Prosperity School Bed and Breakfast

Guests at this 1907 schoolhouse-turned-B&B reported ghostly children climbing into bed with them at night, and Ghost Hunters captured what they called an image of kids running down the hallway. The B&B closed in 2016 and is now a private residence.

Guests at the Prosperity School Bed and Breakfast used to report something climbing into bed with them during the night. Not a person. Something small, child-sized, that settled into the mattress beside them and stayed there. The rooms were named after the school's longtime teachers, and the ghosts, apparently, were the students.

The building is a two-story red brick schoolhouse designed by architect A.C. Michaelis and built by the Tarrant Construction Company in 1907. It sits about seven miles east of downtown Joplin, in what's left of Prosperity, a mining camp that once held 1,500 people. Lead was discovered in a nearby field in the late 1800s, and the town erupted around the mines. It was violent. In 1903, mine owner Benjamin Aylor shot and killed a miner named Gordon Allen in broad daylight outside the Eleventh Hour Mining Company office over a $1,500 debt. Aylor fired five shots, went back to work, then called the sheriff. A jury acquitted him in ten minutes.

Under Principal Pearl Stoneking, the school earned first-class certification by 1925. It served the community until 1962, when the district consolidated with Webb City. The building was sold at auction in 1970 and sat empty for thirty years. During those decades, the reputation grew. Locals talked about lights in the windows, sounds from inside, the feeling that the school was not unoccupied.

Roy and Pam Whyte bought it in December 1998 and converted it into a bed and breakfast. Janet and Richard Roberts took over in 2002. Richard told investigators he'd seen a dark figure walk from the kitchen to the front door. Guests described ghostly knocking, voices from empty rooms, and electrical equipment turning on and off without explanation. A ghostly nurse was seen by visitors on the upper floor. The Roberts mentioned rumors of a 1950s murder in the building but never found proof.

The Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research (CASPR) investigated the property, led by Karen Shillings, a Hot Springs, Arkansas, investigator with a six-member team that included Kay Tope, a registered nurse and psychic. Shillings declared the location "actively haunted," meaning the activity moved and engaged with the living rather than replaying on a loop. The team used infrared cameras, electromagnetic sensors, and dowsing rods but didn't capture the full-bodied figure Shillings was hoping for. Joe Nickell, a forensic expert writing for the Skeptical Inquirer, later criticized the group's methods as "bad science." TV's Ghost Hunters also explored the school and captured what they described as an image of ghostly children running down a hallway.

The B&B closed in 2016. The building sat vacant again before being converted into a private residence, which means you can't visit anymore. But the school is one of the last remaining landmarks of Prosperity, a town that mostly doesn't exist. The mines closed. The people left. The school stayed. And for the years it operated as a B&B, the reports from guests were remarkably specific: small hands on the bedsheets, the weight of a child settling in, the sound of running in the hall when no children were booked.