Peel Mansion

A girl died during surgery on kitchen tables in an upstairs bedroom of this 1875 Bentonville mansion, was revived five hours later, and decades afterward found the room locked because a new owner believed it was haunted by a child. Colonel Peel and his daughter Minnie Belle round out the ghost roster.

In the 1920s, a girl named Margery English had her appendix rupture while playing tennis at the mansion. Her appendix sat on the wrong side of her body because she was a twin, which delayed the diagnosis. Doctors operated on kitchen tables in an upstairs bedroom. Margery died on those tables and stayed dead for five hours before being resuscitated. During those hours, she later said, she felt herself lifted up, passed through a wall, and floated above a meadow.

Years later, Margery returned to the Peel Mansion with her husband William Toalson. The owner at the time, Lee Allen, had locked the upstairs bedroom where the surgery happened. He told the couple he did not want anyone going in there because the room was haunted by a little girl. Margery tried to explain that she was the girl who had died in that room. Allen did not believe her.

The Peel Mansion sits in Bentonville, a 14-room Italianate house built in 1875 by Colonel Samuel West Peel. Peel was a Confederate colonel and pioneer lawyer who became the first native-born Arkansan elected to the United States Congress. He built the house for his wife, Mary Emaline Berry Peel, and filled it with the furnishings of a family that expected to stay prominent for generations.

Two ghosts get the most attention here. Colonel Peel is said to occupy his study, where visitors hear footsteps and catch a dark shape moving through the room. His daughter Minnie Belle plays the piano. Staff and visitors have described hearing piano music drifting from the parlor when the room is empty and the instrument untouched.

The mansion is now the Peel Museum and Botanical Garden, open for tours and filled with period furniture and artifacts from the 1800s. It does not lean heavily into the ghost angle, and some people who have spent considerable time in the building push back on the haunted label entirely. One local who studied the topic for years said plainly: "People like to stretch it, but I promise, it is not actually haunted." A staff member echoed the sentiment, saying she had never experienced anything paranormal despite working there regularly.

That tension makes Peel Mansion more interesting than a straightforward ghost story. The near-death experience of Margery English is documented. The locked room is documented. The owner's refusal to let anyone inside because of a ghostly girl is documented. Whether Colonel Peel is pacing his study or Minnie Belle is playing scales is another question. But the room where a girl died on kitchen tables and came back five hours later, where a future owner independently concluded a child ghost was trapped inside without knowing the history, that sequence of events does not need embellishment.

Margery English Toalson died in August 2000. She did not talk publicly about what happened in that upstairs room until late in her life.