Haunted Places in Tennessee: 18 Sites on the Record

Ask anyone in the state where its ghosts live and the answers come back the same: Adams, where the trouble on the John Bell farm was already a book-length history by 1894, and Franklin, where a single November afternoon in 1864 turned a town of houses into hospitals. Both answers hold up, and the paper behind them is the point. The buildings are documented in National Register files and deed books. The stories are written down too, in museum curators' own accounts and in a state archives exhibit that hands Carnton the title of most haunted house in Tennessee.

This list holds the 18 places where we could pin the story to a building and the building to a record. Every one of them sits in Middle Tennessee: that is the oldest ground in the state's canon, and it is the ground our map knows best. Memphis and the mountains keep their own ghosts, and we have not mapped them yet. Every entry links to its own page, with photos, sources, and the account of what people say happens there. We keep fact and lore apart on every one: when a date comes from a deed book, it stands on its own, and when staff describe footsteps, we write that staff describe footsteps.

If you want the dense core, 4 of the 18 sit in downtown Nashville, and Haunted Nashville: The Downtown Loop threads 7 stops through that core in an order you can walk in a single evening. The rest of the list is a driving itinerary, and it is worth the miles.

Here is the list at a glance, with how each one takes visitors. The details, the documents, and the links follow below. 15 pins are free; the 3 marked paid keep the exact spot as the reveal.

• Bell Witch Cave, Adams. Guided cave tours.
• Carter House, Franklin. Museum, daily tours.
• Lotz House, Franklin. Museum, guided tours.
• Carnton, Franklin. Museum, tours 7 days a week.
• Franklin Masonic Hall, Franklin. Interior by event only. Paid pin.
• Gallery 202, Franklin. Working art gallery.
• Union Station Hotel, Nashville. Working hotel.
• Ryman Auditorium, Nashville. Museum and venue.
• Tennessee State Capitol, Nashville. Free tours, Monday to Friday.
• Skull's Rainbow Room, Nashville. Working supper club.
• Tennessee State Prison, Nashville. Road view only. Paid pin.
• Nashville City Cemetery, Nashville. Public grounds.
• Two Rivers Mansion, Nashville. Tours and rentals. Paid pin.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, Hermitage. Museum, ghost tours.
• Cragfont, Castalian Springs. State historic site.
• Sam Davis Home, Smyrna. Museum, guided tours.
• Stones River National Battlefield, Murfreesboro. National park grounds.
• Athenaeum Rectory, Columbia. Museum, candlelight tours.

Adams and the Bell Witch

Start where the record starts. Bell Witch Cave is a roughly 490-foot karst cave in Robertson County near Adams, on land that was once part of the John Bell farm, added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 2008 (ref. 08000237). The haunting attached to it is older and stranger: the "witch" blamed for John Bell's death in 1820 has never stopped being retold, and by 1894 M.V. Ingram had compiled An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch, a book that folds in a manuscript purportedly written by Bell's son in 1846. Few American ghost stories carry a longer paper trail, and the cave runs guided tours if you want to measure your nerve against it.

Franklin, where the battle never let go

Franklin's haunted reputation comes down to a single day. On November 30, 1864, the Battle of Franklin came through the town itself, and the houses that survived it spent that winter as hospitals. That ground carries 5 of the 18 entries on this list.

The Carter House sat at the battle's pivot: a Federal-style brick farmhouse built in 1830 by Fountain Branch Carter, taken as a Union command post while the family sheltered in the basement and the fighting ran over the top of them. More than a thousand bullet and shrapnel holes remain visible in the house and its outbuildings, which makes it the most bullet-riddled building to survive the Civil War. Capt. Tod Carter, the family's middle son, was mortally wounded within sight of his boyhood home and died inside it on December 2, 1864, at 24. Visitors describe a young man in Confederate uniform in the room where he died. The state historic site runs daily guided tours either way.

The Lotz House went up in 1858 as a show house. Johann Albert Lotz was a German master woodworker, and the building was his portfolio. The battle made it something else: bloodstains and a cannonball scar still mark the floors. The house joined the National Register in 1976 (ref. 76001809), and the Travel Channel once ranked it the second most terrifying place in America. The house runs guided tours if you want to see the marks yourself.

Carnton carries the heaviest title in the state, most haunted house in Tennessee, and it comes from the Tennessee State Library and Archives' own myths and legends exhibit rather than a tour flyer. The record underneath is heavier still. Randal McGavock built the house in 1826 with enslaved labor, and after the battle it became the largest Confederate field hospital in town, with 4 dead generals laid out on the back porch and bloodstains that never left the floors. It joined the National Register on January 18, 1973 (ref. 73001857), and the Battle of Franklin Trust runs house tours 7 days a week.

The Franklin Masonic Hall was old before the battle came. Andrew Jackson negotiated the Chickasaw removal treaty in the 1823 hall, the war made it a hospital, and it has been a National Historic Landmark since 1973. The preservationists who keep it tell of men in blue who never left. Interior access comes event by event, so plan around the calendar rather than the doorknob, and this is one of the list's 3 paid pins: the exact spot stays behind the ropes.

Gallery 202 is the odd one out: a working art gallery inside Clouston Hall, a Federal-style town home from about 1821, designed by Joseph Reiff for Edward G. Clouston, that is believed to have hosted Presidents Jackson, Polk, and Johnson. It took its own turn as a field hospital, and the foyer keeps its cannonball burn. When new owners arrived in 2013, the local paper ran their accounts of the resident company under the headline "Freaky Friday." The staircase bride is the story visitors ask about; the building is the reason to go.

Franklin earns a longer file than 5 entries, and our haunted places in Franklin guide goes deeper on all of them, tour included.

Downtown Nashville

The Union Station Hotel opened in 1900 as the Louisville and Nashville Railroad's terminal, Richardsonian Romanesque stone outside and a barrel-vaulted stained glass ceiling over the lobby. Preservationists saved it from demolition after the trains stopped, and it has run as a hotel since 1986. The story guests come for is Abigail. The hotel's own telling makes her a wartime bride who saw her soldier off to France from this platform and, when word came back that he had been killed, died on the tracks. The hotel keeps room 711 dressed in 1940s vintage for her. Guests in that room report flickering lights, cold spots, and phones that ring on their own.

The Ryman Auditorium was built in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle, funded by riverboat captain Thomas Ryman, and hosted the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. It joined the National Register in 1971 and has been a National Historic Landmark since June 25, 2001. The best account here comes from inside the building: museum curator Joshua Bronnenberg, a self-described skeptic, describes a grey figure that keeps taking his seat in balcony section 11 during empty-house rounds. Staff speculation makes the figure a Confederate veteran, and the balcony has carried the name Confederate Gallery since it was added in 1897. Tour lore adds a woman's voice singing from the dark stage, and likes to name her Patsy Cline.

The Tennessee State Capitol is the only American capitol with bodies sealed in its walls: William Strickland, its architect, who died in 1854 and was entombed in the northeast corner, and Samuel Morgan, the construction commissioner, in the southeast corner. Staff describe Strickland and Morgan quarreling in the halls after dark. The record complicates the fun, because the historian Jeff Sellers notes the pair got along, and the famous feud behind the story is probably apocryphal. Decide for yourself on the free guided tours: 45 minutes, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Skull's Rainbow Room has poured drinks in the basement of the 1895 Southern Turf Building since 1948, under a block that once held saloons, an upstairs brothel, and bootlegging tunnels. Founder David "Skull" Schulman, the Mayor of Printers Alley and a Hee Haw regular who walked dyed poodles on rhinestone leashes, ran the room for 50 years until a robbery took his life in January 1998. The club sat closed for 17 years and reopened in 2015, and staff accounts have Schulman still making his rounds in the alley, a small white poodle at his heel.

The edges of the city

The Tennessee State Prison opened on Cockrill Bend on February 12, 1898, a castle of about 800 cells that ran over capacity from its first day and held the state's electric chair through 125 executions. Hollywood borrowed it for the death row in The Green Mile. It has been sealed since 1992, and it holds a paid pin too: the prison can only be seen from the road, so the road is the visit and the exact spot is the paid reveal, priced on the location's own page.

The Nashville City Cemetery is the city's oldest public burying ground, opened on New Year's Day 1822 and operated today by Metro Parks. Its signature legend keeps a lantern glowing at a spot called Suicide Rock for Ann Rawlins Sanders. What makes this entry worth your time is that Metro's own archivists have traced that legend through the record and taken it apart in public. Few ghost stories get that treatment, and fewer survive it.

Two Rivers Mansion puts a second McGavock name on the list. David H. McGavock began the Italianate house in 1859 for himself and Willie Elizabeth Harding, on the land between the Stones and Cumberland rivers that gave it its name, and the city owns it now. The events manager on site describes a chandelier that rattles on its own, and Metro will rent you the whole property for a paranormal investigation at $200 an hour. The mansion carries the list's third paid pin, with the exact spot as the reveal.

Out from Nashville: Hermitage to Columbia

Andrew Jackson's Hermitage has the best-documented ghost story on this list, because the woman who saved the house wrote it down herself. Mary Dorris, a co-founder of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, published her account in 1915. Across 2 nights in July 1893, dishes crashed in an empty pantry, chains dragged over the porticoes, and a sound came down the hall that she could only call Jackson riding his war charger. The retellings you will hear today date it to 1889; the book itself puts the family's departure in 1893 and the noises that summer. The grounds also hold a cemetery for the enslaved community who lived and worked here, and the site interprets those lives, not only the president's. Jackson and Rachel are buried in the garden tomb beside the mansion, and the museum runs ghost tours of its own.

Cragfont, in Castalian Springs, was the finest house on the Tennessee frontier when Maryland artisans finished it in 1802 for Gen. James Winchester, Revolutionary War officer, brigadier general in the War of 1812, and a co-founder of Memphis. He died in the house on July 26, 1826. The ghost story is gentler here than anywhere else on the list: Nell Satterwhite, a girl growing up at Cragfont in the 1890s, kept a diary that named the house's ghosts her friends.

The Sam Davis Home in Smyrna has been a museum since 1930, on the farm where 21-year-old Sam Davis was waked in the parlor and buried out back. The accounts here come from the payroll: staff up to the executive director report footsteps and doors that close on their own. The museum tells the harder history alongside, with exhibits and a dedicated tour on the lives of the enslaved people who worked the farm, among them a man remembered as Uncle Charlie. Paid guided tours run Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday afternoons, 1 to 4.

Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro preserves ground where roughly 81,000 soldiers fought from December 31, 1862 to January 2, 1863, and about 23,000 became casualties. The National Park Service runs it, and the reports come from people in uniform: rangers and re-enactors at tour stops 4 and 6 describe shadowy soldiers in the old Slaughter Pen. One of them, the account goes, raised his hands in surrender, fell, and vanished.

The Athenaeum Rectory in Columbia is the strangest building on the list, an 1837 rectory in a Moorish-Gothic style, built for Rev. Franklin Gillette Smith of the Columbia Female Institute, who in 1851 founded the adjacent Columbia Athenaeum girls' school. The school closed in 1903; the rectory stayed, and joined the National Register on April 24, 1973 (ref. 73001809). The museum leans in: guides fold the house's own ghost stories into candlelight tours, and the Tennessee Wraith Chasers broadcast live from the building on national TV in 2018.

Take the map from here

That is 18 buildings, 18 records, and stories that run back to 1820. Every link above opens the location's full page: the documents, the accounts with their tellers named, and the pin on the Velvet Ropes map. Most of the pins are free. 3 of them, the Masonic hall, the old prison, and Two Rivers, keep the exact spot behind the ropes, because there the location itself is the story.

If Nashville is your base, start with our haunted places in Nashville guide, or take the downtown loop; the stop list and the price are on the tour page. How these pages get made, and who checks them, is on our about page.