“Ghostly attractions inside the Dimple of the Universe”
Maury County is home to several different small, Southern towns; Columbia, Spring Hill, Mt. Pleasant, Hampshire, Culleoka, Santa Fe and other small communities littered throughout the hilly countryside. Columbia was a Southern metropolis throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, but, soon faltered under the pressure of Franklin and Nashville. Since their own “fall of Rome,” Columbia has a lot of unspoken history and many buildings that still residuate that history into energy.
Rippavilla Plantation, built along what is now Hwy 31, was a gem among the rubble that was the Civil War. Construction began on the home shared by Nathaniel Francis Cheairs and his wife, Susan Peters McKissack in 1852. The construction of the mansion took three years to complete and while the mansion was being constructed, the young family lived above the kitchen house. The family resided in the mansion for six years before the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.
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Rippavilla stands proudly amongst modern amenities that surely have stirred the spirits of the plantation.
“If any house could be haunted in Maury County, it would no doubt be this one.” said Chuck Byrn, an employee at Rippavilla and local historian that specializes in Maury County history.
Union soldiers occupied the mansion in 1862 and throughout the war served as a field hospital. Blood stains still remain throughout the mansion, specifically inside a bedroom that Byrn explained was used as the surgery room.
While walking inside the grand mansion, decorated perfectly to period-appropriate interior design, the air was heavy and seemingly cold. The grand staircase was particularly eerie, connecting the warmer bottom-half of the mansion to the unused, dark top floor. The stairs creaked as I traveled up them, Byrn standing at the bottom, almost hopeful that something would appear when the upper story came into view.
My head jerked to the side of the room; the sun had begun to fade away and the room was darkened, but it didn’t stop my attention from grasping onto the chair that was slowly rocking in the corner, a non-lit old-fashioned oil lamp sitting on the table beside.
The house was eerily quiet, except for the feet of the chair carefully knocking against the old hardwood floor. My heart was in my throat as I climbed back down the stairs; my face was drained. I felt as if I had seen something even though it was just the chair moving. Byrn remained grinning at the bottom of the steps; he already knew. He asked me if I smelt cigarettes or any sort of tobacco while I was up there.
I nodded.
I had. The faint smell of a pipe lingered upstairs as the chair kept slowly moving.
“You will smell tobacco here, sometimes cigarettes. You even smell perfume at times.” Byrn said.
Many people that work at Rippavilla are not shy enough to stray away from the word “haunted.” They’ve all seen things such as the head of Mrs. Cheairs in the upstairs window, boots stomping along the cobblestone in the back garden and the “ghosts” that Byrn is so familiar with even began to set off the security alarm in the old mansion.
The Athenaeum, also known as “Columbia’s Hidden Jewel,” is another historic building in Columbia that is rumored to be haunted. The Athenaeum was the second part of an all-girls school in Columbia that flourished from the 1830s up until the Great Depression. The home that was to become the Athenaeum was built in 1837 by a man, Nathan Vaught, who was considered the “Master Builder of Maury County.” The Athenaeum is pegged as the most haunted place in Middle Tennessee.
Adam Southern, director of the Maury County Public Library and another avid Maury County historian, has attended several paranormal investigations at the Athenaeum, done by local ghost hunters.
“Other than Rippavilla, I’d say the Athenaeum is the other most haunted place in the county. When I went on the investigation with the ghost hunting crew I experienced some odd phenomenon throughout the evening. Lots of temperature changes, voices heard in the background of tapes we played back and footprints upstairs.”
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Historical photo (courtesy of the Historic Maury County blog) of the Athenaeum.
Rev. Franklin Smith, a son of the original Smith family that administered the building of the Athenaeum, is said to haunt the rectory. Southern told me of his “inappropriate behavior” with some of the female students while he “managed” the rectory and many claim that his ghost is the one that roams the halls, looking to maintain his innocence. It is also said that Smith is seen frequently looking out the windows of the upstairs part of the rectory.
Hauntings can take over any sort of place, not just a 200-year-old plantation or rectory. The Maury County Public Library also has its fair share of spooky tales. Southern’s book Mad Maury tells of ghosts, murder and mayhem in Maury County and sheds light on the haunting of the Maury County Library. The land the current Maury County Public Library was covered with two, 18th century houses before they demolished them. It is said that the land the houses were on, the land that the library currently sits on, was haunted and that energy resides between the shelves of the library.
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Historic photo of Ms. Emma Wooten, the children’s librarian when the new library opened in 1968. (Photo courtesy of the Historic Maury County blog)
Southern writes that there is a rumour that the new library, built in 1967-68, sits atop of a gravesite and that the new construction has made the occupant of the old grave angry. The story goes that a woman in white, seen by a library worker first, walks through the shelves of books, longingly.
“The library worker that saw the woman in white for the first time wrote down the date, November 21, so he would remember. As the following year passes and November rolls around again, the same worker saw her again, the night of November 21.”
After researching the subject, the library employee that met the woman in white dug up information that she had died on November 21, 1949 in one of the houses that stood where the current library stands now. In Mad Maury, Southern explains that paranormal investigators explained to him that the woman in white is nothing to be scared of, though, because she is considered residual energy; a ghost that is seen only every once in a while and cannot interact with the living. However, the Maury County Public Library is also accustomed to intelligent spirits, as well.
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Zion Presbyterian Church and cemetery is another known haunted location in Maury county with an extensive graveyard and numerous historic buildings on the property.
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The rural Matthews Cemetery is one of the most haunted locations in Tennessee, by experience, but is almost unknown in the community as a cemetery at all.
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