This Old Missouri Truck Stop On Route 66 Is Haunted!
You can no longer walk into the truck stop outside of St. Louis in Villa Ridge and get a hot cup of coffee and an open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes on your plate. The restaurant has long since closed. A boarded-up reminder that roads like Route 66 used to get us from place to place and all-night diners like this kept truckers fed, caffeinated, and as content as possible during their journey. Only the boarded-up building remains, haunted by ghosts of the past.
Troy Taylor, a haunted historian, crime buff, author, and founder of American Hauntings Ink, filled in the details about the Diamonds Restaurant / Tri-County Truckstop I had wondered about. Pictures and videos of the roadside diner exist, and many videos about the haunting are online. However, finding information about the business seemed difficult, at least when looking at YouTube videos.
Troy breaks it all down. The original Diamonds Restaurant opened west of St. Louis at Highway 50 and Route 66. In 1927, Diamonds started as a fruit and vegetable stand so a young man named Spencer Groff could get his share of the money pouring into places that had opened along Route 66. He did so well that the fruit stand expanded into a restaurant and store he called The Diamonds.
In 1947, the first restaurant burned down, and Groff decided he had had enough and turned the business over to one of his employees. The employee rebuilt it and opened the second building on the site in July 1949. The business did very well through the 1960s until Interstate 44 opened. Even then, the restaurant's owners didn't give up; they moved everything, including the vintage sign, to a location near the new interstate.
The old location then became the Tri-County Truck Stop, a 24-hour restaurant catering to truckers, the late-night bar crowd, and drifters passing through the area. The second floor was renovated into sleeping rooms and showers for truckers. However, those rooms also attracted hitchhikers and prostitutes and developed a rough reputation.
According to Troy's history, the Tri-County Truck Stop started experiencing hauntings around 1970. Customers and employees began telling stories of being touched by unseen hands, hearing voices, or even seeing shadowy figures that weren't there. The stories continued for the next two decades.
Objects moving on their own, lights and appliances turning on and off, while others claimed to see spirits. Like a man in a plaid shirt and tan pants. Or a couple covered in blood. By the 90s, ghost stories were everywhere, and local residents were claiming ghosts were spilling out of the building and haunting other places, including homes.
So, is the old Diamond's Restaurant / Tri-County Truck stop haunted? I'm not the right guy to ask. I'm a little skeptical when I see shadows or floating orbs on video, yet I might sing a different tune if I were there.
My interest in Diamonds/ Tri-County Truckstop stems from seeing postcards, old videos, and pictures. I went to YouTube more to see if anyone had explored the site and if any exciting videos were taken of what was left behind because I'm more into the history of roads, roadside stops, tourist traps, and the like than ghosts. You can watch the videos below and decide how haunted this place is!
This video is about ghost-hunting, but it also does an excellent job of talking about the history of the place and some of the history behind the hauntings.
Businesses around Villa Ridge, Missouri from 1994, including the Tri-County Truck Stop, 12 years before it closed.
Author's note: If the subject of ghosts, hauntings, highways, and history intrigues you, I urge you to check out Troy Talor's website, American Hauntings. He's written many books and articles about haunted history and related events. Visit his website here.
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