The Empress of Little Rock
A hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, The Empress of Little Rock is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Hotel in Little Rock; research record. The archive files it under haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is The Empress of Little Rock haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed documented legend. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
James H. Hornibrook came to Little Rock from Toronto after the Civil War and prospered as a saloonkeeper — a trade that kept him out of Scott Street society. Local tradition holds he waited until his competitor Angelo Marre finished the Villa Marre, then built the most extravagant house in Arkansas to answer it. Completed in 1888 for a reported $20,000, designed by Max Orlopp and Casper Kusener entirely of Arkansas materials, the Hornibrook Mansion was Gothic Queen Anne at full flamboyance: divided staircase, octagonal rooms, stained-glass skylight, and a three-and-a-half-story tower where Hornibrook is said to have kept a card game running with a view of any raid on his saloon.
He barely lived in it. Hornibrook died of a stroke at his own front gate shortly after completion, age forty-nine; Margaret followed two years later, reportedly of a broken heart. The house became the state's first Arkansas Women's College in 1897, then a nursing home, apartments, and — after a 1990s restoration by the Blairs — The Empress of Little Rock bed and breakfast. It has been on the National Register since 1974.
The man on the stairs
Little Rock tourism recounts apparitions on the divided staircase and in the halls: a period-dressed man in a top hat seen floating down the steps — attributed to Hornibrook — a woman matching Mrs. Hornibrook, and a maid figure. One oft-told account has a hired painter locked out of an attic door that had no lock, returning to find it open and the same apparition waiting.
The Blairs, who owned the house during its restoration decades, described the encounters as eerie rather than threatening — Sharon Welch-Blair said she felt Hornibrook had blessed the work. Filed, as the dossier keeps it, as reported accounts attached to a documented life.
The record of claims
Little Rock tourism recounts staircase and hallway apparitions. The Empress of Little Rock, a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. 'Four of Little Rock’s Most Haunted Places' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. The reports keep the place on every haunted list it qualifies for.
Little Rock tourism recounts staircase and hallway apparitions. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. 'Four of Little Rock’s Most Haunted Places' carries the account. It's the version the place will be remembered by, whether or not it's the true one.
Sources on file
- 01Four of Little Rock’s Most Haunted PlacesLittle Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Discovery pass. Precise location, historical chronology and current visitor conditions require independent enrichment. Confidence concerns provenance only.