Black Friday at the Lake Norfork Inn

Date: November 28, 2014

Location: Lake Norfork Inn, Henderson, Arkansas

Family friends Jennifer and Rusty went on this investigation with us to the Lake Norfork Inn in Henderson, Arkansas. The hotel and accompanying restaurant sit on a hill overlooking the beautiful Lake Norfork. The hotel was built over an old cemetery that could not be excavated, potentially giving rise to a wide variety of spirits and energy.

The show was featured on SyFy Channel’s Haunted Collector, but despite John Zaffis’ team removing several “haunted” objects from the property, the owner and her staff still regularly encounter multiple spirits at the hotel and the restaurant. The owner and staff were gracious hosts for the evening and told us many of their own personal experiences with the local spirits.

I began taking photos as we toured the property upon arriving. While in The Club

Windjammer restaurant my camera was persistently having trouble focusing and flashing to take pictures in the dark rooms. However, when I hung back to photograph the kitchen after everyone else had proceeded back into the dining rooms, I captured an interesting image of a tall, dark figure standing across the room from me, hidden from the waist down by a food preparation counter. Although the image is dark because the flash did not work on the camera, it appears that the figure has one hand on his hip and the other raised, almost like he is waving at the camera. In the next photo, taken only seconds later, the flash on the camera worked and there is no one on that side of the room.

The original photo of the shadowy figure with no flash. 

The photo taken immediately after the one of the shadowy figure. Taken with flash.

A zoomed in and lightened version of the original photo. 

The other interesting encounter we had in The Club Windjammer occurred without our knowledge in the dining room where we had our monitor set up. Photos of the room taken by Jennifer and myself between 8:15 and 8:30 p.m. show that all of the chairs in the dining room were setting firmly on the ground. However, at around 9:45 p.m. John was alone in the room watching the monitor and looked across the room to find that eight chairs at the long back table were now sitting on top of the table, six lined up in a row with the right-most chairs double stacked. At the time he noticed this, John was the only person in the restaurant building, and the dining hall was never left empty. At least one member of our team was there at all times watching the monitor, and none of us heard or saw the chairs moving.

Photo of dining room tables and chairs taken at 8:37 p.m.

Photo of rearranged dining room chairs taken at 10 p.m.

In the hotel itself, the staff and visitors encountered a wide range of spirits. Reports include hearing children playing in the atrium around the pool, seeing a lady in white, and footsteps wandering the halls. Room 212 is reported to have a wide variety of activity, so we focused a lot of our attention in the hotel on that room. Early in the evening my mom, Jennifer, and I went into the room to do an EVP session and noticed that we were hearing a low but continual conversation that included 2-3 different male voices. We could not make out particular words in the conversation, but at times it sounded like it was coming from all around us. The hotel was technically closed for the winter already, so the only guest staying in the rooms was a young nurse who was already in bed at the time of our investigation. Despite that, we still went looking for the source of the conversation, thinking someone may have snuck into a room or left a TV on in a room above us, but we found no answer.

Jennifer and Rusty investigating in a guest room.

Later in the evening we returned to room 212 with my dad and Rusty and were able to communicate with a spirit that identified itself as Richard using a flashlight. The spirit was also able to tell us that his age was around 31 and that he had somehow been involved in the building of the hotel. Based on the owner’s research into the hotel, we knew that the primary spirits identified in the restaurant was of one of the three developers of the hotel whose name was Richard. Although the developer Richard died when he was in his 40s, we still believe the male spirit we talked to could be the same one that the owner encounters in the restaurant. Throughout this session with the flashlight we all again heard the muffled multi-person conversation going on around us, but it was too low to be picked up by our audio recorders and we once again could not find a source for the voices. A brief excerpt from our half hour EVP/flashlight session in room 212 can be viewed below. 

This hunt did not yield any EVPs for us, but it did result in some interesting personal experiences, a photograph of a full body apparition, and some great memories. The Lake Norfork Inn was well worth the drive and we certainly hope to return again in the near future. Based on the wealth of experiences the hotel staff and guests have reported, we feel that we most likely just scratched the surface in unearthing its secrets.

Hayley.