The Athenaeum Rectory

The Athenaeum Rectory is what remains of a vanished Columbia girls' school: an 1837 Moorish Gothic house kept as a museum. Its ghost stories are told by the museum's own guides.

Completed in 1837 for the Columbia Female Institute, the rectory housed the Reverend Franklin Gillette Smith, its first president. In 1851 Smith founded the Columbia Athenaeum next door, which taught girls until 1903.

The house joined the National Register of Historic Places in April 1973 and was donated the same year to the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, whose Maury County chapter runs it.

The Tennessee Wraith Chasers brought Travel Channel's “Haunted Live” here on November 2, 2018, investigating the house on live national TV.

The stories name headmaster Smith's own children among the house's spirits. No press or primary record confirms those deaths; the claim lives inside the tellings.

Civil War soldiers turn up in the accounts as well, men buried in the garden whose graves were later disturbed.

Investigators report flashlight sessions in the basement that draw responses to questions. Visitors describe a woman in period dress.

Tours run Thursday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., $5, with Monday to Wednesday by appointment. Periodic $10 candlelight tours pair 1800s mourning customs with the ghost stories.