The Haunting of Longview Mansion

Longview Mansion as it appeared in 1919, sitting majestically above the old Franklin Pike.

Like Green Hills and Berry Hill, Forest Hills is one of the storied Seven Hills of Nashville, a cluster of old neighborhoods south of downtown where the past lingers along with the ghosts of yesteryear.

In Ghosts and Haunts of Tennessee, I chronicled the ghosts of a certain part of Nashville, and in this journal I updated that chapter with supplemental information about the Hauntings of the Seven Hills. Overlooked in those articles was the venerable Longview Mansion, which has sat majestically on the corner of Caldwell Lane and Franklin Pike, since the 1850’s.

When it was originally built, it was not such a grand affair as one sees today. It began as a cozy four room, one story cottage, constructed by Henry Norvell and his bride Laura Sevier, the grand-daughter of the colorful frontier leader and first Governor of Tennessee, John Sevier. Today this modest manse boasts twenty-two rooms, eleven fireplaces, fourteen crystal chandeliers, and luxurious glass solarium.

It survived the Civil War more or less intact and in 1878 was purchased by James Caldwell, then president of the up and coming Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company. It remained in the Caldwell family through much of the twentieth century, undergoing several expansions and architectural redesigns. After a further change of owners it was ultimately purchased by the Church of Christ and is now owned by David Lipscomb University to serve as a special event center and administrator’s residence, while the LU soccer team uses the grounds for practice.

Having been in one family’s hands for so long and now owned by a decidedly Christian institution, not a lot of details abound about the alleged ghosts that haunt the house and grounds. In any case, genuine ghosts do not pop up on command for camera crews, much less for yahoos who go around in the dark with flashlights aimed at their faces scaring themselves.

It is thought that the origin of at least some of the alleged hauntings can be traced to the Civil War period. The house, on an eminence overlooking Franklin Pike, was in the thick of the Battle of Nashville on the second day (December 16, 1864) and the area about the mansion saw a great deal of bloody fighting.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a cannonball was found in the garden, a testament to the estate’s involvement in the battle. One of the family was moved to compose a poem about that memento of the war.

Whether there are any soldier’s graves remaining on the grounds is unknown, but not unlikely, given its location. After the battle, many Confederate dead were hastily dumped into mass graves on unhallowed ground, their names and the locations of their graves long forgotten. Their spirits are thus doomed to haunt the battleground to this day. The Seven Hills, the heart of the battleground, is awash in ghosts dating to the Civil War battle.

Second hand accounts of uncanny events in the house have circulated for years, although the Caldwell family have never spoken directly about such encounters. Given their long residence there, some of the resident spirits may well be family members. The mansion is so opulent and attractive, one could well understand why one might be reluctant to leave it, even for greener pastures.

One incident that has been given credence by those who know, happened a few decades back before the University took ownership of Longview.

The lady of the house at the time was playing the grand piano, just off the main entrance to the house, one day. It was a tune which she was fond of but which apparently did not meet with one of the resident spirit’s approval. As she was in the midst of the tune, a nearby lamp was knocked over by an invisible hand, falling to the floor with a crash.

In the Room where it Happened. Longview.

The lady of the house, aware of her permanent guest’s mercurial temperament and preferring not to upset the resident spirit, never played that song again.

As with the ghosts that inhabit nearby Belmont Mansion and University, the ghosts of yesteryear choose to linger beneath the enchanted eaves of Longview to moving on to another plane.

For more haunting tales of Tennessee, go view Strange Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground, published by HarperCollins, or Ghosts and Haunts of Tennessee by Blair publishers. For double your hauntings, buy them both!

 

Strange Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground surveys uncanny accounts of the Mid-South, not just haunted houses and other spooks, but assorted unexplained phenomena from Spontaneous Human Combustion to Fortean Falls of Blood and Gore–and more!

 

Hauntings of the Seven Hills: Suburban Spooks of Nashville

Howard Pyle’s painting of the Battle for Shy’s Hill, today part of Green Hills. In December of 1864 a bloody battle was fought over most of what is now suburban Nashville.

Although I wrote about the ghosts of “The Seven Hills” in Ghosts and Haunts of Tennessee, due to technical issues I wasn’t able to illustrate it the way I would have wished, which is one of the reasons why this blog exists–to update and supplement the true ghost tales I have already related to you.

Green Hills Mall, a modern shopping center located in the center of a battlefield. Reports of apparitions surface from time to time here.

For those not native to Nashville, Tennessee, “The Seven Hills” does not refer to specific hills in the city (there are far more than seven) but to a cluster of suburban neighborhoods southwest of downtown which share similar names: Green Hills, Forest Hills, Hillsboro Village, etc. Although to the casual visitor they all seem pleasant affluent areas (they are) they also hide darker secrets as well: all possess their fair share of ghosts.

Most popular of the neighborhoods by far is Green Hills, and in Ghosts and Haunts of Tennessee I detail several hauntings there. One of the most interesting is at that mecca of Nashville fashionistas, Green Hills Mall. The mall has had repeated reports of hauntings. Other reports of hauntings in Green Hills come from the homes in the area as well.

Apparently some time back a shoe clerk at The Mall reported seeing an apparition wearing a tricorner hat on a number of occasions. It is thought that this spirit may have been a victim of an Indian attack during the frontier era, when raids and scalpings were commonplace in Nashville.

However, in these neighborhoods an even more common cause of the many reports of haunted homes is the fact that this part of Nashville is where some of the bloodiest fighting of the Battle of Nashville took place. In December of 1864, Green Hills and adjacent Forest Hills saw horrific bloodshed before the Confederate Army was finally defeated. The dead and dying lay everywhere after the battle.

While quietly buried in a modern suburban neighborhood, this old home dates back before the war. Privately owned, it has had several reports of poltergeist activity, including old coins appearing out of nowhere!

While these days on cable television, ghost hunters claim able to not only identify who is haunting what house, but also what they had for breakfast the day they died, the reality is that most hauntings cannot really be pinned to any known person. Residents or owners will report uncanny happenings, mysterious sounds or, more rarely, actually seeing a visual presence. In truth, however, identifying the ghost as a particular individual is mostly speculation. The fact that right after the battle, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dead Confederate were hastily thrown into mass graves in The Hills and never properly buried, is the most probable source of most of these continuing poltergeist activities. As in the movie “Poltergeist,” these subdivisions were often built over the mass graves of the dead without the graves being relocated.

Belmont, home of Adelicia Acklen, Headquarters of US IV Corps during the Civil War and today part of Belmont University. Open to the public, the ghosts are at no additional charge.

One exception to the above rule of thumb, however, is Belmont Mansion. This grand old dame of antebellum architecture stands on a tall hill overlooking Hillsboro Village, a popular destination for both the college crowd and music industry executives. Today Belmont is the campus of a prestigious Christian school, Belmont University. During the Battle of Nashville it was headquarters for the Union Army’s Fourth Corps and the battle lines lay only a few blocks away. While it is thought several ghosts haunt Belmont Mansion, the one most commonly associated with it is Adelicia Acklen, a Southern belle possessed of beauty, brains and lots and lots of money. Despite all that, she suffered the loss of several of her children in the house and it is believed that that is why she still resides there.

Adelicia Acklen, the Phantom Belle is one of several ghosts reputed to reside in Belmont Mansion., and located near Hillsboro Village

For more on the hauntings of The Hills see Chapter 13, Ghosts and Haunts of Tennessee; for more about Adelicia and her restless spirit, see Strange Tales, Chapter 26.