65 haunted destinations cataloged across Arkansas, spanning 35 counties. The collection features museum, cemetery, and theater — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Hot Springs, AR
Hot Springs' flagship resort opened in 1875 and was rebuilt in its current Spanish Revival form in 1924. During Prohibition it operated openly as a retreat for organized crime figures, with Al Capone booking Suite 443 repeatedly between 1927 and 1931 while the city's political machine shielded illegal gambling and prostitution operations.
Eureka Springs, AR
The 1905 Basin Park Hotel is a seven-story limestone hotel in downtown Eureka Springs, Arkansas, built on the site of the Perry House, an 1881 hotel that burned in 1890. The Basin Park's distinctive limestone-cut design, with every floor opening at ground level on its hillside, was featured by Ripley's Believe It or Not.
Fort Smith, AR
Built around 1848, this Greek Revival mansion was pressed into service as a field hospital during the Civil War, where surgeons performed amputations and patients died in its rooms. After the war, federal prosecutor William Henry Clayton purchased the property in 1882 and lived there until his death.
Hot Springs, AR
The original 1910 Princess Theatre burned on Christmas Eve 1935 and was rebuilt as the Art Deco Malco in 1936, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building has seen four documented deaths across its history and was investigated by Travel Channel's 'Portals to Hell' in 2022.
Fort Smith, AR
Camp Chaffee broke ground on September 20, 1941, near Fort Smith, and its first soldiers arrived on Pearl Harbor Day. It trained three armored divisions in WWII while holding about 3,000 German prisoners of war. Renamed Fort Chaffee in 1956, it processed over 50,000 Vietnamese refugees in 1975 and roughly 19,000 Cuban refugees after the 1980 Mariel boatlift, including a June 1, 1980 riot that injured 62 people. It has operated as an Arkansas Army National Guard training center since 1997.
Batesville, AR
Lyon College was founded as Arkansas College in 1872 by Arkansas Presbyterians and is the state's oldest independent college still operating under its original charter. The current campus occupies a 136-acre site that served as the Masonic Home for Orphans before the college's 1954 relocation. Brown Chapel, the campus's defining structure, was constructed in 1958 as the first academic building on the new grounds.
Little Rock, AR
The Capital Hotel has operated on W Markham Street since the early 1870s. Railroad magnate William Denckla substantially expanded the property in 1872, and it has served as Little Rock's leading downtown hotel through multiple eras of renovation and ownership.
Little Rock, AR
Built between 1842 and 1843, Curran Hall's first recorded owner sold the property almost immediately after his wife died in childbirth there. The house passed through several owners before acquiring its darkest period during Reconstruction, when it was associated with Klan-related violence that left documented fatalities.
Little Rock, AR
James Hornibrook, a Canadian-born saloon operator who became wealthy in Arkansas, completed the mansion at 2120 Louisiana Street in 1888. He died three years later at 49 from cardiac arrest during a card game. His wife died not long after. The property changed hands multiple times before being restored and opened as a bed and breakfast.
Little Rock, AR
On September 4, 1957, nine Black students attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School under a federal desegregation order. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the National Guard to block them, triggering a constitutional crisis that forced President Eisenhower to deploy the 101st Airborne Division.
Little Rock, AR
The Tower Building is the sole surviving structure of the 1840 Little Rock Arsenal and the birthplace of General Douglas MacArthur. Arkansas militia seized it in February 1861 before the state formally voted for secession; Union forces retook Little Rock in September 1863 and held the arsenal through the war.
Little Rock, AR
Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas was established on February 23, 1843 when prominent citizens Chester Ashley and Roswell Beebe deeded a four-block site to the city. Known as the Westminster Abbey of Arkansas, it holds the burials of eleven Arkansas governors, four U.S. senators, four Confederate generals, and many of the state's leading 19th-century figures.
Little Rock, AR
Built between 1833 and 1842, the Old State House served as Arkansas's capitol for over five decades. In 1837 Speaker John Wilson stabbed fellow legislator Joseph Anthony to death on the House floor during a political dispute — one of the most notorious acts of political violence in antebellum Southern history.
Little Rock, AR
US Ghost Adventures operates its Little Rock program under the local brand Little Rock Ghosts, running a nightly downtown walking tour covering the Capital Hotel, Curran Hall, and the Museum of Arkansas Military History.
Fayetteville, AR
The Arkansas Air & Military Museum occupies the 1943 all-wood hangar built at Drake Field in Fayetteville as part of a World War II military aviation training installation. The structure is one of a small number of all-wood WWII-era military hangars still standing in the United States and is listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places.
Fayetteville, AR
The Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery was established in 1872–1873 by the Southern Memorial Association to gather and re-inter Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War battles fought near Fayetteville, including the Battle of Pea Ridge (March 1862) and the Battle of Prairie Grove (December 1862). It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1993.
Fayetteville, AR
Built in 1905 as the University of Arkansas's first women's dormitory, Carnall Hall was named in honor of English Professor Ella Howison Carnall, who died of typhoid fever before the building she helped advocate for was ever completed. The structure operated as a university dormitory for nearly a century before being restored and reopened as a 49-room boutique hotel in 2003.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPFayetteville, AR
Tilly Willy Bridge is a low concrete crossing on a secluded dirt road south of Fayetteville in Washington County, Arkansas. Sources indicate the present crossing was originally intended in the 1930s as a flood-control structure. The name traces to early settler Matilda Wilson Ford, whose name was locally shortened to 'Tilly Willy.' The original bridge was demolished in 2010 and replaced by a new structure opened in 2012.
Fayetteville, AR
The Washington County Courthouse in Fayetteville was the seat of capital justice for the region in the late 19th century, with death sentences handed down inside and public hangings carried out on the courthouse grounds. The building's Wikipedia entry documents its history as a significant civic structure in Fayetteville.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHot Springs, AR
On December 2, 1922, Violet Alma Boles — 20 years old, born November 16, 1902 — was shot and killed at the Japanese Tea Room at 366 Central Avenue in Hot Springs by Elmer Jones, a school acquaintance who had developed an obsessive fixation on her. Cemetery records from Greenwood Cemetery in Garland County confirm her dates exactly.
Hot Springs, AR
The United States Army-Navy General Hospital at Hot Springs opened in 1887 as the nation's first joint Army-Navy medical facility, built to take advantage of the city's therapeutic mineral springs. Rebuilt as a 412-bed brick complex in the early 1930s, it treated more than 100,000 veterans during World War II before closing permanently in 2019.
Hot Springs, AR
Operating since 2008 in downtown Hot Springs, the Gangster Museum of America documents the city's four-decade role as an 'open city' — a protected retreat for organized crime figures from the 1920s through the early 1960s, where local and state authorities permitted gambling, prostitution, and mob operations in exchange for a share of the proceeds.
Hot Springs, AR
The Superior Bathhouse opened in 1916 as one of the eight bathhouses on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park. It operated until 1983, then sat vacant for thirty years before reopening in 2013 as the first — and still only — brewery operating inside a U.S. National Park.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHot Springs, AR
The Poet's Loft operated at 514B Central Avenue in Hot Springs, Arkansas, across from Bathhouse Row, where for more than a decade Dr. Paul Tucker and Suzanne Tucker hosted the long-running Wednesday Night Poetry event documented in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The venue is no longer at that address; the building sits within the Hot Springs Central Avenue Historic District.
Jonesboro, AR
The theater at 115 E. Monroe Avenue in Jonesboro opened in 1926 as the Strand Theatre. The City of Jonesboro acquired it in the late 1970s, renovating it into a modern performance venue and renaming it the Forum Theatre. Since 1986 it has served as the home of the Foundation of Arts, the premiere arts organization in northeast Arkansas.
Jonesboro, AR
Built in 1926 as the Strand Theatre, the Forum Theatre has operated as a downtown Jonesboro performance venue for nearly a century. The Foundation of Arts, a non-profit arts organization, has managed it for decades and continues to produce community theater and musical productions.
Jonesboro, AR
Keller's Chapel Cemetery is a rural burial ground roughly south of Jonesboro in Craighead County, Arkansas, associated with a small country chapel. The cemetery holds approximately 1,200 interments, about 75 of them members of the Keller family for whom the site is named, including nine Keller infants.
Jonesboro, AR
On December 26, 1920, Wade Thomas, a Black man, was taken from the Craighead County Jail by a white mob of approximately 400 people and lynched at the corner of Main and Monroe Streets in Jonesboro. The killing followed a police officer's death during a Christmas night craps raid; Thomas had been present at the scene. Authorities did not resist the mob's removal of Thomas from custody.
Camden, AR
Built in 1847 by Peter McCollum from lumber imported by ship from New Orleans, the house was purchased in 1858 by Colonel John T. Chidester for $10,000 in gold. Chidester ran an extensive stagecoach operation across Arkansas. During the 1864 Union occupation of Camden, General Frederick Steele commandeered the house and used the parlor and east bedroom as his headquarters for five days.
Camden, AR
On April 18, 1864, a Union foraging column of approximately 1,800 men — including the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry — was ambushed by 3,600 Confederate troops at Poison Spring, Arkansas, during the Camden Expedition. The Confederates routed the Union column and then massacred wounded and surrendering Black soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry during and after the battle, killing or mutilating over 200 men. Documented evidence including period accounts record post-battle killings. It is the worst documented atrocity involving Black Union soldiers in Arkansas Civil War history.
El Dorado, AR
The Newton House is the oldest building in El Dorado, built sometime between 1843 and 1853 by Matthew Rainey, the city's first settler. The vernacular two-story wood-frame structure features a central hall plan and retains original construction details. It was relocated from the center of its original 4-acre parcel to the edge of the property in 1910. The South Arkansas Historical Foundation acquired it and operates it as a museum; it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 6, 1974, and incorporated into the Murphy-Hill Historic District in 2007.
El Dorado, AR
The Rialto Theatre opened in 1929, built during El Dorado's oil boom for $250,000 and designed by the firm of Kolben, Hunter and Boyd in the Egyptian Revival style. Its brick facade features basketweave patterning and decorative stone Egyptian Revival details. Originally seating 1,400, the theater was owned for decades by the McWilliams family and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. After closing in 2006, it was acquired by the Murphy Arts District in 2012 and restored for active use.
Fort Smith, AR
The Fort Smith Museum of History occupies the 1906 Atkinson Williams Hardware building, a five-story commercial structure that outlasted Fort Smith's frontier era. The museum documents Judge Isaac Parker's federal court — which tried cases from Indian Territory and executed 79 men by hanging between 1875 and 1896 — and the wider violent history of a city that served as law's edge.
Fort Smith, AR
From 1875 to 1896, U.S. District Judge Isaac Parker presided over a federal court with jurisdiction over Indian Territory from this Fort Smith courthouse. Parker sentenced 160 people to death; 86 were executed on the gallows in the courtyard — the highest execution total of any single federal judge in American history. The National Park Service operates the site, which includes the restored courtroom, the original basement jail, and a reconstruction of the multi-trap gallows.
Magnolia, AR
The Cameo Theatre was constructed in 1949 in Magnolia, Arkansas, and served as the city's primary movie palace until its closure in 2012. Designed by architecture firm Ginocchio & Cromwell, the theater featured 850 seats and ornamental murals. W.P. Florence, Jr. owned and operated the theater until his retirement in 2000. Stars Cinema subsequently operated the facility until 2012.
Magnolia, AR
Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia traces its origins to the Third District Agricultural School established in 1909. The institution became Southern Arkansas University in 1976. The Harton Theatre is the home of the SAU Department of Theatre and hosts the university's main stage season.
Van Buren, AR
The Crawford County Courthouse in Van Buren dates its original section to 1842, making it a candidate for the oldest courthouse in continuous active use west of the Mississippi River. Arsonists gutted the building in 1877 during a bitter county-seat dispute, but it was rebuilt within the surviving original walls. The Civil War left its mark on the structure as well — the building was used as a military post during the conflict.
Van Buren, AR
The King Opera House in Van Buren, Arkansas first opened in 1891 and was acquired by Colonel Henry P. King in 1898, who transformed it into an opera house with storefronts at the street level. The building is a contributing property to the Van Buren Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Arts on Main has managed the venue since 2022.
Arkadelphia, AR
Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas was founded in 1890 as Arkadelphia Methodist College and became a state institution in the early 20th century. Arkansas Hall serves the university's performing arts programs and contains a full-equipped theater complex including a studio theater, auditorium, and dance studio.
Bentonville, AR
Col. Samuel W. Peel, a Confederate veteran turned Arkansas congressman, built this Italianate mansion in Bentonville in 1875 for his wife, Mary Emaline. It passed through five more owners after her death before Walmart donated it to a nonprofit foundation in 1992, which restored it as a museum and botanical garden.
Berryville, AR
Berryville High School operates as a comprehensive secondary institution in the Berryville School District in Carroll County, Arkansas. The school serves students in grades 9-12 and includes athletic facilities including a gymnasium. The gym's history and any documented trauma remain undocumented in accessible public sources.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBono, AR
Bono Bridge was a railroad-overpass bridge in the town of Bono in Craighead County, Arkansas, near Jonesboro. Local reporting describes the bridge as dating to the 1800s, with its wooden elements torn down in the early 2000s and the structure ultimately demolished around 2011. The site remains a well-known location in regional ghost lore.
Booneville, AR
The Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium opened in 1910 three miles south of Booneville and grew to become the largest tuberculosis treatment facility in the United States by 1940, housing up to 5,000 patients at peak capacity. The facility treated more than 70,000 patients across 63 years of operation before closing on June 30, 1973.
Clarksville, AR
The Bunch-Walton Post No. 22 American Legion Hut is a historic two-story structure constructed from native stone in Clarksville, Arkansas. Built on a raised foundation on what was formerly an island in Spadra Creek, the building displays distinctive Normanesque castellated architecture inspired by European military structures from World War I. The structure serves as a veterans hall and historical landmark.
Cotter, AR
The Cotter Bridge, officially renamed the R.M. Ruthven Bridge in 1976, carries U.S. Highway 62 Business over the White River near Cotter in Baxter County, Arkansas. Designed by the Marsh Engineering Company and completed in 1930, its distinctive concrete rainbow arches made it Arkansas's first National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPDe Queen, AR
Avon Cemetery is a rural burial ground in the Avon community near De Queen in Sevier County, southwest Arkansas. Little formal historical documentation is publicly available for the cemetery, which is typical of small rural burial grounds in the region. Its modern notoriety stems almost entirely from a local ghost legend rather than documented historical events.
Eureka Springs, AR
The 1886 Crescent Hotel was built as a luxury Victorian resort atop the Ozark mountains of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, then briefly operated as a women's college before its most notorious chapter: Norman Baker's fraudulent cancer clinic from 1937 to 1940. Baker charged dying patients for treatments that offered no medical benefit, and the hotel retains his intact basement morgue.
Garfield, AR
The Battle of Pea Ridge (March 7–8, 1862) pitted roughly 26,000 soldiers across two days of fighting across 4,300 acres of Ozark terrain. Union General Samuel Curtis repulsed a Confederate offensive under General Earl Van Dorn, effectively ending Confederate hopes for holding Missouri. Elkhorn Tavern, a stagecoach stop on Telegraph Road, changed hands twice during the fighting and was used as a field hospital by both sides.
Gurdon, AR
Gurdon grew up as a Clark County timber and railroad town on the Missouri Pacific line. In December 1931, a section foreman named William McClain was beaten to death near the tracks outside town by an employee, Louis McBride, in a dispute over work assignments; McBride was convicted and executed. An unexplained light began appearing along the rail bed near the site not long after, and locals have reported it ever since.
Helena-West Helena, AR
Maple Hill Cemetery in Helena was established after the 1863 Battle of Helena damaged or destroyed the city's original burial ground. The cemetery contains more than 73 Confederate soldiers including 23 killed in the July 4, 1863 assault on Helena, and holds the graves of three Confederate generals. It serves as one of the primary historical sites documenting the Battle of Helena's human toll.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPJudsonia, AR
Evergreen Cemetery, also called Judsonia Cemetery, is a historic burial ground in Judsonia, White County, Arkansas, dating to the 19th century. It contains the 1894 Grand Army of the Republic Monument surrounded by graves of Union veterans, and a notable marble statue marking the grave of Laura Lee Henson, an 18-year-old who died in 1914 of injuries from a fire.
Leola, AR
The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry was fought on April 30, 1864, on the banks of the Saline River in what is now Grant County, Arkansas. Confederate forces caught the retreating Union Army of General Frederick Steele at the river crossing during the Red River Campaign. By percentage of casualties relative to forces engaged, Jenkins' Ferry ranks among the Civil War's most costly single-day engagements. The 67-acre state park preserves the site of the pontoon bridge crossing.
Marion, AR
On April 27, 1865 — twelve days after Lincoln's assassination — the steamboat Sultana exploded on the Mississippi River seven miles above Memphis, killing approximately 1,169 Union soldiers who had just been released from Confederate prison camps and were headed home. The ship was certified for 376 passengers but was carrying an estimated 2,300 to 2,500 people, the result of a bribery scheme in which an army officer accepted payment per prisoner loaded regardless of capacity. The Sultana disaster remains the deadliest maritime catastrophe in American history.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMena, AR
Rich Mountain Pioneer Cemetery is a small 19th-century burial ground on the slope of Rich Mountain in the Ouachita National Forest, Polk County, Arkansas, west of Queen Wilhelmina State Park. James Witherspoon set aside a two-acre family plot here, and roughly twenty Rich Mountain settlers were eventually buried in the cemetery, most marked only with native stones.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMonette, AR
Monette Cemetery in Craighead County, Arkansas contains a notable architectural anomaly: a mausoleum that was originally constructed with glass panels, allowing visibility of the remains inside. When the remains began to decay visibly, the community sealed the structure in concrete and painted it over. The mausoleum bears no identifying name or date.
New Edinburg, AR
Marks' Mills Battleground State Park preserves part of the site of the April 25, 1864 Action at Marks' Mills in present-day Cleveland County, Arkansas. The Confederate ambush of a Union supply train under Lieutenant Colonel Francis M. Drake produced approximately 1,500 Union casualties to 293 Confederate, contributed to General Frederick Steele's withdrawal from Camden, and is part of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark.
North Little Rock, AR
North Little Rock High School's West Campus, originally known as Ole Main, was completed in 1930 and designed by Little Rock architect George R. Mann in an Art-Deco style. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1993, the building hosted high school students until 2015 and now sits largely vacant while the district plans its renovation as a Center of Excellence charter school.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPOxford, AR
Oxford is an Izard County, Arkansas community settled in the mid-nineteenth century around Wiley Croom's cotton mill and grist mill. It was incorporated in 1945. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry for Oxford documents Cumberland Presbyterian (1870), Methodist, and Baptist (1937) churches but no vigilante witch-hanging history of the type described in the Shadowlands narrative.
Paragould, AR
The Capitol Theatre opened on West Emerson Street in Paragould on October 25, 1925, built by Bertig Realty Co. with John A. Collins as initial manager. The Collins family operated the venue across six decades until 1986, when they deeded it to the Greene County Fine Arts Council. Renamed the Collins Theatre and restored beginning in 1991, it now operates as northeast Arkansas's principal community performing arts venue.
Piggott, AR
The Clay County Courthouse, Eastern District is located on Courthouse Square in the center of Piggott, Arkansas. The current courthouse was built in 1966-1967 to a design by Donnellan & Porterfield, replacing an 1890s Romanesque courthouse designed by Charles L. Thompson. Piggott became the Eastern District seat of Clay County in 1891, when an election shifted the seat from Boydsville.
Prairie Grove, AR
The Battle of Prairie Grove (December 7, 1862) produced nearly 2,700 casualties as Union General James Blunt and Confederate General Thomas Hindman fought to a bloody standstill across Washington County farms. The Borden family farmhouse stood at the center of the worst fighting; the family returned to find hundreds of bodies stacked in their yard. Confederate forces withdrew that night and never mounted another major offensive in northwest Arkansas.
Russellville, AR
Witherspoon Hall houses the Department of Music at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas. The hall is named for Gene Chief Witherspoon, who served as director of bands at the university from 1950 to 1979, and contains practice rooms, classrooms, and an auditorium recently renovated by the university.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPScott, AR
Mama Lou's Bridge is the local name for a crossing of Wolf Bayou on Old Highway 30 north of Scott, in Pulaski County, Arkansas. The original bridge that gave rise to the legend was replaced in 2005. The area around Scott is a historic farming community east of Little Rock along the Arkansas River bottomlands.
Sheridan, AR
Grant County's courthouse square in Sheridan, Arkansas has been the seat of county government since the county's creation in 1869. Three earlier courthouses occupied or stood near the square; the current 1964 Greek Revival building preserves corner markers from the 1910 structure and houses Grant County's first public clock. The Reconstruction era brought significant violence to the area.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPVilonia, AR
Cypress Valley Cemetery is located just south of Vilonia in Faulkner County, Arkansas, at 114-124 Stanley Road. The burial ground serves multiple generations of families from the surrounding rural community, with documented graves dating from the 19th century. Both Arkansas Gravestones and BillionGraves catalog the cemetery as part of Faulkner County's preservation record.