Crumley Bridge
Baileyton
The old Lick Creek Bridge, also called Crumley Bridge, on Crumley Road, was said to be a site where you can turn off your car and hear otherworldly sounds coming from underneath. According to bridgehunter.com, it was built in 1925, and replaced in 2005. Since then, no otherworldly sounds have been reported.
Train Station Tracks
Greeneville
According to the website, Chuckey, Tennessee Ghost Sightings, there is a spirit that seems to be waiting for a train at the old train station, near the end of Chuckey Pike, in the 2000-block, before Charles Johnson Road. The website says that often, around 6:00 AM, the semi-transparent silhouette of a man can be briefly seen standing by the tracks, still waiting for the train to arrive.
Cedar Creek Cave
Greeneville
Local legend tells of the ghost of a hermit that still protects the privately-owned cave he once called home, but may be a once important figure in Melungeon mythology.
Folklore maintains that this sometimes violent spirit was a cranky old hermit nicknamed Old Man Joe and that he passed away in the cave. It’s said that his spirit will occasionally rush at trespassers, screaming, “Get out of my cave!”
One older tale from The Greeneville Sun on July 28, 1956, explained that, at the time, it was said that an old man went into the cave to “fiddle the Devil a tune”. It was said that the cave had rich veins of gold deep inside that would only be provided with assistance from an infernal being. The hermit was never seen again, although, he might be synchronized with the “Fool Killer”.
Fool Killer was popularized by political cartoonist Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, editor of the newspaper called The Milton Chronicle, in North Carolina, between the 1840s and 1850s. His version's name was Jesse Holmes and roamed what are now North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia, killing fools with his club, which doubled as a walking stick. He would use Bowie knives to carve “Fool killer” into the flesh of his victims. At first, his victims were always Confederate sympathizers and those who mistreated enslaved persons.
Between 1861 and 1870, the character was absent from newspapers due to the nation being divided and then recovering from the Civil War. When returning, the fictional character turned his murderous sprees on the Ku Klux Klan, those who mistreated black families and men who abused their wives.
Fool Killer might have been inspired by a folk character of the same name in Melungeon culture. In their tales, Fool Killer's father was the Devil, known to the culture as “Old Horny”, who was ascent all of his childhood. So, he tracked his father down to a blacksmith shop in east Tennessee.
Concealing his true identity, Fool Killer placed an order for a large iron staff and promised to pay with gold that even Old Horny had heard the Melungeons had hidden throughout the mountains. However, as soon as Old Horny finished the staff, his son beat him “back to Hell”. He then topped his staff with the image of a human skull made of gold. He moved into a cave where he would live between killing fools.
This character can be traced back at least to the 1830s and was said to attack non-Melungeons searching for the culture's caches of gold, governmental agents who attempted to shut down their gold-minting refineries, and authorities who tried to shut down moonshine stills and arrest their operators during Prohibition.
He could also place a sort of curse on men whose wives had had affairs. Fool Killer would meet the betrayed man shortly after he had learned of his wife's infidelity, wave his staff, and small horns would grow from the man's head. The only way the man could remove the horns was to murder the man who his wife had been with. If the man didn't succeed, Fool Killer would shoot him, cut the horns off, and keep them in his cave.
During the Great Depression, Fool Killer's targets were any person who had any secular influence on the insular culture. Victims included teachers from the town outside of their mountains and entertainers on radio.
Before fading into obscurity, he was seen as a man dressed in black, carrying guns, knives, and his infamous staff, and was seen on either a black horse or driving a horse-drawn carriage.
Dickson-Williams Mansion
Greeneville
The pain and suffering of patients in the old Greeneville Hospital, now the Dickson-Williams Mansion at 108 North Irish Street, seems to have continued into the present with people hearing ghostly moans. The book, The Dickson-Williams Mansion Greeneville, TN, published in 2003 by the Dickson-Williams Historical Association, reveals that the mansion was established as the Greeneville Sanatorium and Hospital by Dr. C. P. Fox and was later called the Greeneville Hospital. Some people have reported having paranormal experiences in the museum.
General Morgan Inn
Greeneville
Different sections of the General Morgan Inn, at 111 North Main Street, in downtown Greeneville, are said to be haunted by three different ghosts. One is mischievous and likes to steal spoons, the other continues to try to check in guests long after their passing and the final one seems to want to remain near his portrait.
The Green Room is said to be haunted by a ghost affectionately called “Green Room Grace”, and she is blamed when spoons go missing in the restaurant. It’s said that she was a waitress when the building was Grand Central Hotel. For almost a century, it’s said, she’s been stealing spoons from the kitchen and tables in the Green Room dining area. She’s also perceived as mischievous. On the YouTube video, The General Morgan Inn, it’s documented that she’s also blamed for moving objects in the kitchen, as well as causing the painting to go crooked in the middle of the night in the Green Room.
The same video presents the hotel’s other ghost, called “Front Desk Bill”. He is said to be a ghost who occasionally appears at the old check-in desk, continuing work long after his employment came to an end with his passing.
The video also says that Confederate General John Hunt Morgan (1825 – 1864) is believed to haunt the second-floor Presidential Suite where his portrait hangs on the wall.
Morgan Culvert
Greeneville
The railroad bridge on Morgan Road, before Old Stage Road, in Greeneville is said to have been a commonplace for lynching. From here, folklore maintains, countless black persons were hanged. Not surprisingly, their spirits are said to still haunt this bridge. It’s said moans of the dying can be heard coming from the culvert, and that anyone walking through it can hear phantom footsteps following them.
However, these tales migrated from Little Chucky Creek Stone Arch in Mosheim and were created by a man named Michael Doty in the late 1960s while he and his friends were trying to impress young women.
It’s not uncommon for older bridges to be associated with hangings.
Crimes against black people in the not-so-remote past, as well as vague memories of the worst violence perpetrated in the name of Jim Crow segregation laws between 1865 and 1965, have given rise to the motif of hanging bridges in the foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains. It seems every county has at least one old bridge or railroad trestle where spirits of black people reside because local legend says that after the Civil War, these places were where they were lynched. While the majority of these stories have no historical basis, horrendous lynching did indeed happen.
Greene County Bridge, built in 1921, lies directly in front of the railroad arch on Hartman Road, but the ghostly tales associated with it are a little more complex. In a post on the group, “Down Home In Greeneville Tn.”, on Facebook, Michael Doty explains that he and his friends changed the ghost story that was already in place when they were still in high school, in 1968.
Originally, he wrote, tales said that Confederate troops guarding the bridge during the Civil War were ambushed and killed by Union soldiers. On certain nights, he said, gunfire and screaming can still be heard. However, as a teenage prank, Michael and his friends would set up an elaborate system where if one were driving a young lady around that night, someone else would be hidden above and throw a dummy toward the car.
It seems that after a while, the story changed to black persons being hanged from the arch, which migrated to Morgan Culvert in Greeneville.
Old Greeneville Jail
Greeneville
According to The Greeneville Sun article, Hunting Hauntings, the old, relocated stone jail at 116 East Depot Street, was originally built on Richland Creek from the limestone and iron taken from an older jail and was built by enslaved men in 1806. It is said, by some, that the spirits of some prisoners still reside in the building.
Robinhood Road
Greeneville
Robinhood Road in Greeneville is said to be haunted by the spirit of a young girl named Ryan, who is desperately trying to leave the road, where it is said she was murdered and buried in a basement. It’s said that her specter will walk up to cars to try to get help, but since she can’t speak, help never comes. There’s no record of any crime similar to this in newspapers, so it may have been invested in the early days of the internet after ghost-hunting shows became popular.
The Sewing Room
Greeneville
Andrew Johnson and his wife, Eliza McCardle, owned a tailor shop on Main Street before he became interested in politics. In 1884, their daughters, Martha and Mary purchased it, and it remained in the family until 1921. It was then enclosed in the current building at 101 North College Street. Since then, sounds of old sewing machines continuing to operate long after they were removed can be heard inside.
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