Haunted Places in Knoxville, TN

The history

Knoxville's ghosts work ground that was contested from the start. The city's Wikipedia article records the documented frame: Knoxville, settled in 1786 on the Tennessee River in the Appalachians, had a population of 190,740 at the 2020 census, the third-most populous city in Tennessee, and was the state's first capital. The Cherokee called the area kuwanda'talun'yi — "mulberry place" — and one of the oldest artificial structures in the city is a Mississippian burial mound the University of Tennessee campus later grew around. James White's fort became the seat of the Southwest Territory's capital in 1791, when, as the Craighead–Jackson House article tells it, William Blount selected White's Fort and James White's son-in-law Charles McClung drew the grid of 64 half-acre lots that is still the core of downtown. The railroad arrived in 1855 and set off an economic boom; the Civil War then split the city bitterly, with Confederate and Union armies occupying it alternately and the fighting culminating in the Battle of Fort Sanders in 1863. After the war Knoxville grew into a wholesaling and manufacturing centre, stagnated from the 1920s, and was reinvigorated by hosting the 1982 World's Fair.

Downtown's theatre anchor is really two buildings in one. The Bijou Theatre's Wikipedia article records that the theatre was built in 1909 as an addition to the Lamar House Hotel — a hotel originally built in 1817 by the descendants of Irish immigrant Thomas Humes, where Andrew Jackson in 1819 became the first of five presidents to lodge. In the early 1850s the hotel was expanded into a lavish 75-room complex; during the Civil War the Union Army used the hotel as a hospital for its war wounded, among them General William P. Sanders, who died at the hotel in 1863. The theatre structure replaced the hotel's rear wing in 1909, entered through a new lobby cut through the hotel building from Gay Street, and opened on 8 March 1909; over the next four decades it hosted the Marx Brothers, Dizzy Gillespie, John Philip Sousa, the Ballets Russes, Ethel Barrymore and Houdini. The building and theatre were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and preservationists renovated the theatre after its 1960s and early-1970s decline.

Across downtown, the Craighead–Jackson House supplies the city's oldest domestic anchor. Built by John Craighead in 1818 on Lot 15 of McClung's original grid, across the street from the William Blount Mansion, the two-storey brick house stayed in the Craighead family until 1855, when it was sold to William Swan and soon after to George Jackson, whose family lived there until around 1885. The state of Tennessee and the City of Knoxville bought the property in 1957, transferred it to the Blount Mansion Association in 1962, and it served as the Blount Mansion visitor centre from 1966 to the mid-1990s. North of downtown, Old Gray Cemetery — established in 1850, dedicated on 1 June 1852 and named for the English poet Thomas Gray, author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard — is Knoxville's second-oldest cemetery, a 13.47-acre garden cemetery added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, holding everyone from the victims of the city's 1854 cholera epidemic to several dozen victims of the 1904 New Market train wreck. On Mabry's Hill, the Mabry–Hazen House, built in 1858 as Pine Hill Cottage for Joseph Alexander Mabry II, was occupied by both armies — Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer headquartered there in 1861, and Union forces later fortified its grounds — and has operated as a museum since 1992, under the will of Evelyn Hazen, who lived there alone until her death in 1987 and stipulated the house become a museum or be razed.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by the tour operators and, in one case, recorded as local legend in the anchor article itself, and never asserted as fact here.

Knoxville's signature legend is unusual in this program because the anchor states it as legend in so many words. The Craighead–Jackson House article records, in its history of the Jackson years: "According to a local legend, the house is haunted by the ghost of one of Jackson's servants, who burned to death after her skirt caught fire while working in the house's kitchen." That sentence is the whole documented basis — a local legend, labelled as one, attached to a documented 1818 house — and the national operator's retelling adds only atmosphere: unexplained sounds, moving shadows and strange activity reported by visitors, tied in its telling to a tragic accident and generations of Knoxville history. This guide reports the legend exactly as its anchor frames it, and asserts nothing more.

The Bijou's lore needs one correction before it can be told, and the anchor supplies it. The national operator's page says the Bijou's golden era was interrupted by a traumatic stint as a Civil War hospital where many soldiers lost their lives. The sentiment has a documented root, but the building is wrong: the theatre was built in 1909, forty-four years after the war ended. What served as a Union hospital, and where General Sanders died in 1863, was the Lamar House Hotel — the 1817 building the theatre was later added to, whose lobby the theatre still enters through. Told precisely, the lore is the hotel building's, inherited by the theatre that shares its walls; the operator's own Knoxville telling elsewhere gets closer, describing midnight shifts, the Civil War occupation of the Lamar House as a triage centre, and third-shift security guards who routinely hear heavy boots stomping across the catwalks above the modern stage. Boots on a catwalk are folklore, attributed to the operator; a hospital in 1909 is an error, and it does not appear in this guide as fact.

The remaining canon is the city's violent documented past, retold at night. The national operator frames its courthouse-and-jail stop around Gallows Hill — trials, executions and notorious criminals, with reported footsteps and slamming doors — and the local investigation company independently sells the same ground under its own tour names, "Hauntings on Gallows Hill" and "Prisons of Knoxville's Past," and reported in August 2025 that its investigative history project had uncovered Knoxville's Confederate jail. Market Square's bloody summer of 1919 — the race riot the operators and the walking-tour company both call Red Summer — is retold on the routes with National Guard machine guns in the square; the Old City, once known as the bowery, contributes, in the walking-tour company's own summary, murderous brawls, shoot-outs, horrific train crashes and the ghost of a musician who has not quite faded away. Riots, gallows, jails and train wrecks are Knoxville's documented history; the footsteps, the boots and the musician are its folklore, and the two stay in their labelled places here.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 4 places in Knoxville, TN. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Bijou Theatre — haunted place, 803 S Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902
• Blount Mansion — haunted place, 200 West Hill Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902
• Mabry-Hazen House — haunted place, 1711 Dandridge Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37915
• Tennessee Theatre — haunted place, 604 S Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902

Sources

• Wikipedia, Knoxville, Tennessee (city anchor — settled 1786, first capital of Tennessee, on the Tennessee River, 2020 population 190,740 and third-most populous city in Tennessee, the Cherokee name kuwanda'talun'yi, the Mississippian burial mound, the railroad's arrival in 1855, the divided Civil War city and the Battle of Fort Sanders in 1863, the post-war wholesaling and manufacturing growth, the stagnation from the 1920s and the reinvigoration from the 1982 World's Fair) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville,_Tennessee
• Wikipedia, Bijou Theatre (Knoxville, Tennessee) (anchor — built 1909 as an addition to the Lamar House Hotel, the hotel originally built in 1817 by Thomas Humes's descendants, Andrew Jackson the first of five presidents to lodge there in 1819, the Union Army's Civil War use of the hotel as a hospital and General William P. Sanders's death there in 1863, the theatre's opening on 8 March 1909 and its performers from the Marx Brothers to Houdini, National Register of Historic Places 1975 — the basis for this guide's correction of the operator's Civil War hospital framing) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijou_Theatre_ (Knoxville,_Tennessee)
• Wikipedia, Craighead–Jackson House (anchor — built by John Craighead in 1818 on Lot 15 of McClung's 64-lot grid across from the William Blount Mansion, the Craighead family until 1855, then William Swan and George Jackson, whose family lived there until around 1885, the state and city purchase in 1957 and transfer to the Blount Mansion Association in 1962, its service as the Blount Mansion visitor centre 1966 to the mid-1990s, National Register of Historic Places, and the article's own record, quoted in the legend section, of the local legend of the servant's ghost) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craighead%E2%80%93Jackson_House
• Wikipedia, Old Gray Cemetery (anchor — Knoxville's second-oldest cemetery, established 1850 and dedicated 1 June 1852, 13.47 acres, named for Thomas Gray, a garden cemetery, the 1854 cholera epidemic burials and the victims of the 1904 New Market train wreck, National Register of Historic Places 1996) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Gray_Cemetery
• Wikipedia, Mabry–Hazen House (anchor — built 1858 as Pine Hill Cottage for Joseph Alexander Mabry II at 1711 Dandridge Avenue, Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer's headquarters in 1861 and Union fortification of the grounds, Evelyn Hazen's occupation until her death in 1987 and her will's museum stipulation, museum since 1992, National Register of Historic Places) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabry%E2%80%93Hazen_House
• Haunted Knoxville Ghost Tours, official site (the operator's own homepage — one of America's first hands-on paranormal adventures since 2010, events hosted by J-Adam Smith, adventures of roughly 2.5 hours of training, history and investigations with paranormal tools, the public Friday and Saturday tours Spirits on the Square, Hauntings on Gallows Hill and Prisons of Knoxville's Past, private tours Sunday, Monday and Thursday from $240 for up to six, the Briceville and Oak Ridge menus, the August 2025 blog announcements of the Confederate jail investigative history project and the debunking ethic, and the contact number 865-377-9677; collected 2026-10-30) — http://www.hauntedknoxville.net/
• Knoxville Ghosts, US Ghost Adventures (the operator's own tour page — daily year-round tours, the Knoxville After Dark tour of 1 hour and 1 mile at 8 PM meeting at the Andrew Johnson Building, six or more locations, EMF detector rental, the page's tellings for the Bijou Theatre, the Craighead-Jackson House and the courthouse and jail at Gallows Hill, its Market Square 1919 and Andrew Johnson Hotel lore, and its claimed ratings; collected 2026-10-30) — https://usghostadventures.com/knoxville-ghost-tour/
• Knoxville Walking Tours, official site (the operator's own pages — guide Laura Still, stories based on Jack Neely's books, the partnership with the Knoxville History Project and the proceeds share, A Haunted History of Knoxville, the Shadow Side, Shadow Side 2: Ghosts of the Old City and Side Street Shadows tour descriptions, the Old Gray Cemetery tour's own summary of the cemetery's 1850 founding and marble-industry heyday, and the phone (865) 309-4522; collected 2026-10-30) — http://knoxvillewalkingtours.com/