Someone waited in the attic while a family got ready for bed. More than 114 years later, no one knows who it was. June 9, 1912. Villisca, Iowa. That Sunday night the Presbyterian church held its Children's Day program, and Sarah Moore had organized it. She and her husband, Josiah, 43, a well-liked businessman, had four children: Herman, 11, Katherine, 10, Boyd, 7, and Paul, 5. Katherine had invited two friends to sleep over, sisters Lena and Ina Stillinger, 11 and 8. After the program they all walked home together. They were inside before 10 p.m. The next morning, the house was silent. No one came out for chores. A neighbor, Mary Peckham, knocked and got no answer. She called Josiah's brother, Ross, who unlocked the door with his own key. All eight people inside were dead. Six of them were children. The weapon was Josiah's own axe, left in the guest room. What investigators found made it stranger. Two cigarette butts in the attic, as if someone had waited up there for the family to come home and fall asleep. Every mirror in the house covered with cloth. A lamp upstairs with its wick turned down low. Then the town found out. Hundreds of people walked through the house before it was secured, handling everything, including the axe. Suspects came and went. A traveling preacher, Rev. George Kelly, confessed years later, then took it back. One jury deadlocked. A second acquitted him. A state senator was whispered about but never charged. A drifter was cleared by payroll records. Nobody was ever convicted. The little white house still stands on Second Street. You can tour it. You can even spend the night. Eight people went to bed after a church program and never woke up. And whoever sat in that attic walked away. Would you spend a night in that house? Disclaimer: Based on the 1912 coroner's inquest, the 1917 Kelly trials, and Iowa historical records. The case remains officially unsolved. Photos: Moore House by Jason McLaren (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Ryan Moomey (CC BY 2.0); The Day Book (Chicago), June 14, 1912 (public domain); Villisca Carnegie Library postcard, c. 1910 (public domain); via Wikimedia Commons.