The Nashville Stories

My sister flew in from Colorado to meet me in Nashville.  Her plane was delayed, so I spent an hour cooling my heels in the airport. The Nashville airport is not the airport to have to wait for someone.  The only shopping access available to you is a News stand and a flower stand.  All the good stuff is on the other side of the security point.

So she finally arrives about two hours after she was first expected. We hit the hotel long enough to check in and dump stuff and then we head out to downtown Nashville.  Our Ghost/ Tavern crawl starts at one of the downtown taverns.  We do a little sightseeing of the downtown (really, it was mostly shopping, but let's call it sightseeing).

 

This was our tour guide, Audrey.  This is the upstairs for the first stop on the tour.  This pub was at one time a carriage house.. with the downstairs being for the horses and carriages and the upstairs being where the family lived that managed/owned the carriage house.

The ghost that haunts this pub is the wife of the carriagehouse owner.  She fell down the stairs and broke her neck and died.  Rumors flew for years that she didn't trip and fall as was thought to be the case by the police, but  rather that the husband had pushed her down.

This pub is said to have two types of "haunts" going on.. the first is a re-enactment of the scene (the husband pushing the wife down the stairs).  Several of the folks that have worked there have claimed to see this scene being acted out at the end of the night (there is a kitchen on the second floor from which the snacks, etc are served.. so typically there is a clean up crew up there.)

The second haunt seems to just be the wife hanging out "visiting".  Our tourguide has a pretty cool picture that someone took of her during one of the tours.  In the pic she seems to have a ghostly third arm and  hand hanging down to her side, while her real arms are up and gesticulating as she tells the tale. 

The guide also mentioned that recently someone who claimed to be "sensitive" picked up a name that they believe to be the name of the ghost.. "Sarah".  Someone had written on a small chalkboard "Sarah is a nice person." The night of our tour, the writing was still there and it was below that blackboard that the first ghostly picture was taken.

You can see the blackboard there behind my sister. The other all female group in our tour took pictures towards that wall.  In one of those pictures, you can see the folds of a skirt, draped just so.... it is a long skirt, such as what might have been worn at the turn of the century.  They passed their digital camera around so that we could all see what they got.   It was there... kind of see through-y but definitely there... and as you can see by this picture... nothing draping behind my sister towards that wall that could have made such an image.

These are the ladies that caught the "ghost" on their camera. Behind the girl on the far left is the staircase down which the woman was pushed.

This is when we departed the first pub (going down the infamous steps).  See the mirror to the right of the tour guide's head?  They used to have that mirror on the wall facing the tour guide, but too many patrons claimed to have seen someone standing behind them as they prepared to go downstairs (but when they turned around no one was there). They moved the mirror to avoid further scares of that nature.

We walked to our next pub, with Audrey telling us bits of history and folklore. Unfortunately I can't remember much of anything she said that night.. guess I shouldn't wait so long to write, huh?  Sorry.

This is Susan and me at the second pub.  The girls from San Diego got a few shots of orbs floating behind us, on their camera, but of course nothing with ours.  (Beginning to wonder if they weren't "plants" to add to the tour scariness) At any rate, the vodka sours were first rate at this pub...

Another long shot at the dance floor in pub two.  Dancing orbs were the object but again, I found none on my pic.  I did manage a pic of what i thought was one orb, but the tour guide quickly debunked it as the red light from the security camera.

This was the last pub we stopped at that night.  This pub has a bit of a poltergeist thing going on.  The ghosts here like to hang out in the bathrooms (both male and female) and turn on the taps when no one is using the sink.  Once again our San Diego girls had the chance to experience this haunting first hand.  The only male in our group used the restroom, but didn't experience anything out of the ordinary.  On the second floor of this tavern, there are occasionally shadows with no explanations.  And orbs are caught floating down the staircase.

Usually after I've been on a ghosthunt I like to buy a book with the local ghost stories.  But I didn't find one in Nashville, so I couldn't refresh my memories of what Audrey shared with us.

Second day in Nashville we did a city tour that included Ryman Auditorium (the original "Grand Ol Opry") and the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Both worth seeing, but we didn't get enough time in the CMHF.  I will have to go back sometime and really sit and read all the cool stuff in there.  I didn't even get to the gift shop, that's how crammed full of things to see it was.

 

Nashville Parthenon

 looking from the Parthenon towards downtown Nashville.

The Bruce Springsteen concert was awesome.  I was not a big fan of his in my younger days, but he really does put on a good show.  Susan was the big fan and this was one of my b-day gifts to her, so as long as she enjoyed it (which she did) then it's all good.  We left out of Nashville and headed to Atlanta.  Stories from Atlanta to follow :)

Tags: ghost hunt, Nashville

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