This four-part series delves into the history of Pine Street Station, which serves as home to the UMB Department of Police and Public Safety.
Note: Please see the video at the end of this article. Read "The Ghosts of Pine Street Station: Part 1" before continuing.
Is Someone There?
For nearly 150 years, patrolmen, criminals, police matrons, judges, and countless others passed through Pine Street Station’s doors. But some who entered may never have left.
Talk to nearly anyone who has spent time in Pine Station and they’ll have a story of something odd going on. Strange sounds when no one’s around: windows opening and closing, footsteps, typing. Lights flickering. Bathroom faucets turning on unexpectedly. Seeing something out of the corner of your eye.
One employee who didn’t want to be named was a notorious skeptic until he experienced something … odd.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw feet walking by in the lobby,” he says, “but the motion-activated lights never turned on. The front door never opened and the door to the back stairwell never opened. No one was there.”
Others have experienced something more physical. Thomas Leone, MSL, assistant vice president for public safety and chief of police, vividly remembers grabbing a stack of paper off the printer one morning.
“I started walking toward my office and it felt like a hand came up underneath my papers and they just went flying everywhere,” Leone says. “In a state of shock — and really being afraid — I scooped everything up, dropped my papers on the desk, and I left for the day.”
On her very first day, public information officer (PIO) Carin Cardella, MA, MS, excitedly walked into Pine Station. The ghosts were waiting.
“When I stepped from the lobby into the back area with the stairwell, my feet went out from under me and I fell flat on my back,” Cardella says. “There was no water on the ground, there was nothing slippery, but I went down hard.”
From his office, Leone looked up at the Pine Station camera feed to see the department’s new PIO lying on the ground. “I was like, ‘What in the world just happened?’”
Others describe feeling a push by the building’s central staircase. For years, when only two people were in the building, they would make sure to leave together. No one wanted to be left in Pine Station alone.
What’s That Sound?
The televisions inside Pine Station are especially sensitive. In the upstairs Chief’s Suite, many — but not all — of the televisions turn on and off unexpectedly. One employee remembers going into the basement while joking he didn’t believe in the ghosts. When he got there, all the televisions in the basement turned on.
Deputy Chief Barbara Duncan, JD, has an office with a TV that mysteriously turns on and off. Cardella worked in that same office from 2019 to 2024; the TV never turned on and off unexpectedly while she was there.
The upstairs conference room television caused months of confusion and countless Help Desk tickets. The TV is mounted to the wall about 10 feet high. It can’t be turned on and off without a ladder or the remote.
“Occasionally, I’d be the last to leave. I’d lock up. Everything was quiet,” says Cardella. “The next morning, I’d be the first one in. I’d unlock the door to the Chief’s Suite and the TV would be on with the volume blaring as loud as it could go.”
The conference room television mystery went on for months. “It was so loud, you could hear the TV as soon as you walked in the building,” says Leone. The volume would be turned down and the TV turned off. Soon enough, the TV would turn on. It would get louder and louder until it reached a deafening volume.
One morning, Cardella arrived and could hear the TV blasting from the conference room. When she went to turn it off, she found that the room had been stacked with boxes during an office move; the TV remote was on the opposite side of the room. The only way she could get the remote — and turn off the TV — was to climb over the table and around boxes.
Many people had theories. A timer? A trickster turning the TV on and off from outside? After countless hours spent trying to “fix” the TV, it was unplugged.
“If it turns on again, you’ll have to call the Ghostbusters,” joked John Czahor, IT application analyst lead.
All Quiet … Or Not
Photo: Early residents of Pine Station
Pine Station’s current employees have long joked about a “creepy” framed photo of some of the station’s earliest tenants, calling them their “ghosty friends.” For a long time, the photo was hidden away in closets or back rooms. In 2025, the photo went up on the wall in the Chief’s Suite.
For a while, the activity seemed to quiet down. New building occupants said they hadn’t experienced anything odd. Perhaps the ghosts had been appeased.
Then, in September 2026, business analyst Kristy Guice joined a meeting online and saw something strange (photo below).
“When I was looking at the screen, I saw this weird light that looked like a person,” says Guice, “but when I turned around, it wasn’t there.” The outline only appeared in the teleconference window. No sun shining in her window. No reflections from anything in her empty office, which she had only recently moved into.
When Clery coordinator Allison Shelley decorated her office for Halloween, she came in the next morning to find the streamers on the floor.
“They’re held up by thumbtacks, so it’s not something that just pops out,” she says. “And it never happens with my Christmas decorations. I guess the ghosts don’t like Halloween.”
Who’s Haunting Pine Station?
UMB Police and Public Safety observed 50 years in 2025. Part of the yearlong celebration included extensive research into the history of UMB Police. What started as a peek into the department’s past turned into a deep dive of Pine Station and its former tenants.
As we looked closer, one story stuck out: the sudden death of Capt. Charles A. Kahler inside Pine Station.
Captain Kahler’s story is Part 3 of "The Ghosts of Pine Street Station" series.