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Historic haunted places in Oklahoma City, OK. Each page gives the ghost story, whether visitors can go, and a link to the site the story came from. The stories are folklore, not documented fact.
4 listings shown.
OKLAHOMA / HAUNTED PLACE
Haunted place
Open since 1910, this is Oklahoma City's oldest restaurant. Staff over the decades have noted cold spots in the dining room that never seem to go away, a story recorded in the book…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
OKLAHOMA / HAUNTED PLACE
Haunted place
This 1920s building once held Dr. W.L. Haywood's clinic, and the lore says he still looks after the place. Staff describe bottles clinking by themselves, swinging light fixtures, a…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
OKLAHOMA / HAUNTED PLACE
Haunted place
The city's first mansion, built in 1903, is linked to Anna Overholser. Tour staff and visitors have described a woman in a long gown, piano notes, footsteps on the upper floors, an…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
OKLAHOMA / HAUNTED PLACE
Haunted place
Oklahoma City's oldest hotel opened in 1911 and is famous for Effie, a ghost whose legend even reached visiting NBA teams. Guests describe unexplained sounds, doors opening and clo…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Explore verified haunted attractions and ghost tours in nearby cities.
Oklahoma City's haunted ground is unusually young for this program, and its own ghost-tour operator says so in so many words. Oklahoma City Ghosts, the US Ghost Adventures operator, frames the city's reputation this way: it stretches back to the city's earliest days, when the chaos and ambition of the 1889 Land Run transformed open prairie into a bustling boomtown in a matter of hours. Everything stands on ground that was prairie before 1889 — a capital city built in a rush, whose two haunted landmarks are a 1911 hotel and a 1903 mansion raised by two of the men who built the city itself.
The hotel is the Skirvin. The Skirvin Hotel opened on September 26, 1911, on the documented record carried by its National Register history: 224 rooms in a ten-story, two-winged tower, founded by William Balser "Bill" Skirvin, whose daughter Perle Mesta became ambassador to Luxembourg under President Truman. The hotel's own history page calls the opening property the largest hotel in the Midwest. A third, 12-story wing was added in 1925, and in 1929–30 all three wings were raised to 13 floors with a total of 525 rooms. Theodore Roosevelt spoke to a large crowd of supporters from a Skirvin balcony on September 24, 1912. The hotel's own timeline supplies the texture of the decades that followed: a 1935 Golden Era a few blocks from the bustling Union Station, reaping the abundance of Oklahoma's oil boom — and, in the hotel's own words, an era when "liquor is smuggled through the underground tunnels and, in the evening, gambling reigns." After W. B. Skirvin's death, Dan James took over in 1945 and modernized the hotel; in 1958, on the hotel's own page, Clara Luper staged a Civil Rights sit-in that incited the Skirvin to become the first integrated hotel in the state. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 10, 1979. It closed in 1988, due to low occupancy — "The Pigeon Era begins," in the hotel's own phrase — and sat abandoned for the next 19 years. Oklahoma City acquired the building in May 2002 for $2.875 million; its renovation cost about $51 million; and the Skirvin Hilton reopened in 2007 with larger rooms bringing the count down to 225, as a Hilton operated by Marcus Hotels & Resorts and a member of Historic Hotels of America. In 2022 it was sold to a joint venture of Ortus Hotel Investments and the Chickasaw Nation's Sovereign Properties Holdco, and in 2025 it completed a further $22 million renovation — the hotel's own page records the 2025 restoration as a partnership between Ortus Hospitality and the Chickasaw Nation.
The mansion is the Overholser. Its own history page, published by Preservation Oklahoma, its caretaker since 2003, is the fullest single source. Henry Overholser, considered by many to be the "Father of Oklahoma City," and his wife Anna each arrived shortly after the Run of 1889; in 1902 Henry purchased three lots in the newly developed Classen's Highland Park Addition, "out in the country" where the rail lines ran only to 13th Street. Built in 1903, the Overholser is considered Oklahoma City's first mansion, in a Queen Anne and Chateauesque style already regarded as out of style — The Daily Oklahoman of February 28, 1904 nonetheless called it "a sermon on beauty." The home was a center of social life for decades; the Overholsers' only daughter, Henry Ione, was born in the house in 1905. Henry died in 1915; Anna continued to live in the house until her death in 1940; the house passed to Henry Ione and her husband David Jay Perry, and when Henry Ione died in 1959 Perry was left sole heir. The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1970, and on April 14, 1972 Perry sold the house, including all of its contents, to the Oklahoma Historical Society — "It was Mrs. Overholser's wish that it go to the city or state. She would be pleased." Preservation Oklahoma has overseen an extensive exterior restoration since, raising nearly $750,000, with the original windows, roof and several chimneys repaired since 2008. Downtown, the third ground is Bricktown and the Civic Center: the Bricktown Brewery occupies a former livery, on the tour operator's account, and the Civic Center Music Hall is the city's grand entertainment venue and the tour's meeting point.
This section is folklore — reported by the tour operator, the hotel's chroniclers and the accounts cited, and never asserted as fact here.
The Skirvin's ghost is Effie. As the story goes — the framing is the National Register history's own — the hotel's original owner, W. B. Skirvin, had an affair with a maid named "Effie," which led to a pregnancy; to protect his reputation and avoid a scandal, Skirvin locked the maid in Room 1015, and she eventually jumped out a window, killing herself and the baby, the death written off as the suicide of a saleswoman. Room 1015 is rumoured to be the most haunted room in the hotel. Other versions collected in search place her confinement on the 10th floor generally, describe her as "a woman of loose morals," and add the reports the legend has generated since: men propositioned by a female voice while alone in their rooms, a figure seen in the shower, objects moving by themselves and strange noises at night, the last two attributed to hotel staff over the years. Oklahoma Today retells the same story in shorter form — a former chambermaid named Effie who lived and died during the hotel's original heyday, carrying on an affair with the hotel's owner, "Big Bill" Skirvin, and jumping to her death with his love child. The sceptical check is on the record and is part of this legend's file: according to Steve Lackmeyer, who co-wrote a book about the hotel, and Jason Kersey, both reporters from The Oklahoman, Skirvin was "a notorious womanizer and drinker" and the 10th floor was known for various incidents of gambling and other vices — the hotel's own history page independently confirms the tunnels-and-gambling era — but there is no real-life evidence corresponding to the "Effie" story; Skirvin's family did believe he had an employee, his assistant and bookkeeper Mabel Luty, who was also his mistress, but she outlived him. The hotel's own verdict sits between the two: its history page's single paranormal line, for the 2007 reopening, reads "Rumors of paranormal activity circulate, though no evidence is found."
What is documented is the legend's second life in professional sports. Rumors of a haunting at the Skirvin have been cited by NBA teams, on the record: in 2010 the New York Knicks famously blamed their loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on the haunting, and the Chicago Bulls reported doors slamming shut on their own and strange sounds outside their rooms; the story received national attention again in June 2012, when the Miami Heat stayed at the hotel for the NBA Finals. The Baylor Lady Bears, defending NCAA women's champions, were put up at the Skirvin before one of the biggest upsets in tournament history, their 82–81 regional-semifinal loss to Louisville in 2013 — an association the record notes without claiming the ghost scored any points. In January 2019, Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving announced he was producing a feature film about the purported paranormal activity at the hotel.
The rest of the city's repertoire is the tour operator's. The Civic Center Music Hall is linked, on Oklahoma City Ghosts' own page, to reports of a shadowy figure known as the Grayman — staff stories of strange silhouettes and unexplained movement. The Bricktown Brewery's basement, a former livery turned bustling brewery in the operator's description, holds a heavy steel vault that inexplicably locks and opens on its own, while missing tools and a mysterious 1918 vintage ink signature plague the staff, in the operator's telling. The operator's wider canvas names the forgotten tunnels and the legends surrounding the city's forgotten Chinese Underground among the city's enduring mysteries. At the Overholser Mansion, the reported repertoire in the accounts collected in search is domestic in scale: a woman in a long dress spotted on the grand staircase — identified in one collected account as Mrs. Overholser herself — piano music drifting through rooms when no one was playing, sudden chills at certain doorways, and, in the same account, toys moving on their own and faint giggles in the third-floor bedroom that was once the Overholser children's. The Oklahoma Historical Society's own framing of the mansion's October program is the careful version: evening visitors "discover why some say they are still roaming the halls."
Hountix lists 4 places in Oklahoma City, OK. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.
That sentence, from the hotel's own history page's 2007 entry, is quoted in The legend above: "Rumors of paranormal activity circulate, though no evidence is found." What the hotel's own site does publish is a century of civic history, told as a timeline: the 1911 opening as the largest hotel in the Midwest; the 1935 Golden Era of oil-boom abundance, smuggled liquor in the underground tunnels and evening gambling; the 1945 handover to Dan James after W. B. Skirvin's death and the 1958 Clara Luper sit-in that made it the first integrated hotel in the state; the 1988 closure and the Pigeon Era; the 2007 restoration; and the 2025 reimagining under Ortus Hospitality and the Chickasaw Nation, which the documented record prices at a further $22 million. The present hotel, on its own homepage, pairs historic details with modern amenities across its guest rooms, serves Perle Mesta — its restaurant named for W. B. Skirvin's daughter, with James Beard Award-winning Chef Andrew Black at the helm — pours cocktails in the Red Piano Lounge on the first floor, keeps an on-site gallery and artifact museum, and offers 18,500 square feet of event space, at One Park Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73102, phone 405-702-8547 on its own site. The Effie legend, the Room 1015 reputation and the NBA chapter are set out in The legend above, attributed in full — including the Oklahoman reporters' finding that no real-life evidence corresponds to the Effie story. The Skirvin is presented here exactly as that combined record presents it: the city's oldest hotel, a documented 1911 landmark twice restored, whose ghost its own history acknowledges only to note that no evidence for her has been found.
*Website: https://skirvinhilton.com/*
The Henry Overholser Mansion is Oklahoma City's haunted house museum, and the first fact in its story is its present closure, stated plainly: the mansion's own homepage, read live, announces "We are currently closed for tours and events," because a preservation project has started at the house — Phase 1 covers masonry, window restoration, roof restoration and new gutters and flashing, is expected to last around 10 months, and is funded by the Legacy Capital Financing Fund created by the Oklahoma Legislature. Its story therefore documents the mansion and its haunted program as published, for when the work is complete. The documented house is set out in The history above from Preservation Oklahoma's own history page: built 1903, the city's first mansion, home to Henry and Anna Overholser, birthplace of their daughter Henry Ione in 1905, in family hands until David Jay Perry sold it with all its contents to the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1972, and caretaken by Preservation Oklahoma since 2003, at 405 NW 15th Street, phone (405) 525-5325 on its own site. The mansion's regular program, still published on its homepage beneath the closure notice, is guided tours Wednesday through Saturday at 10 AM, 12 PM and 2 PM with tickets purchased in advance — $10 for adults, $7 for seniors and military, $5 for students, children under 6 free — with a warning that the mansion may close on Saturdays for private or neighborhood events, and that stairs are required. Its haunted program is the annual History and Haunts series each October, documented by the Oklahoma Historical Society: evening tours beginning with an introduction in the carriage house and an after-hours tour of the home "in its nighttime splendor," where visitors "learn the history of the home and its former occupants, and discover why some say they are still roaming the halls" — $25 per person and limited to 30 attendees a night in the Society's press-release year, and, in the Society's calendar for October 2025, six evenings at $30 per person, all sold out. The reported hauntings behind that program — the woman in the long dress on the grand staircase, the piano music with no player, the chills at the doorways — are set out in The legend above under the mansion's name, attributed to the accounts that publish them; the mansion's own pages publish no ghost claims at all, only history, and its October program lets the Historical Society's "some say" carry the folklore. A first mansion with a documented family, a contents-intact interior sold whole to the state, and an annual October night in its halls: that is the Overholser's record, closure and all.
*Website: https://www.overholsermansion.org/*