it. They were tired, but excited. In the house, it felt fine. But even in that first week, there were little moments that stuck out later. One afternoon, Deborah noticed their dog Bo standing perfectly still in the middle of the living room, ears up with his head tilted, staring at a corner where nothing was happening. She clapped her hands trying to get his attention. Nothing. His eyes tracked something she couldn't see. She let it go. Another night, Tony turned off the hallway light before bed. He walked upstairs, brushed his teeth, and when he stepped back out, the hall light was on again. He figured he just misremembered or bumped the switch. He let it go. A cold spot showed up near the bottom of the stairwell, a little patch of air that didn't seem connected to the vent system, or a draft from outside. They joked about it. Old houses do weird things. And still, they let it go. But there was one detail Deborah remembered clearly later on. Something small that didn't feel important at the time. Each morning, when she walked into the nursery they were prepping, the room up at the end of the upstairs hall, she'd find one of the stuffed animals out of place. A bear that had been on a shelf sitting in the rocking chair. A doll that had been on the floor leaning against the door. The first few times, she thought Tony moved them. He thought she did. Neither of them wanted to admit that something in the room felt watched. Not dangerous, not heavy, just aware. And honestly, looking back, I can understand why they brushed it off. You don't move into a new house and immediately tell yourself it's haunted. You explain things away because that feels safer. But the house wasn't easing off. It was building. And the moment that finally made both of them stop and think happened late one night, long after they'd settled into bed, when the temperature in the room dropped all at once. Not gradually, not like a vent kicking on, but suddenly, like someone opened a freezer door beside them. Tony sat up. Deborah pulled the blanket tighter. Bo growled from the hallway, low and steady. Something moved just outside their door. A soft shuffle, light and quick. And for the first time, neither of them could explain it away. At first, Tony and Deborah tried to treat those early moments like part of the adjustment period, the same way any couple gets used to the quirks of a new house. But within a few weeks, the odd moments weren't random anymore. They were repeating. And they were happening in ways that felt intentional. The nursery, especially. That room at the end of the hallway had a quiet stillness to it during the day. Almost warm, almost peaceful. But when the house settled at night, something about it changed. The air felt heavier. The corners seemed darker than they should. In that rocking chair by the window, the old wooden one they found at a secondhand shop never stayed where they left it. Some nights it was angled towards the crib, other nights facing the door. Once it was turned completely around, pointed to the wall. Deborah asked Tony if he was moving it. Tony asked her the same thing. And both of them realized they were having the same thought. What if neither of us touched it? Still, they didn't want to jump to the word haunted. Most people don't. You create explanations because they feel safer. So they kept looking for ways to rationalize what was happening. One afternoon, Deborah walked into the nursery and stopped in the doorway. The rocking chair was angled toward the crib again, not where either of them had left it. And the air in the room had that same charged stillness she'd been feeling more and more. Downstairs, Tony was having his own moments. He'd hear footsteps on the staircase when he knew Deborah was outside. Not heavy ones, light steps, quick, two or three at a time, almost like a child running up and down. The kind of sound you only notice when the house is supposed to be quiet. Sometimes Bo, their dog, would bark towards the stairs as if someone were standing halfway up, peering down at him. His fur would rise along his back, not full alarm, but alert enough that Tony would stop what he was doing and listen. And Bo wasn't the only one responding. Lights flickered on by themselves, always in the hallway or in that nursery. Cabinet doors in the kitchen stood open in the morning when they'd been shut the night before. And they both started noticing cold spots, not drafts from windows, but little patches of freezing air that showed up and disappeared without warning. But the moment things shifted from strange to unsettling came one night while Tony was watching television in the living room. He felt something brush across the back of his calf. Not a breeze, not static, but contact. Light and quick and unmistakably deliberate. His first thought was Bo. He looked down. The dog was asleep on the other side of the couch. Tony didn't call out. He didn't move. He just watched the doorway, waiting to see something, anything that could explain it. Nothing appeared, but the feeling didn't leave him. Later, when he told Deborah, she didn't laugh or brush it off. Instead, she admitted something she'd been keeping to herself, that she'd felt small touches too. Little tugs at the hem of her shirt, soft pressure on her ankle while she folded laundry, the sensation of a tiny hand brushing across the back of her arm. For the first time, it actually got to them. One person feeling something strange is easy to ignore. Two people feeling the same kind of touch, that's different. But even then, they weren't ready to label the house as something paranormal. They told themselves it was just the stress of moving, the adjustment, the creaks and quirks of an old place. They tried to hold on to normal, but the house wasn't interested in normal. Because the next phase wasn't about sounds or toys or cold spots, it was about pain. And the moment it started, everything changed. For weeks, the strange activity in the house had been building. Small touches, toys out of place, cold spots that seemed to hover at angle height before disappearing. But one night, the shift wasn't slow. It wasn't a gentle build. It was immediate. It happened while Tony was in the hallway, getting ready to head upstairs. He felt a quick sting across his stomach, sharp enough to make him grab at it. Not the kind of feeling you get from brushing against a nail or catching yourself on a corner. This felt intentional, clean, fast. He lifted his shirt. Three red lines were rising across his skin. They weren't long, maybe four inches each, but they were deep enough to bead with blood. He stood there in shock, trying to replay the last few seconds in his head. He hadn't touched anything, he hadn't bumped into anything. There was no loose wood, no sharp object anywhere near him. But when Deborah saw the scratches, her expression changed. Not confused, not dismissive, concerned. Because a few days earlier, and she hadn't told him this yet, she had woken up with two similar marks on her thigh, faint but unmistakably scratches. At the time she convinced herself it was their dog or the edge of the comforter, something ordinary. But now Tony had marks too, and they matched. That was the moment when the atmosphere in the house shifted from strange to invasive. Something wasn't just moving things around. Something wasn't just brushing past them. Whatever was in the house could touch them, and it could hurt them. A couple nights later, something happened that convinced both of them the house wasn't easing up. It was escalating. After that, the energy in the house changed, especially upstairs. The hallway grew colder. Lights flickered more often, sometimes brightening and dimming like someone was playing with a dimmer switch that didn't exist. And the nursery. That quiet room at the end of the hall felt like it had someone in it. During the day, Deborah would pass by the doorway and swear she saw something small move in the corner of her eye. A shadow, quick, childlike. At night, the rocking chair creaked again. Slowly at first, sometimes just once or twice. Other times long enough that she'd stand in the hallway listening, hoping it would stop. There were other moments too, the kind you only processed later. The baby monitor picking up static when it wasn't plugged in. Soft breaths coming through the speaker. A child's giggle. Faint, fast, and impossible to place. Voices in the hallway that sounded like they were coming from just outside the bedroom door. But when Tony opened it, the hall was empty. Still. And then objects didn't just move, they rearranged. One morning, Deborah found the nursery closet open, and every piece of clothing was in a pile in the center of the floor. Another morning, the picture frames downstairs were face down, placed, not knocked. The worst moment was when Tony got up for a glass of water and found every cabinet door in the kitchen open. Silently, all at once. But the incident that finally pushed them from uneasy to afraid came days later, when Deborah stepped into the nursery and saw the stuffed bear sitting in the center of the room and the scorch marks beside it. Dark circles, small and perfectly round, like someone had pressed two burning hands into the carpet. She backed out of the room and closed the door. Because at this point, the house wasn't just strange, it was becoming hostile. If the odd moments in the house were unsettling before, the next phase was something else entirely. Because whatever had been brushing against them and tugging at their clothes wasn't staying subtle anymore. Now it was acting with intention. And the scratches were only the beginning. Tony was the one the house focused on the most. He didn't want to admit it, not at first, but it became impossible to ignore. The touches, the cold spots, the sudden pain, they all seemed directed at him and only him. And the attacks kept escalating. One night, Tony was walking past the nursery when he felt something clamp around his wrist, small fingers, tight and fast, like a child grabbing onto a parent. But when he turned, no one was there. He tried to shake it off, blame it on nerves, blame it on the house settling. But later that same night, while he was asleep, Deborah woke to the sound of him sucking in air like he'd just been burned. She turned on the lamp, and Tony was sitting upright, clutching his chest. Three deep scratches were rising across his skin, fresh, red and angry. She didn't hear him move. He didn't thrash. He didn't even sit up until the pain hit him. The marks just appeared. And they were deeper this time. Long enough she wiped blood away with her hand. A few days later, Tony was alone in the basement finishing laundry. The basement of the Sally house was unfinished, concrete floors, low ceilings, old foundation walls that let in just enough cold air to feel uncomfortable, even on warm days. He heard movement behind him. Not footsteps, shuffling, like someone small dragging their feet across the floor. He turned quickly, expecting to see Bo, but the dog was upstairs. What Tony did see froze him in place, a shape standing by the support beam, just tall enough to be a little kid. Not fully formed, not solid, but dark. A human outline. He blinked, it was gone. He ran upstairs without finishing the clothes. He didn't tell Deborah, not yet, because even though he didn't want to say it out loud, a part of him wondered if seeing it would make it more real. But Deborah was having her own moments, especially in the nursery. One afternoon, while folding laundry in the room, she felt a sudden rush of cold air pass behind her. Not a breeze, not a draft, a temperature drop like someone walking right past her shoulder. The kind of cold that sinks deeper than skin. She turned, and the rocking chair was moving. Slowly back and forth, back and forth. The room was silent, no vents running, no floorboards creaking, just the chair moving on its own. She stepped closer, almost without thinking, and felt a tug on the hem of her shirt, gentle but unmistakable, like a small hand reaching out. She didn't scream, she didn't drop the clothes, she just stepped backwards and whispered, please don't. But whatever was in the house wasn't looking for permission. The next major incident happened while they were sitting in the living room, talking about their day. No tension, no argument, nothing emotional happening. It was calm. Then Tony jerked suddenly, like something punched him in the back. He reached behind himself and winced. Deborah pulled up his shirt. Three long scratches ran across his shoulder blade, blistered like the skin had been burned and split open. She touched one of the marks and felt heat radiating off of it. Heat coming from scratches that hadn't existed ten seconds earlier. The house wasn't just reacting anymore, it was escalating. In some moments felt personal. The activity got stronger when Tony was frustrated. Lights flickered when he walked under them. Footsteps followed him up the staircase. He felt cold breaths on the back of his neck whenever he tried to be alone. Then came the nursery incident that finally broke him. It was late afternoon. The house was quiet. Tony stepped into the nursery to grab something from the closet. The moment he entered, every stuffed animal in the room, every single one, toppled over at the same time. Not slowly, not one by one, but all at once. Like someone brushed a hand straight across the room. He froze. Then suddenly the rocking chair started moving. Not the gentle sway Deborah had seen. This was harder, angrier, like someone was stomping their foot. His chest tightened, the hair on his arms lifted. He stepped back towards the hallway because something in that moment told him he wasn't supposed to be there. As he reached the door, he felt a sharp pain across his forearm. He didn't even need to look. He knew. Three more scratches, deep enough that blood slid down toward his wrist. And that's when Tony finally said the thing he'd been holding back. I think whatever's in this house hates me. The tension in the home grew heavier each day. Deborah felt it. The dog felt it. Tony, the one being targeted, felt it constantly. He told Deborah he didn't like being alone in the house anymore. He told her he heard voices whispering behind him in the kitchen. He told her something was wrong with the nursery. And every night the scratches got worse. They formed in threes, always in the same pattern, always without warning. They happened while he was awake. They happened while he was asleep. They even happened once while he was driving. Deborah begged him to see a doctor, but Tony didn't need a medical explanation. He needed help. Someone who knew what to do. Because at this point, the house wasn't just haunted, it was hostile. And whatever was in there seemed determined to run them out. They couldn't ignore it anymore. So they reached out. Not to family, not to neighbors, but to people who dealt with this kind of thing. And the moment those investigators stepped inside, the entire story shifted. By the time Tony and Deborah decided to bring in help, the house felt different than it had when they moved in. The air was heavier. The upstairs hallway stayed cold, the kind of cold that didn't belong at a Kansas home in the middle of summer. In the nursery, the room that should have felt the warmest had become the center of everything they couldn't explain. When the first group arrived, they expected the usual cameras, meters, gear. What they didn't expect was how quickly the house responded. Within minutes of stepping into the nursery, all three investigators felt the same thing. A small tug at their clothes, light at first, then firmer, like a child trying to get an adult's attention. One investigator set a plush bear on the floor near the rocking chair as a test. They stepped back. The bear shifted just a few inches, but enough for everyone to see. Downstairs, things were no calmer. When Tony stood in the center of the living room to test whether the presence reacted to him, he winced almost immediately. Three scratches rose across his abdomen as the team watched. Fresh, red. That changed the tone. This wasn't a residual haunting. Something was interacting. A psychic arrived later that evening, someone familiar with the property. She paused in the upstairs hallway, hand hovering above the wall like she felt heat rising from it. She's in that room, she said, nodding towards the nursery. She's been here a long time. She looked at Tony, not afraid, but cautious. She doesn't understand boundaries. The name Sally came from her, the impression of a young girl, maybe six or seven, confused, lonely, and seeking attention. It sounded gentle, but it didn't match the scratches. Throughout the night, investigators heard footsteps on the stairs when no one was near them. They recorded a faint giggle outside the nursery door. One audio recorder captured rhythmic whispering, soft and close, like a child murmuring to herself. When one investigator asked aloud, Sally, can you show us you're here? The rocking chair moved. One slow rock. The next morning, when they returned to gather equipment, the nursery door was open. The plush bear sat upright on the rocking chair. One recorder had been nudged several inches from where it was placed. But the thing that shook Tony wasn't the objects, it was the footage. In one clip, a faint figure stood near the crib, small, dark-haired, perfectly still for a moment before darting out of the frame. Tony knew that shape. He knew that feeling in the nursery, the sense of someone standing behind him. It hadn't been his imagination. After the investigators left, the house didn't quiet down. It didn't reset. It retaliated. Door slams, objects thrown, lights flickering violently whenever Tony walked beneath them, cold spots following him from room to room. The house wasn't hiding anymore. It was demanding attention. And the scratches, the thing tormenting Tony for weeks, began happening almost daily. Deborah started worrying the house wasn't just trying to scare them, it was trying to break them. And the moment that turned dangerous wasn't a shadow, it wasn't a sound, it was fire. Tony and Deborah had gone to bed early. The house was quiet, the air still, the kind of calm they'd been craving after weeks of activity. For the first time in a while, it felt like maybe things were settling down. Around midnight, Tony woke up to the smell of something sharp and chemical, burning electrical wires. He sat up fast, convinced a socket had blown or something in the wall was overheating. Deborah woke up too. They both smelled it. They followed the scent into the hallway, and the temperature dropped instantly, the same cold, heavy air they'd felt in the nursery before everything got worse. The odor grew stronger, burned plastic, hot metal. Tony opened the nursery door and froze. In the center of the room, on the carpet, a small patch was smoldering. Not a flame, but a dark smoking circle no bigger than a child's hand. The same shape as the scorch marks Deborah had found earlier, except this time it was happening right in front of them. Deborah whispered his name. Tony didn't move. Across the room, the rocking chair began to sway. Slowly at first, then harder, like something was pushing it with intent. The smoke thickened. Their dog barked from the hallway, a frantic sound they had never heard from him inside the house. Deborah grabbed Tony's arm. We need to go. But Tony wasn't looking at the carpet anymore. He was looking at the wall near the crib, where three long black streaks, like charred fingerprints, were sliding downward. He felt that familiar burn across his chest at the same moment. He didn't look, he didn't have to. They left the nursery, shut the door, and didn't open it again. By morning, The decision was made. They packed what they could. They called family. And they left the house. Not for a night, not for a weekend, for good. Because at that point, whatever was in the house wasn't just trying to scare them. It was trying to drive them out. And it finally succeeded. Now that we've walked through the story the way it's been told for years, let's step back and look at what we can actually confirm in what remains part of the narrative built around the Sally House. The house itself is real. Its location on North 2nd Street in Acheson has been documented for well over a century. Multiple families lived there long before the activity became part of local lore, and the house is now known as a destination for tours and investigators. The couple's move-in timeline is also real. Tony and Deborah lived in the home in the early 1990s, and they've spoken publicly about their experiences many times in interviews, documentaries, and paranormal case files. Their accounts stay largely consistent over the years, even when separated. The scratches are also documented. There are photographs taken during the height of the activity showing red marks across Tony's abdomen and arms. Investigators at the time said they witnessed new scratches forming while they were in the room. Those testimonies exist in written reports and in video interviews. The cold spots, the footsteps, the nursery activity, the moving objects, those all come directly from the couple's personal accounts and from the notes of investigators who visited the home. Multiple groups claim they saw toys move, lights flicker, and the rocking chair shift. Again, these are reported experiences, not proven phenomena. Now we move into the areas that are widely circulated but not verified. Details like scorch marks shaped like hands mostly show up in later retellings of the story. Some versions say the investigators photographed them. Some say the couple only saw discoloration. There is no surviving photograph that confirms the exact shapes or their cause. The burning smell and the fire incident appear in several accounts, but there isn't an official incident report from the fire department. Nothing was recorded as a structural fire. So while multiple retellings include it, there's no direct documentation beyond witness statements. The reports of a small shadowy figure, especially the description of a child-sized form near the crib, come from investigator interviews, but again, no publicly released footage confirms the exact shape. If any video was captured, it hasn't been shared beyond closed groups. The psychic statements about a girl named Sally also fall into the unverified category. There are no historical records of a young girl named Sally dying in the home. The story of a doctor performing emergency surgery on a child there appears in many versions, but lacks supporting documentation in medical or local archives. It's part of the narrative, but not part of the historical record. The idea that the house targeted Tony specifically, that does come directly from the couple, and other investigators said they noticed the same pattern, but the cause, if any, is unknown. What we're left with is a blend of documented injuries, multiple eyewitness accounts, consistent reports of the same types of activity, and a significant layer of folklore added over time. There's enough consistency to say the couple experienced something, but the exact nature of that something, a child's spirit, a hostile presence, or a mix of psychological strain and environmental conditions, isn't something that's been proven through any official record. What is clear is that the experiences left a mark on the home and the community. And long after they left, new families, investigators, and visitors would report their own moments in the house. Enough to keep the legend alive for decades. When I look at the story of the Sally House, what stands out to me isn't just the scratches or the shadow figures or the temperature drops. It's the consistency in how people describe the atmosphere of that home. Everyone who steps inside seems to talk about the same things. The wait in the hallway, the strange quiet in the nursery, the feeling of someone standing close even when the room is empty. You can dismiss cold spots or flickering lights, but it's harder to ignore how many people walked into that space and described it in almost identical ways. And if I'm being fair, what strikes me most is how quickly a place can change you when you're already under stress. A new house, a new routine, the pressure of trying to understand things that don't make sense. It doesn't take a haunting to make you feel off balance. But when unexplained things start piling up, one on top of another, your mind starts connecting dots in ways you wouldn't normally allow. Do I think the house had something going on? I think something happened there that affected people emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Whether it was a haunting, something environmental, or a kind of feedback loop between fear and experience, the result was real for the people who lived through it. And if there was something in that house, I don't think it wanted to be ignored. But this is one of those stories where the truth sits in the spaces between the accounts. You have what people saw, what they felt, what they believed, and what they carried with them after they left. You have patterns that repeat and moments that don't line up neatly with explanations. And somewhere in that mix is the version that makes the most sense to you. So when it comes to the Sally house, you almost have to decide for yourself what you think was happening there. A haunting? A home under pressure? Or something in between, waiting for someone to pay attention. This has been State of the Unknown. What stays with me about the Sally House is how little the reports have changed. Different families, investigators, and visitors, years apart, all describe the same moments. The cold spots, the footsteps, the uneasy quiet in the nursery. Most stories twist as they get retold. This one didn't. And that consistency is hard to dismiss. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, leaving a review is one of the best ways to help the show grow. And if you're on Spotify, I always put a poll under each episode. It's a fun way to tell me what you think or what you believe really happened. So tap in and let your voice be part of the mystery. And truly, thank you for listening. It means more than you know. If you've got an idea you think would make a great episode, you can reach out to me anytime at stateoftheunknown.comslash contact. Until next time, stay curious, stay unsettled, and remember, some rooms are better left behind a closed door.