The story
Epperson House looms over the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, a 48-room Tudor-Gothic mansion completed in the early 1920s for insurance magnate Uriah Epperson, complete with tunnels, a swimming pool and an organ loft; given to the university, it served for decades as dormitory, offices and classrooms before standing largely closed awaiting restoration. Its legend centres on Harriet Barse, a musician and companion of the Epperson household who died in the house in 1922; campus telling links her to the organ that was installed in her memory. Generations of students, campus police and staff have described organ notes from the empty house, footsteps and lights, a woman in evening dress, and — in the best-known account — a patrol car struck from behind at night by an unseen vehicle, and the house has featured on national lists of haunted campus buildings. The building is not generally open to the public, which the record should state. These accounts should be presented as campus folklore around a real death, told respectfully and hedged throughout.