1889 gas-boom mansion where a child's 1935 death left behind footsteps and laughter heard in empty rooms
1216 W Sycamore St, Kokomo, IN 46901
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to view exterior; check Howard County Historical Society for interior access hours
Access
Limited Access
Historic Victorian home with stairs; older building with limited accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1889 · Kokomo Natural Gas Boom Architecture · Howard County Historical Society
The Elliott House rose in 1889 at the height of Kokomo's natural gas boom, when cheap fuel drew glass factories, steel mills, and the industrial fortunes that built the city's largest homes. Matthew Elliott, for whom the house was named, was one of those gas-era industrialists whose capital shaped this stretch of west Sycamore Street.
The building passed through several owners before the Dow Harvey family occupied it in the early twentieth century. In 1935, the family's youngest child fell from a second-story window — an accident that would become the emotional center of the house's later reputation. The circumstances were straightforward: a child, a window, a fatal fall. The Howard County Historical Society has documented the event as part of the building's history.
The Historical Society now operates the Elliott House as part of its preservation portfolio. Staff members have described experiences they attribute to the child: a boy's apparition visible through the second-floor window at night, and the sounds of footsteps and laughter audible on the upper floor when the building is confirmed empty. Whether or not one credits those accounts, the house stands as one of the more intact examples of gas-boom domestic architecture remaining in Kokomo.
Sources
The paranormal accounts attached to the Elliott House center entirely on the 1935 child death. Howard County Historical Society staff — the building's regular occupants — have described two recurring phenomena: the figure of a young boy appearing in the second-floor window during evening hours, and unexplained sounds from the upper floor that match child's footsteps and laughter when no one is upstairs.
The specificity of the reports — staff rather than occasional visitors, a consistent location (the window from which the child fell), and sounds that match a child's movement — gives the accounts more coherence than the typical haunted-house story. The Kokomo Post documented these staff experiences in a feature on the city's most reported haunted locations.
Notable Entities
View the 1889 Queen Anne-style home from the street. The building is operated by the Howard County Historical Society and is visible from the public right-of-way. Contact the historical society for information about interior access.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
New Castle, IN
Built in 1845 on seven acres in Henry County, Thornhaven Manor stood abandoned from the 1970s until its purchase in 2012. Local accounts associate the property with deaths that occurred there; it has attracted major paranormal television productions.
Fort Wayne, IN
John Henry Bass, a Fort Wayne industrial magnate who made his fortune in brass manufacturing, built the Brookside estate in 1902. The mansion served the Bass family until 1944 and is now part of the University of Saint Francis campus. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Opelika, AL
Spring Villa was built in 1850 by Horace King — a formerly enslaved master builder who became one of the most accomplished architects and engineers in the antebellum South — for planter Penn Yonge. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the property was purchased by the City of Opelika in 1927 and now serves as a 325-acre public park.