Omaha Exploration

Exploring everything from the origin stories of longtime Omaha businesses and buildings to new developments shaping the city’s future. If it’s part of Omaha’s story, past or present, it’s fair game.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Gone But Not Forgotten: Wayne Sealy’s Mystery Manor

Omaha Exploration

716 N 18th Street, Creighton University, Mystery Manor, North Downtown, Wayne Sealy

September 24, 2023

Built in 1886, the house didn’t become “haunted” until nearly 100 years later in 1984. That was the year that Sealy opened the Mystery Manor at 716 North 18th Street. It quickly gained a following with crowds anxiously waiting to get inside. They would line up around the building and down 18th Street to Burt Street and beyond. Features included a three-story slide, the tunnel which gave you the sensation that the room was spinning, a Frankenstein character and a clown room, among others. Despite the stories, there is no evidence that a gruesome murder took place in the house.

The intersection of 18th and Webster in 1925. As much as I want the house on the far right to be the the house, I don’t think it is. Even so, it gives you an idea of what the area was like.

As the surrounding houses and buildings were demolished, Sealy received offers for the property. He turned them down because he didn’t care how much he could get for the land, he just wanted to entertain the paying customers that returned to his house which sat on the edge of the Creighton campus year after year. Sealy passed away in 2022 and it’s likely that it closed as he was the driving force behind the haunted house. Creighton bought the property for $425,000 and will use it as part of its expansion.

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