Tennessee State Prison

The shuttered castle-style penitentiary on Cockrill Bend, 6 miles west of downtown Nashville. Opened in 1898 with about 800 cells, it was overcrowded from its first day to its last.

From 1916 to 1960, 125 men were executed in the prison’s electric chair, each name recorded in the warden’s ledger. The chair went to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where executions resumed in 2000.

A federal court closed the prison in June 1992 after Grubbs v. Bradley found its overcrowded conditions unconstitutional, and a 1993 permanent injunction bars the state from ever housing prisoners there again.

After closing, it became Hollywood’s prison of choice: The Green Mile, Walk the Line, The Last Castle, and Ernest Goes to Jail all shot here before asbestos put the interiors off-limits in 2011.

The few people allowed inside over the years report screams from empty wings, cell bars clanking shut with no one near them, and footsteps down vacant corridors.

Others describe shadow figures moving along the outer walls and pacing the ruined cell blocks, sometimes in groups that witnesses compare to prisoners walking in line.

A 2020 tornado knocked down a 40-yard section of the wall, but the site is state property and entry is prohibited. The facade is visible from Centennial Boulevard; that view is the visit.