When Dylan Acevedo snapped up the historic Begley Building at the corner of Vine and Broadway for $150,000 from Sarah Hays, he bought a building whose legacy haunts Poplar Bluff history figuratively – and literally.
That’s because some locals are convinced that ghostly spirits dwell in the four-story brick building used as temporary jail, morgue and courthouse after the 1927 tornado left death and destruction in its wake downtown. And these believers will regale you with stories of swinging chandeliers, stomping footsteps and ethereal apparitions.
George Begley, the blacksmith-turned-mortician, built his original business on this spot, then in 1908 rebuilt the structure as the building stands now. The Hays family, operators of Hays Music Store in downtown Poplar Bluff since 1947, purchased the building in 2000 and relocated the music store to the building until shuttering it in 2020.
Allen Gallamore, 56, a long-time employee of Hays Music, recalled a conversation with the building’s previous owner when the Hays bought the building.
“He asked me, ‘Do you believe I ghosts?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m kind of a skeptic.’ He said, ‘Well, you will now.’”
Gallamore recounts the time he and a coworker heard a “clunk” while working on the first floor, then looked up to see the second-floor chandelier swinging wildly.
“I heard the impact of something actually hit it,’’ he said. He went to investigate “but there was nothing out of place, there was nobody in there,’’ he said.
Then there was the time when a colleague had his head down on a glass counter, then caught the reflection of what he thought was a customer.
“He looked up and there was nobody there,’’ he said.
Other encounters inside the building include that of a luthier literally seeing a guitar unstring itself, of ghosts in windows at night, of footsteps stomping in empty rooms, and of loud thuds on the floors in rooms where nothing’s found out of place.
“We kind of heard stuff for years,’’ Gallamore said. “Nobody ever got hurt or anything so we didn’t really fear it.”
But he admitted that “it’s hard to be a skeptic after hearing all those things.”
The building has been visited numerous times by ghost hunters seeking to capture spirits or unexplained sounds on tape, according to Acevedo, who recently allowed the local paranormal group Backwoodz Paranormal to investigate the building for evidence of spirits.
“We set cameras up on all the floors,’’ said Linda Moore, 62, a Poplar Bluff municipal court clerk and member of a paranormal group that has investigated about 40 properties.
She said one attendee “did see some shadow figures, we, unfortunately, did not catch them on cameras,’’ she said.
According to Acevedo, another local businesswoman has “swore up and down that there’s a little girl on the top floor.”
“She gave me a story about an ice storm that Southeastern Missourians experienced in ‘09,’’ said Acevedo. The woman never lost her power. “She thinks it’s a guardian angel who looks out over her.”
The Poplar Bluff tax analyst said when he bought the building it came with a caveat.
“Sarah Hays she told me about this record book that was on the mezzanine floor that needed to stay here’’ because it belonged to a female ghost, Acevedo said. “It was an old album, early 1900s and had these handwritten notes in it.”
At the moment, he doesn’t know where the album is due to demolition inside the building.
“I’ve been in the building late at night, I’ve never seen anything,’’ the developer said. “It’s four brick walls. If a car drives by, the whole place shakes.”
You can contact Backwoodz Paranormal at https://m.facebook.com/Backwoodz-Paranormal-206949149894/