McRaven House

McRaven is three houses in one. The oldest part, a small frontier structure, was built around 1797 by Andrew Glass, remembered in local lore as a highwayman who preyed on travellers along the Natchez Trace and used the house as a way station. In 1836 Sheriff Stephen Howard added an Empire-style middle section, and in 1849 John H. Bobb, a brickmaker, bought the property and added an elegant Greek Revival front. The result is a rare architectural timeline of early Vicksburg, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The house’s history is marked by loss. Stephen Howard’s young wife, Mary Elizabeth, died in childbirth in 1836 in the middle bedroom; tour guides say she was fifteen. During the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863 the house served as a Confederate field hospital and camp and was struck by Union shells. In 1864, after the city had fallen, John Bobb confronted Union soldiers on his property and hit one with a brick; he was seized and shot dead a short distance from the house. In 1882 William Murray bought McRaven, and several members of his family died there over the following decades. His daughters Annie and Ella lived on in the house with few modern conveniences, letting it decay around them, until Ella’s death in 1960.

Restoration began soon after. O. E. Bradway opened the house for tours in 1961, National Geographic featured it in 1963 as a “time capsule of the South,” and later owners carried out extensive restorations. The ghost stories gathered pace in the late twentieth century, and today McRaven runs historical tours, ghost tours and monthly ghost hunts. It has appeared on Ghost Adventures (2018) and in national media lists of America’s most haunted houses.

Visitors report apparitions said to be Mary Elizabeth Howard, John Bobb, William Murray and the Murray sisters; doors on furniture closing on their own; flashlights switching on in response to questions; footsteps, cold spots and a smell of decay in the parlour; and Civil War soldiers on the grounds.

Mary Elizabeth’s bedroom in the 1836 middle section, the parlour, the Bobb bedroom, the staircase and the grounds where wounded soldiers camped. Monthly ghost hunts take place after dark.

McRaven has appeared on Ghost Adventures, in a 2025 CNN feature on haunted houses and in countless lists of Southern haunts; it was also toured by the stars of The Beverly Hillbillies in the 1960s. It is a centrepiece of Vicksburg’s ghost tourism alongside the National Military Park.