Ghosts of the Southern Tennessee Valley by Georgiana Kotarski

Author:Georgiana Kotarski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folklore/Ghosts
Publisher: Blair
Published: 2006-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

“The house talks to you in a certain way. You could tell there was a presence there…. I don’t know that anyone has ever put a finger on what it was. The feeling that I got is that it took care of the property. The spirit liked me because I was preserving the place…. I never saw anything bad. Instead of having the life scared out of you, it was pretty relaxing, like having life slowed down for a second. Sometimes, we called it Tranquility Island. It seemed so peaceful, almost sacred. It attracted you. People would come by all the time, and they’d just stay. The longer people stayed, the more comfortable they got. We had people spending the night. It’s almost like they’d forgotten all their cares.”

It seemed to Thom the house conspired to hold people in its protective shadow. “It was like breaking out of the magnetic connection there,” he explains. “For some folks, it was staggering.” Many visitors lost their keys or became confused when it was time to leave. One, in his bewilderment, even ran over the flowers.

The place has a long history, going back to the Cherokees’ occupation of the property, Thom says. “It was harmonious for them as well.”

But it wasn’t so for everyone.

The house offered many a young soldier respite from the gruesome feast of blood and death during the dark autumn of 1863. The Yankees took a mighty whipping during the Battle of Chickamauga and fled toward Chattanooga. Although the house was not on the main route out of Chickamauga, thirteen miles to the south, some soldiers did pass nearby. Located near the springs just south of the Tennessee line, the home no doubt tempted many a weary soldier to stop and rest.

During November 1863, the Yankees struggled to take Lookout Mountain, five miles to the north. No battle ensued near the house, but the guns were heard there. The Union used it as a hospital. Injured men could be evacuated there easily through what is now St. Elmo. “When they were getting pinned down trying to get up the mountain, [the house was] where they were dragging them off to,” says Thom. Despite the horrors of those times, Thom thinks Miss Leila turned any “bad vibrations” around.

The house or the presence within it repels negative people and attracts artistic ones. According to neighbor Hilda Morse, Miss Leila’s mother, Elizabeth Grant, was musically gifted. “I’d always been told that she played for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra some,” says Hilda. She even composed several pieces, including the Kalmia Waltz, an original printing of which remains in the Morse family as a treasured memento.

Nationally known architect Garnet Chapin later bought and worked in the house, then rented it to musicians, artists, and media types. But being the creative sort was not an automatic foot in the door. One of the most popular DJs in town moved in with Thom and his friends. He didn’t have very good luck there.

“He was a bad-vibe guy, and the house did not like him,” says Thom.

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