LITTLE ROCK — Ghost tour left without you? Well, boo! Here are some of Arkansas’ bestknown places to go alone, if you have to, in search of ghosties and creepies and long-legged beasties:
The King Opera House, Van Buren: Said to be haunted by the ghost of a young actor. He died like the tragic lover in many a melodrama: trouble over a girl.
The Gurdon Light, Clark County. Legend explains a light that hovers over the railroad tracks near town as the ghost of a murdered man with a lantern, hunting for his lost head. And wouldn’t you know - that thing is bound to turn up in the last place he looks.
The St. Francis County Museum in the Rush-Gates house, Forrest City. Dr. J.O. Rush built his home near the railroad tracks in 1906 to care for the ghastly injuries that rail workers incurred on the job. Stories that the house is haunted endure on the museum’s website, sfcmuseum.org, which allows that “a few odd and unexplainable happenings have been reported.”
The Old State House Museum, Little Rock. One legislator killed another in a knife fight in the 1800s. Both had some reason to be everlastingly sorry for the incident and either might be the phantom said to roam the halls.
The story persists in spite of a declaration from the museum, in 1992, that, “There is no evidence that we are any more prone to soulless, lifeless zombies than any other state agency.”
Politics makes for strange dead fellows. The Old State House in Hartford, Conn., also has trouble with ghosts - the New York State Capitol in Albany, too, the story goes - and even the White House in Washington, where some say the worried specter of Abraham Lincoln remains in office.
Sources include the online Arkansas Encyclopedia of History and Culture and arkansas.com.
Style, Pages 62 on 10/30/2011