Have a Wicked Good Time with Boogie Bus Express This Fall

Steel your nerves and open your senses. Boogie Bus Express, a St. Louis-based party bus company, has transformed one of its buses into a paranormal portal, taking those who dare to board into the darkest depths of local history.

While the company’s buses typically host wedding parties, bar crawls and sports outings, brave souls are invited on its haunted bus tour, which runs on select dates until Nov. 10. As the moonlight flickers and the shadows dance, your clairvoyant guide will take you on a journey into the unknown with ghostly whispers, chilling tales and eerie encounters.

Once everyone finds a seat among the unnerving décor – imagine fanged spiders on the ceiling, severed limbs preserved on ice, possessed dolls with demonic smiles and the Grim Reaper, who has his eye on you – the bus lurches to its first stop.

The Lemp Mansion, one of the 10 most haunted places in America, bore witness to the suicides of three members of the Lemp family, along with other tragedies such as heart failure and debilitating madness. Here, the air hangs heavy with despair, and it’s believed that the sudden and tragic nature of the deaths has eternally tethered the family’s spirits to the house. Over the years, visitors have glimpsed their tortured figures in different areas, from the attic to the stairway to the basement, which the staff refers to as the Gates of Hell.

The next stop is a two-story, three-bedroom, Colonial-style brick house in a tree-lined neighborhood. Oh, and we should mention that it inspired The Exorcist.

As legend has it, an ill 13-year-old traveled from Washington, D.C. to St. Louis in late 1949. Convinced that the child was possessed by the Devil, Jesuit priests from Saint Louis University performed a grueling month-long exorcism on the boy, at last freeing him from Satan’s grasp in the psych ward of St. Alexius Hospital. Whether the child was actually possessed is still a matter of debate, but the fact that priests performed the archaic ritual is not.

When The Exorcist hit movie houses in 1973, several priests with intimate knowledge of the event came forward to deny the film’s more outrageous claims, but they never denied that the exorcism took place in St. Louis, and the house at 8435 Roanoke Drive is likely where the boy endured a living nightmare.

The spine-tingling adventure continues in Alton, Illinois, where a sordid past has led to a cursed present. The haunted bus tour will stop in a number of places, including the notorious McPike Mansion, where current owners Sharyn and George Luedke hold regular séances to connect with the dead; the Enos Sanitorium, where a deranged doctor performed cruel experiments on tuberculosis patients who suffered relentless horrors among the stench of decay; and the First Unitarian Church, where restless souls linger in oppressive silence behind the aged stone exterior.

At the Alton National Cemetery, you might photograph orbs floating between headstones, and at the site of the Alton Military Prison, you might hear the screams of the departed. Outside the halls of the Milton School House, you can also watch for the translucent figure of a young girl.

A place that once rang with laughter, the Milton School House now reverberates with the echoes of something sinister. The story says that one day after school, a student named Mary was finishing a seasonal bulletin board in her classroom. Everyone else had left the building, and as dusk fell, she decided to go home before her mother started to worry. As she was skipping down the stairs, she heard a noise behind her. Curiosity drew her into darkness, and she never made it out.

The next morning, Mary was found in the girls’ locker room, battered, bruised and bloody. In the years that followed, employees of Intaglio Design reported hearing footsteps in the hallways, noticing items disappear and reappear and even glimpsing Mary’s ghost around corners.

While Mary mostly keeps to herself, Clarence Blair, a 17-year-old who drowned in the pool that once filled the Mineral Springs Hotel, loves to hear stories spun about him. Within the walls of the hotel, the line between the living and the dead blurs, and a local guide claims that Clarence’s presence can be felt at the beginning of his tours, when he regales visitors with dreadful tales of the spirits that have lingered too long at the hotel. “You can check out any time you like,” he reflects, “but you can never leave.”

Need a moment to cleanse your aura? Throughout the haunted bus tour, you’ll have the opportunity to rejoin the living – and sip a stiff drink – at local bars such as Bluff City Grill, Ragin Cajun Piano Bar and Fast Eddie’s Bon Air.

As the frightful exploration comes to an end, look through your photos to see if you captured any haunting imagery.