Queen Anne House Bed & Breakfast

This elegant Queen Anne-style home in Boone County has been converted into a B&B where guests come for the Ozark charm and sometimes get more than they bargained for.

William M. Duncan, the son of a Pennsylvania congressman and a prolific local builder, constructed this one-and-a-half-story Queen Anne residence at 610 West Central Avenue in Harrison in 1893. Duncan also built the Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, one of Arkansas's most famous haunted landmarks. The house features asymmetrical massing and a busy roofline typical of the Queen Anne style, with metal cresting on the ridge lines, a wraparound porch with tapered columns and a turned balustrade, and an octagonal cupola capping the roof. Inside, the three-thousand-square-foot home is graced with stained glass windows, gleaming hardwood and marble floors, claw-foot bathtubs, and a sunlit solarium. A courtyard connects the main residence to the original carriage house.

The mansion passed through a succession of prominent Harrison residents. Reverend D. Shuck used it as a parsonage. Sheriff J.P. Callicott lived there from 1919 to 1939 with his wife Gertrude and their eleven children. Callicott was the city marshal involved in the Henry Starr shootout on Harrison's town square on February 18, 1921, when the notorious Cherokee outlaw -- nephew of the legendary Belle Starr -- robbed the People's National Bank of six thousand dollars. As Starr fled to his getaway car, former bank president J.W. Myers grabbed a gun from the safe and shot him in the back. Starr died four days later, ending the career of a man alleged to have robbed twenty-one banks. Sheriff Callicott spent many hours afterward smoking his pipe in a rocking chair in the living room by the wood stove, a habit that would echo through the house long after his death. The Castleberry sisters, both teachers, later owned the home, followed by Sheridan and Cynthia Garrison, shipping magnates whose company Freightways would evolve into FedEx. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Duncan House in October 2005.

Now operating as the Queen Anne House Bed and Breakfast with five individually decorated guestrooms, the inn has developed a persistent reputation for paranormal activity. Guests report the sound of a rocking chair creaking rhythmically from empty rooms, a phenomenon many attribute to Sheriff Callicott continuing his evening routine by the stove. Doors open and close by themselves throughout the building. Strange knockings and disembodied footsteps echo through the hallways at night. Visitors describe the sensation of someone standing directly beside them in rooms where no one else is present, and objects have been observed moving on their own. Disembodied voices can be heard, though the words are rarely distinguishable.

A female presence is felt most strongly in the upstairs bedrooms. Guests have reported feeling someone touching them during the night while sleeping in the main house. The identity of this female entity remains unknown, though some speculate she may be connected to one of the home's many former occupants -- perhaps one of the Castleberry sisters or Gertrude Callicott, who raised eleven children within these walls. The upstairs rooms generate the most consistent reports, with multiple guests independently describing similar experiences of unseen companionship during the night.

The bed and breakfast is open year-round and includes a complimentary full breakfast. It sits just steps from the Boone County Heritage Museum and a short walk from the Lyric Theater on Harrison's historic square.