Union Station Hotel

Nashville’s Union Station takes guests now instead of passengers. The downtown railroad terminal has been on the National Register since December 30, 1969, and operates as a hotel today.

The Louisville and Nashville Railroad opened the terminal in 1900, built in Richardsonian Romanesque stone. Its great hall sits under a barrel-vaulted ceiling of stained glass.

Rail traffic dried up, and demolition loomed in the late 1970s. Historic Nashville, Inc. helped save the terminal, which reopened in 1986 and operates today as the Union Station Nashville Yards, Autograph Collection.

The account goes that a woman named Abigail saw her soldier off to France from this platform in World War II, learned he had been killed, and died at the station.

Guests in room 711 report flickering lights, sudden cold, figures in mirrors, and phones that ring with no one on the line. They describe footsteps overhead, though 711 is the top floor.

The hotel promotes the haunting itself, which makes the paper trail matter. The earliest telling we can trace is Sarah Heffern’s, for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, May 18, 2017.

The great hall, bar, and restaurant are open to anyone who walks in. The guest floors are not: room 711, kept in 1940s vintage as an homage, has to be booked.