Belvoir Winery

A real human skeleton named George watches wine tastings at this former Odd Fellows orphanage, nursing home, and hospital compound in Liberty, Missouri, where the ghost of a boy in a red shirt warms himself by the fireplace and TAPS investigators heard two pianos playing at once with no one at the second one.

George has been dead since the 1880s. His skeleton stands in a display case at Belvoir Winery in Liberty, Missouri, propped up where visitors sip Chambourcin and Vignoles. He was an Odd Fellows member who donated his body to the fraternal order, and they used his bones in initiation rituals for decades. Now he watches wine tastings.

The building George occupies has a layered history that makes most haunted hotels look tame. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows bought 240 acres outside Liberty in 1895 and built a sprawling Jacobethan Revival compound that opened in 1900. It was an orphanage, a nursing home, a hospital, a school, and a working farm, all in one complex. Children grew up here, elderly members grew old here, and the sick came here hoping to recover. The orphanage closed in 1951, but the compound kept operating as an elder care facility for years after. Nearly 600 people are buried in the IOOF cemetery on the property, which was relocated in 1911 and is accepting burials today.

Manheim Goldman, a Liberty businessman who served as mayor twice, pushed hard to bring the Odd Fellows Home to Clay County. Seven Missouri cities bid for it. Liberty won on the fourth ballot, partly because the local school board offered free high school tuition for the orphans. The campus address is 1325 Odd Fellows Road, which should tell you how much the compound defined this corner of town.

The ghost sightings center on the children. The winery's owner has seen a boy in a red shirt and knickers standing near the fireplace on multiple occasions. He just stands there, warming himself. Overnight guests at the inn report small hands pressing on their bed covers, like a child trying to climb up. Others have watched two children appear near the foot of their bed and then vanish.

Room 7 has a reputation. A couple staying there heard someone moving around in their bathroom all night. Lights flickered on and off. No one was in there. TVs in other rooms have turned on by themselves. Bathroom doors swing shut without a draft.

SyFy's Ghost Hunters came through in 2013 for Season 9, Episode 10, titled "Vintage Spirits." The TAPS team heard low giggling and the scurrying sound of small feet. Then it got strange. While investigators played the piano in one room, they heard a second piano playing somewhere else in the building. Both pianos were real instruments on the property. No one was at the second one. The investigation's most startling moment came early: the sound of breaking glass that made Jason Hawes and Steve Gonzalez jump. They searched the area and found no glass anywhere. Kindred Spirits and Ghost Adventures have also investigated the property.

Staff who sing nursery rhymes in the old orphanage wing report hearing excited, chattering responses. That detail sounds like a ghost tour gimmick until you remember that hundreds of children actually lived and died in this building over half a century.

An older male figure has been spotted near the former hospital wing. Visitors describe him as heavy and brooding, entirely different from the playful energy of the children. Every staff member at the winery, from management to housekeeping, has their own ghost story. That kind of unanimity is unusual.

The building operates as a winery and inn now, with eight suites and a 1,500-square-foot bridal suite. Couples get married here. Wine tastings happen on the first floor. Author Skaught Anthony Patterson wrote a horror novel inspired by the property's history, which gives you a sense of how deep the material runs. And George watches from his case, the same bones that terrified Odd Fellows initiates 140 years ago, a skeleton who outlasted every living person he ever met.