Edinburgh Manor

Edinburgh Manor stands on land the State of Iowa deeded to Jones County in 1840, originally for a courthouse in a town named Edinburgh that never grew. When the county seat settled in Anamosa, the property became the county poor farm, where destitute, elderly, disabled, orphaned and mentally ill people lived and worked in return for food and shelter. By about 1910 the farm housed roughly twenty residents of many ages and backgrounds, and a county history of the time described its treatment of them as considerate and humane. The Jones County Genealogical Society has compiled a list of residents from 1876 to 1911 that records many deaths, with burials in cemeteries around the county.

In 1909 the Board of Supervisors planned a replacement for the old home, and the present brick building went up in 1911–12. For decades it housed people who could not live independently but did not need hospital care. As poor farms faded with Social Security and later welfare programs, it became a residential facility for people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness. By 1999 it was one of only seven county homes left in Iowa, and in 2001 a nonprofit took over operations. The county later declared the property surplus, and in the fall of 2010 its last 36 residents, all with chronic mental illness, were moved to a care center in Anamosa.

The county accepted a $52,050 bid for the property from a land trust in 2011, and the buyer, Cindy Anderson, has said she bought it almost on a whim. Instead of the bed and breakfast that was first discussed, she has run it as a haunted attraction, with day tours and overnight stays. She and her partner reported objects moving when no one was present, and in 2012 her partner felt something squeeze his foot overnight. Anderson has described being pushed in the basement, having her hair pulled and hearing children running in the halls. Visitors are said to have seen a little girl who plays and sings in the first-floor hallway, a woman in white on the second-floor landing and a shadow figure in the basement nicknamed “the Joker.”

Visiting paranormal groups have added their own claims, including footsteps, a bang on the front door and unexplained voices during a June 2016 investigation; another group captured a door closing in a recreation area but noted friction might have caused it. The site was featured on the Travel Channel shows Ghost Adventures and Destination Fear. It is private property, and the people who lived and died here were real; many of them had nowhere else to go.

A little girl heard laughing and playing in the first-floor hall, a woman in white vanishing on the second-floor landing, a shadow figure nicknamed “the Joker” in the basement, footsteps, slamming doors and objects that move. Reports come from the owner, her partner, visiting groups and guests.

The first-floor hallway, the second-floor landing, the basement and the men’s recreation area, according to the owners’ accounts.

The site appeared on the Travel Channel shows Ghost Adventures and Destination Fear and in Iowa PBS’s round-up of local legends. It has also been used for music videos and senior photos.