Missouri association building to make horror film debut

Key Takeaways

Jay Shipman spent eight years presenting the Missouri Association of Counties to the world. Almost 15 years after he left for a new career, he’s still at it.

When horror film buffs watch “The Mortuary Assistant” upon its release next year, they’ll see the exterior of a funeral home in Cole County — home to state capital Jefferson City — featured in a scene. County officials from across the state will better know it as their state association’s new office building when it opens after extensive renovations. 

In late 2024, while in Missouri for work, Shipman was visiting with colleagues from the association, where he worked as communications director, when Executive Director Steve Hobbs told him about their impending purchase — the long-dormant former Buescher Memorial Home. 

“When he told me that, I nearly fell over,” he said.

Shipman, now several years into his film production career, was working as a production coordinator for “The Mortuary Assistant,” and had been looking for a location for the film. 

He struck gold, thanks to the Show Mo Act tax credit, which he called critical to the on-location filming. 

The film is based on a videogame of the same name, in which a woman, played by Willa Holland of “The O.C.” and “Arrow” fame, encounters supernatural forces after taking a job embalming bodies. You may remember her costar, Paul Sparks, from such television shows as “Boardwalk Empire” and “House of Cards.”

The association bought the building from the city in March. 

Built in 1868, the funeral home closed in 2009 and was later condemned by the city, then auctioned in an effort to revive East Capitol Avenue. In addition to the opportunity to preserve architectural history, Hobbs liked the 80 parking spots, three-block walk to the capitol and capacity to accommodate dozens of county officials. But more on that later.

Hobbs first explored the building a year ago, solo. With no electricity, he relied on a flashlight to find his way around.

“It’s like you stepped back in time to the ’70s,” he said. “When we took it over, clothes were still hanging in the closet.”

Some rooms were filled with four feet of garbage and debris. The embalming room was intact, with syringes and scalpels in place. More than 100 coffins littered the showroom. 

“I was terrified I was going to find someone sleeping in one of them,” Hobbs said. 

A local mortician will store the coffins and sell them to counties at cost for use in indigent burials. The building also contained 11 vehicles, including a mid-’50s Packard Hearse. 

The city’s bomb squad had to come in and dispose of sticks of dynamite dating back to 1951. There were 11 $100 bills from 1977 in one basement room and Hobbs is confident any valuables had been ransacked from the property while it was vacant for 16 years.

He and his staff spent most of the summer cleaning the building out, and aside from the film, the scary stuff seems to be behind them.

State historic preservation tax credits will defray 40% of the brick restoration cost, which Hobbs estimates will save the association several million dollars from the overall project. 

Hobbs had experience in historic preservation work at the Audrain County courthouse when he was a county commissioner. The original funeral home building will house the association’s offices. The basement has room for more offices and 3,000 square feet of storage space.

An attached chapel seats 96 people, which will accommodate the association’s 72-person Board of Directors, saving on facility rentals five times a year for Board meetings. An annex, with views of the capitol and the governor’s mansion, seats 160. More meeting space will seat 120 with a divider.

“We were going to tear down the annex and build something new, but once the engineer got in there and checked it out, he said it was solid enough that we didn’t have to do too much work on it,” Hobbs said. 

The new building is a block away from the association’s headquarters from 1990-2019. Hobbs had hoped to restore that building after a tornado rendered it unusable, but space limitations proved insurmountable.

Shipman worked in the old building.

“It’s exciting to be a part of this history, even just a small piece of it,” he said of the film. “It was just a great experience, especially when there was so much tragedy of losing the old building, that much history, to get to start a new chapter for the association.”