The Office Ghost

EVER SINCE I STARTED WORKING at the Missouri Life office, located in a house built in 1840, there has been casual talk of an office ghost. I never paid much attention to it. That is, until it started paying attention to me.

It was a regular lunch break in the office—food storage containers and iced coffees laid out and chatter coming from the community table in the middle of the office. We associate editors, Andrea Kaneko and I, were talking about upcoming feature stories for the October issue. Andrea had volunteered, perhaps a little prematurely, to take a ghost tour at the Missouri State Penitentiary in preparation for a feature article—before she knew it had been coined “the bloodiest 47 acres in America.” She’d been spending the last two weeks amping herself up for the visit.

“Why did I sign myself up for this?” Andrea asked, laughing nervously. “I’m worried I might actually see something.” I assured her that she’d be just fine while thinking up ways to help her feel less worried.

“Hey, I have an idea!” I said. “I’ve heard rumors that our office has a ghost.” I pointed over toward her desk, where an electromagnetic field (EMF) reader sat that the magazine had purchased for her tour. “Let’s practice for your tour and try it out! Then you’ll see there’s nothing to worry about.”

Electromagnetic field readers are handheld devices that detect changes in an electromagnetic field. If interference occurs, the device beeps loudly and lights up. Paranormal investigators believe that if an EMF reader beeps after a yes-or-no question is asked, a spirit is affirming the question.

I have watched many episodes of Ghost Hunters, a reality show about The Atlantic Paranormal Society’s investigations, so I knew what to do. As we waited for the EMF reader to go silent, signaling its readiness to detect a change in frequency, we giggled excitedly like ten-year-old girls. “Now we just have to ask some questions to the ghost,” I said.

“Is there a ghost in the room with us right now?” I asked. Andrea and I looked at each other and laughed at the ridiculousness of what we were doing. A second later, our laughter was interrupted by a loud “beep beep beep beep beep!” Our faces froze. The reader went silent
again. Coincidence, I thought. It has to be.

Andrea’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Ask another question,” she squeaked out in a whisper, still stiffly holding the EMF reader in front of her.

“Was this building your home?” I asked.

“Beep beep beep beep beep!” went the reader and then went silent.

Andrea and I screamed. She threw the EMF reader onto her desk and backed away. “I think we’re good. I think that’s all we need to know,” she said. We sat back down in front of our lunches, gobsmacked.

Other coworkers have had experiences with the office ghost, seeing shadow figures, hearing noises from the basement, and finding objects moved in the Mercantile from where they were the night before.

Since then, we have only touched the EMF reader on the penitentiary tour and have left it alone while in the office. I’m not sure our experiment helped Andrea feel any better about her pending tour; in fact, it probably did the opposite. We also haven’t heard anything more from our office ghost—whom we’ve since named Earl—which is both a little relieving and a little disappointing.

We usually chalk up Earl’s quiet spells to the fact that he’s on his lunch break or taking a nice walk through Rocheport’s quaint downtown.

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Feeling brave? Tag along on Andrea’s eerie Missouri State Penitentiary tour here. Prepare to be spooked!

This article was originally printed in the October 2025 issue of Missouri Life.