Step into the Periwinkle Place Manor Bed & Breakfast in Chelsea and you may wonder if you will ever step out.
The three-story, nine-bedroom inn occupies a former funeral home that operated from 1892 to 2003 in the Iowa River valley town west of Cedar Rapids.
Guests participating in murder mystery-themed stays may hear the ghosts of children believed to haunt the second floor, see the body elevator and sit on the concrete slab where blood was drained from corpses during embalming.
“It’s not for everybody, but people really enjoy the history part of it,” said owner Jodi Philipp.
She and her husband John started a murder mystery dinner business on their farm near Van Horne and had used the former funeral home, which they bought in 2013, as a setting for some of the meals. When they converted it into an inn, they at first downplayed its past. But guests persuaded them to embrace it.“People wanted to see that part of it. That’s why they were coming,” Philipp said. “So I started putting the stuff back into the place that was there, and that’s what has made it so much more popular.”