public

Reported

Something about this hillside compound never quite let go of its past. Visitors to what is now Belvoir Winery report children's footsteps pattering through empty hallways, a woman who drifts through the old library and then isn't there, and a man who seems to stand watch over wards that haven't held patients in decades. Ghost Hunters once caught voices on a recorder finishing the second half of "Ring Around the Rosie" — a children's rhyme, in a children's home, with no children present. Stand still long enough and the building seems to notice you back.

Founded in 1895 by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows on 240 acres along Missouri 291, the complex housed orphans, widows, the elderly, and the infirm under one self-sufficient roof — farm, school, hospital, and all. Built in the Jacobethan Revival style and developed through about 1935, it swelled during the Great Depression before modern social programs quietly made it obsolete. It's now a National Historic District and a winery — because of course a fraternal order that kept a ceremonial skeleton on-site as a memento mori would eventually become a place people visit for ambiance.