Haunted Inn at Carnall Hall, Fayetteville: The Ghost of Ella Carnall

The Inn at Carnall Hall stands on the lawn of Old Main, the twin-towered heart of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Built in 1905 and opened in 1906 as the university’s first women’s residence hall, it was named for Ella Carnall, one of the first women on the faculty. By 1991 it was empty and slated for removal. A campaign saved it, and it reopened in 2003 as a hotel of about 50 rooms with a restaurant named for Ella.

Fayetteville’s own visitor bureau includes it in its haunted Fayetteville guide: Ella is said to walk the building in a ball gown. Guests add the classic signs of a busy campus haunting, from beds that sink as if someone sat down to lights that switch themselves on. Here is the story, the real Ella, and how to stay. For the rest of the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Arkansas.

The ghosts of Inn at Carnall Hall

Ella in her ball gown

The story Fayetteville’s visitor bureau tells is that Ella Carnall’s spirit has been seen inside the building, sometimes as a woman in a ball gown. The detail that makes it memorable is that she is described without a head or feet, a white gown seeming to float in midair.

Someone sitting on the bed

The most common guest report is quieter. People describe the mattress dipping beside them, as if someone had just sat down on the edge of the bed, when they are alone in the room. It is the kind of story that fits a building where generations of young women once shared rooms.

Lights, objects and reflections

Staff and guests also tell of lights switching on and off by themselves and objects moving. One older story says photographs taken in the inn have caught a figure reflected in the polished surface of the furniture.

Why Ella?

Ella Howison Carnall was born in Virginia in 1861 and studied and taught at the university, then called Arkansas Industrial University, in its early years. She taught in its preparatory department from 1881 to 1884, earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan, and returned in 1891, becoming an associate professor of English and modern languages in 1893. She died in Fort Smith on March 30, 1894, at 32; Fayetteville’s visitor bureau says it was sudden, from typhoid fever.

She died more than a decade before the hall that bears her name was built, and never lived in it, which skeptics point out. Believers say the building was her memorial and she has simply moved in.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Upper-floor rooms: The corridors upstairs are where the gown is said to drift, and the old dormitory rooms are where guests describe the bed dipping.
• Rooms facing Old Main: Ask for a view of the Old Main lawn; the inn’s front porch looks over campus life.
• Ella's Table: The inn’s restaurant, named for Ella, serves Southern dishes from regional ingredients.
• Lambeth Lounge: A pub with leather armchairs, named for James Lambeth, the lead architect of the building’s restoration.

History of Inn at Carnall Hall

The University of Arkansas opened in Fayetteville in the 1870s, and for its first decades women students had no hall of their own. Carnall Hall changed that. Designed by Charles L. Thompson, it was funded by the Arkansas Legislature in 1905 with a $35,000 appropriation, the largest of six new campus buildings, and completed in 1906 with running water and bathtubs, something the men’s halls did not have. It sat on the far northeast corner of campus, in keeping with the rules of the day.

It was named for Ella Howison Carnall, an early alumna who taught in the university’s preparatory department from 1881 to 1884 and returned as a faculty member in 1891, one of the first women to teach there. She died in Fort Smith in March 1894, at just 32.

Carnall Hall housed women until 1967. The Phi Gamma Delta fraternity used it until 1977, and then it held university offices and classrooms. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and is part of the University of Arkansas Campus Historic District.

The building closed in 1991, and by the late 1990s it was in poor shape and a candidate for demolition. A campaign to save it led to a partnership with investors; in 2001 the university’s trustees approved a $6.9 million conversion into a hotel and restaurant, with James Lambeth as lead architect. It was rededicated in 2003, students in the university’s hospitality program have used it as a hands-on learning lab, and it is a member of Historic Hotels of America.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book well ahead for Razorback football weekends and graduation, when the inn sells out.
• Ask for an upper-floor room if you want to be on the corridors where Ella is said to walk.
• Have dinner at Ella’s Table and a nightcap in the Lambeth Lounge.
• Walk the Old Main lawn after dark; Dickson Street’s bars and music are a few minutes away.
• The visitor bureau’s haunted Fayetteville guide adds other local stories, such as the Courthouse Phantom on the square and Evergreen Cemetery.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs: the state’s most famous haunted hotel, with nightly ghost tours
• Basin Park Hotel, Eureka Springs: the Crescent’s sister hotel in downtown Eureka Springs
• Empress of Little Rock: an 1888 mansion inn with four ghosts in its lore
• Haunted hotels in Arkansas

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Inn at Carnall Hall (official site)
• Experience Fayetteville: Haunted Fayetteville
• Fayetteville History: Inn at Carnall Hall
• Wikipedia: Carnall Hall
• Waymarking: Carnall Hall, University of Arkansas (NRHP marker)
• USGenWeb Archives: Ella Howison Carnall biography

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