5 places to check for ghosts in our heavily haunted state

Guests of the Empress of Little Rock bed and breakfast could run into the ghost of a dapper, top-hatted gentleman.
Guests of the Empress of Little Rock bed and breakfast could run into the ghost of a dapper, top-hatted gentleman.

"Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring."

-- Dracula

Arkansas is like Transylvania, full of creepy places and haunted looks. These are some of the state's most famously said-to-be-haunted abodes according to the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism:

• Hornibook House, today's Empress of Little Rock bed and breakfast in Little Rock. The house was built by saloon keeper James Hornibook in 1888, and is said to count among its boarders the floating ghost of a dapper, top-hatted gentleman.

• Clayton House, Fort Smith. Built in 1882, this Victorian-era mansion claims the ghost of a gray-haired woman, along with unaccountable sounds of boots stomping and doors slamming.

• Peel Mansion, Bentonville. U.S. Rep. Samuel Peel built the house in 1875, and he and his piano-playing daughter, Minnie Belle, are said to have stayed on to this day -- as good an explanation as any for the mysterious sounds of piano music.

• McCollum-Chidester House, Camden. Today's home of the Ouachita County Historical Society, the bullet-marked Civil War-era house is where a man in a three-piece suit once took shape in a mirror, or so the spirits say.

• Allen House, Monticello. Ladell Allen poisoned herself in this extravagant home in 1948, and the house has been haunted ever since by tales of strange rearrangements of the furniture -- and the figure of a woman in a window.

-- Ron Wolfe

HomeStyle on 10/29/2016

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