Yeater Ghost

—

Legends & Lore

—

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, September 23, 2025

1. Yeater Ghost Marker

Touch for directions.

Corridor.

Midwest,

Corridor,

Belt,

Corridor.

America,

Hemisphere,

Click or scan to see
this page online

World,

Anglosphere.

Culture,

Purchase,

South.

Excerpt:  Since opening its doors in 1941, generations of female college students have passed through Yeater Hall, an all-women’s dormitory on the campus of University of Central Missouri. Marketed to prospective residents as a “home away from home”, the large red bricked dorm offered a lounge with fireplace on each floor and even a rooftop deck for sunbathing.

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, September 23, 2025

2. Yeater Ghost Marker

Looking southwest from Holden Street. The northeast corner of Laura J. Yeater Hall is in the background.

Little did anyone know it would soon gain the reputation as one of the most haunted places in central Missouri.
The impetus behind Yeater Hall was Laura J. Yeater, a well regarded professor at University of Central Missouri who championed the idea of an all-female residence hall. Her dream became reality when the first cornerstone was laid on November 18, 1940. Students were welcomed a year later. Almost immediately reports of unusual activities emerged. One such report described sightings of a woman on the third floor in historical dress, checking rooms. A similar figure has been witnessed in windows, sometimes accompanied by sudden cold and creepy sensations.
In the decades which followed, students continued to report strange noises, footsteps, furniture rearranging itself, curtains closing on their own and lights flashing on and off. This continued until Yeater Hall closed its doors in 2015. The cost of refitting the aging building to make it fully accessible and adding modern amenities like air-conditioning has so far prohibited further development.

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, September 23, 2025

3. Laura J. Yeater Hall (northeast corner entrance)

(By Emily Kepley)  Excerpt:  Laura Jameson Yeater was born in 1865 in Sedalia, Missouri. She began teaching Latin at the high school level and earned a Master of Arts degree from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She returned to Missouri and began teaching English at State Normal School No. 2 in Warrensburg in 1900. Yeater was well-known and respected by students and colleagues alike. She was active in the women’s suffrage movement and in February 1913 established a suffrage club on campus alongside fellow faculty members Laura L. Runyon, UCM’s first female history professor and originator of the university’s “Education for Service” motto, and Lucy A. Ball, UCM’s first associate professor of English.
The cost of building a residence hall was estimated at about $225,000. Yeater sought assistance from a private donor, Jay Gould, who was a railroad executive and the father of Helen Gould, a friend of Yeater’s from Wellesley College. Yeater promised to fundraise half of the cost herself, and her hard work eventually paid off. The cornerstone of the residence hall was ceremonially placed Nov. 18, 1940, and the Laura J. Yeater

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, September 23, 2025

4. Laura J. Yeater Hall (northeast elevation)

Looking southwest across Holden Street. The marker is on the far right.

Hall for Women was finished and dedicated May 10, 1941.
Yeater served as the first house mother of the dorm and was fully invested in the lives of the women who lived there. Yeater Hall was a safe and well-kept environment and living there was an experience. In the 1940s a double room cost $75 per student, per term.

(By Jason Offut)  Excerpt:  The red brick walls of Laura J. Yeater Hall stand amongst the trees that surround its entrance. A single window pointing from its attic looks toward the center of campus. Generations of college students at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg have whispered about a woman sometimes seen looking out from that window, a window inaccessible by the students who live there. Yeater Hall, they say, is haunted.
Over the decades since Yeater’s death, many residents of the hall have reported mysterious footsteps, the sounds of moving furniture, blankets ripped off beds and strange lights. Maybe Yeater put so much of herself into the construction

Paid Advertisement

of the dormitory she couldn’t bear to leave…