Do you love a good ghost story? Have an affinity for spooky places? Wouldn’t mind staying in a hotel that is said to be haunted? Actually like feeling a little chill run down your spine? Then this post is for you!
I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but I definitely love a good ghost story!
And Arkansas has plenty of them.
From haunted hotels and historic homes to mysterious lights, phantom hitchhikers, eerie bridges, and a woman in white who has supposedly been wandering near an Arkansas creek for more than 100 years, there are some wonderfully creepy stories associated with places around the state.
Some of these tales are tied to documented historical events. Others are legends that have been told and retold so many times that separating fact from folklore is almost impossible.
That’s part of the fun.
Here are 13 of the most haunted places in Arkansas…or at least the places with some of the best ghost stories!
1. The Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs
We have to start with the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. The Crescent isn’t just one of the most famous haunted places in Arkansas. It bills itself as America’s Most Haunted Hotel, and it has appeared on numerous paranormal television shows over the years.
The hotel opened in 1886 as a luxury resort and has lived several lives since then, including a stint as a prestigious women’s college. And even the college years have their own ghost story.
According to legend, a young woman either fell or was pushed from an upper floor of the hotel. Guests today have reportedly seen the apparition of a young woman believed to be the former student.
But the creepiest chapter began in 1937 when Norman Baker bought the hotel and turned it into a hospital where he claimed he could cure cancer.
Baker was not a doctor. In fact, he had no medical training at all.
He was a charlatan who convinced desperately ill people to come to his “hospital” for treatments. He advertised his supposed cure through the mail and, according to testimony that later came out in court, hired healthy people to pose as patients who had been cured.
Hundreds of cancer patients came to the Crescent hoping Baker could save them.
He couldn’t. Because of this sordid history there is even a morgue in the basement of the building.
As if that history wasn’t unsettling enough, a landscaper working on the property in 2019 uncovered an old dump site. An archaeological excavation eventually revealed hundreds of bottles connected to Baker’s hospital, including some containing his concoctions and others with preserved medical specimens.
Gross and super creepy.
Over the years, guests and employees have reported all sorts of paranormal activity. There are stories about a construction worker named Michael, a mysterious bearded man in formal clothing, a former cancer patient named Theodora, and even a nurse pushing a gurney down the hallway.
Do I believe they’re really wandering around the Crescent? I don’t know.
I’ve stayed at the Crescent and never had a supernatural experience, but people who I personally know and trust have! What I do know is that I definitely wouldn’t volunteer to wander through Baker’s old morgue alone at midnight!
If you want to investigate for yourself, you can still stay at the Crescent Hotel and they also offer ghost tours and paranormal investigations throughout the year.
2. The Haunted Allen House in Monticello
The Allen House in Monticello has one of the saddest stories on this list. In fact, I would have called it the saddest, but just wait until you get to number 13!
This is a beautiful Queen Anne-style home built around 1905 for Joe Lee Allen and his family. The ghost stories center primarily around his daughter Ladell Allen Bonner.
On Christmas night in 1948, Ladell poisoned herself with cyanide in an upstairs bedroom.
For years, no one really understood why. Her mother, Caddye, closed off Ladell’s room, and it remained sealed for decades.
The house was eventually divided into apartments, although Ladell’s room remained sealed. I don’t know about y’all but I might be a little suspicious of renting an apartment in an old house with a sealed off room….Anyway, tenants began reporting strange things. They heard footsteps and moaning, saw a woman in an upstairs window, and experienced doors and objects behaving in ways they couldn’t explain.
When later owners finally opened the room, a bottle of cyanide was reportedly still sitting inside a closet. Then, in 2009, the home’s current owners made an amazing discovery.
Hidden beneath floorboards in the attic were more than 90 old love letters that revealed Ladell had been involved in a relationship with a married former sweetheart. The letters shed new light on the heartbreak surrounding the final months of her life.
Some say Ladell never left.
The Allen House is now famous enough for its hauntings that it is specifically mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas’s discussion of Arkansas ghost legends.
And I have to admit, this is one Arkansas ghost story that gives me the chills.
3. The King Opera House in Van Buren
Of course an old Victorian opera house has to have a ghost.
The King Opera House in downtown Van Buren dates to the 1890s and became an opera house around the turn of the century. Today it is a beautifully restored performance venue.
But its most famous performer might be the one who supposedly never left. His name was Charles Tolson.
Tolson was an actor and manager of a traveling theatrical company that performed at the King Opera House in 1903.
Now, this is where the legend and the history get a little tangled.
The popular story says Tolson fell in love with 17-year-old Allye Parchman, the daughter of a local doctor. The two supposedly planned to run away together until her father discovered the plan.
We don’t know if that part is true or not.
What is documented is that the girl’s father, Dr. William Parchman, confronted Tolson at the Van Buren train depot and shot him. Tolson was taken to Fort Smith, where he died from his injuries.
Nobody knows if he and Allye were actually planning to elope though. History says that she wasn’t at the depot that morning and Tolson was actually already married.
But they say that, even at the time, there was plenty of gossip about what led to the shooting. And if you know small towns you know that part is true.
Whatever the motive, Tolson’s death was very real.
And ever since, people have claimed that his ghost returned to the place of his final performances.
Employees and visitors have reported seeing a young man dressed in old-fashioned clothing, sometimes described as wearing a top hat or cape. Lights have supposedly turned on when no one was around.
I’d say that a real murder followed by a century of ghost stories is plenty to earn the King Opera House a place on this list.
4. The Gurdon Ghost Lights
Is the Gurdon Light actually a ghost? Or is it simply a strange natural phenomenon that we haven’t completely explained?
Either way, it’s one of the most famous Arkansas legends.
The Gurdon Light is a mysterious floating light that has been seen along a remote stretch of railroad tracks outside the town of Gurdon since at least the 1930s. It has even been recorded and became nationally known after appearing on Unsolved Mysteries in 1994.
There are plenty of theories about what causes it.
Car headlights have been suggested, although sightings predate the nearby interstate. Swamp gas has been blamed. Another theory involves electrical activity associated with quartz beneath the area.
But naturally, I prefer the ghost story.
In December 1931, railroad foreman William McClain was murdered near the tracks by employee Louis McBride following an argument over work hours. McBride struck McClain with a shovel and then killed him with a railroad tool.
That murder actually happened.
Soon afterward, people began reporting the mysterious light.
According to one version of the legend, the glow is McClain’s lantern as his ghost continues walking the railroad tracks.
The more dramatic version involves a railroad worker who lost his head and is still searching for it.
Whatever the explanation, people really have reported seeing the Gurdon Light for generations.
What do you think? Science or spirit?
Love being scared on purpose? We also have a list of haunted house attractions in Arkansas that you might enjoy!
5. The Desha County Courthouse
The Desha County Courthouse in Arkansas City was built in 1900 and is an impressive Romanesque Revival building.
It also has a clock that apparently does not like to behave…and according to local legend, there is a reason. The reason is a ghost named Willard.
The story says that a man was accused of being an arsonist. He was convicted of setting fire to hotels and other buildings and was eventually sentenced to hang. Before his death, he supposedly cursed the courthouse and declared that its clock would never work correctly again.
Here’s the interesting part.
There doesn’t appear to be an official record proving that this hanging actually happened. So the backstory may be folklore.
The troublesome clock, however, is not.
Former Desha County Judge Mark McElroy spent years trying to get the clock working correctly. At one point it was completely refurbished, but afterward it reportedly rang 13 times, chimed throughout the night, jumped ahead by an hour, and generally refused to cooperate.
Eventually the repairman gave up. According to McElroy, the man essentially concluded that the thing must be haunted.
People who have worked in and around the courthouse have also reported strange footsteps, a female apparition, and other unexplained activity.
A courthouse ghost with a cursed clock that won’t stay fixed is a fun little ghost story.
6. The Clayton House in Fort Smith
The Clayton House in Fort Smith kind of has the look of a place that would have a ghost. It’s both pretty and creepy.
The home was originally built in the 1850s and was used for a time as a Union hospital during the Civil War.
In 1882, William Henry Harrison Clayton moved his family into the house and transformed it into the Victorian Gothic Italianate mansion that you see today.
Clayton was the federal prosecutor who worked alongside Judge Isaac C. Parker in Fort Smith’s famous frontier court. That’s the famous “hanging judge” in case you don’t know.
Over the years, visitors and staff have reported footsteps, slamming doors, unexplained sounds, and apparitions.
One of the best-known ghosts has been nicknamed The Tall Angry Man. He’s described as tall, dressed in black, wearing a hat, and looking distinctly unhappy.
Apparently one visitor once mistook him for a historical re-enactor and approached him to offer help. The man disappeared.
Yeah, that would do it for me.
Another frequently reported apparition is a woman dressed in brown who has supposedly appeared in and around the house.
Who are they and why do they haunt the house? Nobody really knows.
7. The Haunted Cotter Bridge
The Cotter Bridge is one of those places that doesn’t look particularly scary on a sunny Arkansas afternoon.
In fact, it’s beautiful during the day. But I can imagine how it could be eerie in the night with the mist rising from the White River.
Officially known as the R.M. Ruthven Bridge, this concrete Rainbow Arch bridge crosses the White River near Cotter and was completed in 1930. It is an important piece of Arkansas engineering history.
Even so, ghost stories surrounding the bridge have circulated for years. There are different legends about deaths that supposedly occurred while the bridge was being built. One tale even claims that 3 or 4 prisoners died during the construction of the bridge.
And there are several different ghostly apparitions around that bridge. The story you hear will depend on who is telling it!
People say they see children playing around the bridge. They look real and then disappear when approached. Others say they’ve heard the cries of a baby.
One of the strangest stories involves the apparition of a woman being chased across the bridge by a ghostly pack of hounds. Her screams and the baying of the dogs can be heard.
Then there is the mysterious “Laughing Lady” who has been claimed to have tried to grab a child.
Strange that there are SO many stories associated with one historic Arkansas bridge. Makes me wonder if some of them might be true.
8. The Ghost of Lorance Creek
This one was new to me, and I can’t believe I hadn’t heard it before, especially since I live in the county where this happened.
Lorance Creek is in Saline County, not far from Little Rock, and the ghost story associated with it goes all the way back to the Civil War era.
According to the old story, an unidentified young woman was murdered near Lorance Creek in 1863. She was supposedly pushed into the creek and later buried nearby in Cockman Cemetery on December 24.
Her wooden grave marker eventually weathered away, and her name was lost, but her spirit was not.
In 1920, workers drilling for oil near the creek and cemetery began reporting strange experiences.
Some said they heard a woman screaming.
One worker claimed that on Halloween he saw a young woman dressed in white. She reportedly wailed, “Why?” before walking toward the creek and disappearing.
The apparition was supposedly seen several more times that year.
And then, after the drilling crews left, the sightings mostly stopped.
This isn’t just something that recently appeared on the internet. The Lorance Creek ghost story was written about in the Arkansas Gazette in 1986 and is included today in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas’s collection of Arkansas ghost legends.
9. The Vanishing Hitchhiker of Highway 365
Ok, here’s a creepy one.
Imagine driving down an Arkansas highway late at night. It’s raining. You see a young woman standing beside the road. She’s wearing a white dress, cold and shivering, and appears to need help.
So, of course, you stop. She gives you an address and gets into the car.
When you arrive at the house, you turn to speak to her…and she’s gone. You’re worried so you knock on the door of the house.
An older woman answers the door and tells you that the young woman you just described died in an accident years ago.
Versions of the Vanishing Hitchhiker story have been told all over the United States, and folklorists refer to it as a migratory legend because the same basic tale moves from place to place.
Arkansas has several versions.
One is associated with the area around Redfield and Highway 365. Another Arkansas version places the encounter between Batesville and Little Rock.
Sometimes the driver gives the girl a coat that is later discovered at her grave. Sometimes she appears on the anniversary of her death.
The details change. The disappearing girl does not.
And some drivers say that they still see a young woman in white along Highway 365. I know that I won’t be picking up any hitchhikers after dark.
10. The Peel Mansion in Bentonville
The Peel Mansion, now known as the Peel Museum & Botanical Garden, was built in 1875 by Congressman Samuel West Peel and his wife, Mary Emaline Peel.
The family had nine surviving children, and the beautiful Italianate home became one of Bentonville’s most impressive residences.
Naturally, there are ghost stories.
Samuel Peel and his daughter Minnie Belle have both been named over the years as possible spirits in the house. Visitors have reported a woman in white and the sound of soft piano music drifting from an empty parlor.
But the strangest story connected to this house happened after the Peel family was gone.
The English family later lived in the mansion with their children, including twin daughters Margery and Elizabeth. Margery became gravely ill with appendicitis, so ill, in fact, that the family believed she had died.
A sheet was placed over her body.
Hours later, someone noticed the sheet move. Margery was alive. In fact, she recovered and lived for many years.
When she returned to visit her childhood home as an adult, she reportedly discovered that the room where she’d been so sick had been closed because later occupants believed it was haunted by a little girl.
They claimed that they would hear the faint sounds of a child crying and be tapped or pinched by little fingers.
Margery tried to explain that she was the little girl and that she had decidedly NOT died in that room.
They apparently didn’t believe her.
11. Fort Smith National Historic Site
If ghosts are drawn to places with a complicated and sometimes violent history, Fort Smith National Historic Site certainly has the background for them.
This was the home of the federal court presided over by Judge Isaac C. Parker, and as mentioned above, he was famously known as the “Hanging Judge.”
But Parker’s nickname makes the story sound a little simpler than it really was.
He served on the federal bench in Fort Smith for 21 years and sentenced 160 people to death. Federal law required the death penalty for certain convictions at the time, and Parker himself did not personally carry out or attend the executions.
Seventy-nine men sentenced during his tenure were ultimately executed.
The gallows stood just outside the courthouse complex. Today you can see a reconstruction of the gallows, and the original courthouse and jail.
Over the years, stories have grown up around Judge Parker’s courtroom and the gallows. People have reported unexplained sounds, strange shadows, and other activity that they attribute to Parker or to the men who passed through the court.
Do I know whether Judge Parker is still wandering around his old courtroom?
No.
But I do know that you don’t even need a ghost story to make this place feel a little eerie. The history does that all by itself.
12. The MacArthur Museum and Old Arsenal
Here’s another great Little Rock ghost story.
The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History is housed in the historic Tower Building of the old Little Rock Arsenal in MacArthur Park.
The Tower Building was completed in 1840 and is the only surviving building from the original arsenal complex. It also happens to be the birthplace of General Douglas MacArthur.
But we’re here for the ghosts.
For years, employees and visitors have reported cold spots, whispering voices, doors opening on their own, footsteps upstairs when nobody else was in the building, and shadowy figures moving through the rooms.
One former employee reported seeing a dark figure in the museum theater. When she and a coworker returned to investigate, they reportedly saw the figure again.
They tried to touch it.
Their hands went straight through.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
The most famous possible ghost associated with the building is David O. Dodd, a 17-year-old who was hanged as a Confederate spy in 1864 on the grounds of St. Johns’ College, in what is now MacArthur Park.
The museum itself includes an exhibit examining Dodd’s story and the legends that developed around his death.
A paranormal investigation of the building in 2006 also produced reports of strange voices, lights, music and other unexplained activity.
The Arkansas State Archives has even written about the museum’s long-running ghost stories.
And the best part?
You can visit the museum for free.
Just maybe don’t be the last one upstairs.
13. Avon Cemetery in De Queen
I’ll end our list with what I think is the saddest Arkansas ghost story of them all.
Avon Cemetery is located near De Queen in southwest Arkansas.
The old local legend centers around a mother, a baby, and a well.
The story says that a woman was drawing water from the well and needed both hands to pull up the heavy bucket. She placed her baby on the edge of the well.
Tragically, the child fell in and drowned.
According to the legend, the grieving mother’s spirit still wanders the area looking for her child. Older versions of the story say that if you dropped a rock into the old well at night, you could hear the cries of a baby coming from below.
There are also stories of people seeing the apparition of a woman moving through the cemetery.
Like many old cemetery legends, there is no documented evidence I’ve found that proves the tragedy at the center of the story actually happened.
It’s folklore. But it’s folklore that people around De Queen have been telling for generations.
Are These Arkansas Haunted Places Really Haunted?
I don’t know that I believe in ghosts. But I do believe that the stories we tell about old places are fascinating.
Sometimes a ghost story grows from an actual murder or tragedy. Sometimes it gets attached to a historic building simply because the building is old and mysterious. And sometimes a story gets passed from one generation to another until nobody can remember exactly where the facts end and the legend begins.
Arkansas has plenty of all three.
If you enjoyed these stories, you might also like our collection of Arkansas legends, where you’ll find some of the state’s other strange tales, including monsters, mysterious lights, lost treasure, and folklore that didn’t quite belong on a list of ghost stories.
And if you want something a little less spooky, check out our favorite fall activities in Arkansas, the best places to see fall color, and our guide to Arkansas pumpkin patches.
