It’s no surprise that a massive, just post-Victorian mansion with four red brick turrets towering into the sky gets a reputation as a haunted house. Belvidere Mansion, located in Claremore, Oklahoma, is one of those places. With a dead owner who passed into the afterlife before he could finish building his mansion, this house has all the drifting figures, hidden whispers, and hot and cold spots that any history buff visitor who likes ghost stories could conjure up. Just make sure that you don’t encounter anything spooky at the top of the stairs.
Today, Belvidere Mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1902, John M. Bayless, a former Missouri businessman who helped fund the building of the Cassville and Western Railroad and the Arkansas ; Oklahoma Railroad, decided to build an Oklahoma mansion for his wife and seven children. Only six months away from completing his dream house, Bayless died after an appendix operation in 1907. His family finished building the mansion and lived in it until 1919. The gothic-style home featured a huge, covered porch, tiled roof, and towers. Inside, pressed tin ceilings gazed down on tiled floors, wooden pocket doors, and multiple fireplaces. The Bayless family even imported woodwork from the 1904 World’s Fair held in Missouri. In 1991, the Rogers County Historical Society bought and restored the mansion. Now you can experience both ghostly shivers and culinary delights by dining at The Pink House, a delightful restaurant that hosts tea parties, luncheons, and event catering in the heart of the historic mansion.
Supernatural sleuths can rejoice that the house has such a ghostly reputation that the Rogers County Historical Society hosted a paranormal evening investigation with the Sooner Paranormal Society at Belvidere Mansion in August 2021. In the early 1990s, one unbelieving visitor had a strange encounter in the first room to the right of the stairs on the second floor of the mansion during a Christmas craft sale. Due to an ongoing restoration process, the visitor and his female friend entered the only room not roped off upstairs. In a room that looked like a child’s bedroom frozen in time, the visitor walked across the floor and looked out of the window. Facing the street, he could see his truck below. As he turned around, he felt a cold, solid presence glide behind him. Suddenly shivering, he saw the floor tilt at a 45-degree angle as his mind grappled with the sudden reality shift.
Trying not to fall on the slanting floor, he ran out into the hall. Behind him, his friend emerged with her eyes as big as saucers. When she turned around, she felt something tug on her shirt, but there was no one there. Since then, visitors reported weird cold or warm spots in the house, unexplained noises, the ghost of a suicidal young woman, a tenant who lived in the house during the 1940s, sounds of children playing, and John Bayless’ troubled ghost roving around on unfinished business.
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