Visit Independence tourism passport leads to 13 haunted locations across the city, with prizes along the way

INDEPENDENCE, MO — KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw covers eastern Jackson County, including Blue Springs and Grain Valley. Share your story idea with Claire.

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Independence's long history is full of haunted stories — and now local sites are using those stories to boost tourism.

Visit Independence, the city's convention and visitors bureau, has launched a new tourism passport called Paranormal Pursuit. Visitors can explore 13 locations across Independence to hear about alleged apparitions and earn prizes along the way. The passport runs Sept. 23 through Nov. 6.

Mixed Wildflower and Co. on the Independence Square is one of the lucky 13 stops. Owner Sherri Corwin said she has experienced a number of unexplained events inside her store — including a door opening on its own, a picture flying over her head, and curtains moving without any draft.

—- Hear more about the haunted stories —-

One of the strangest incidents involved a small cat figurine falling to the ground.

"So then this little kitty cat took this big leap, and how this is possible? It's not. This is probably the creepiest thing that's happened that kind of shook me. So it's on the floor, and that's what I heard was clunk. But it was doing this. But it was going straight, and it would do that, and then it would do that, and it did that about four times," Corwin said, showing how it rolled around on the floor allegedly by its own.

Rather than feeling frightened, Corwin said she has started attributing the activity to an owl statue in her shop named Oliver.

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"I don't feel scared, and I don't feel like something's trying to get me," Corwin said.

"That's when I started talking to Oliver. I'm like, 'Hey, what's going on there?'" Corwin said.

Corwin said she expects the unexplained activity to continue and she'll continue to blame it on Oliver.

"Maybe we'll have some more stories to tell," Corwin said.

For Visit Independence, the Paranormal Pursuit passport is about more than ghost stories — it's about driving economic impact.

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"Hopefully they're exploring new parts of Independence they've never seen, or this could attract new visitors to the area and increase the economic impact of tourism in our community," Allison Calvin, executive director of Visit Independence, said.

Visitors can sign up for the free Paranormal Pursuit passport at visitindependence.com/paranormalpursuit.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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