Читать книгу Nashville Haunted Handbook - Jeff Morris - Страница 30

directions

Take I-40 East for about 6 miles to the Briley Parkway exit, Exit 215B. Follow this road for about 2 miles to the Lebanon Pike exit, Exit 8. Turn right onto Lebanon Pike, and follow the road for a little more than 2 miles. The Clover Bottom Mansion will be on your right.

history

Easily one of the largest plantations in the Nashville area, Clover Bottom was constructed in 1854 by a man named Dr. James Hoggatt. Only two years after its original construction, a tragic fire hit the mansion and did extensive damage to it. When reconstructing the building, Hoggatt decided to give the façade a more original and artistic appearance that it originally had. The Italianate style of today’s building was added to the mansion after the fire in 1856.

The plantation did quite well, and at one point more than 60 slaves worked on the extensive property. Eventually, Dr. Hoggatt contracted a disease that slowly wasted him away. He died in the house after a long bout with the mysterious illness.

ghost story

The ghosts that inhabit the Clover Bottom Mansion tend to haunt the building by making sounds. Most of these sounds come in the form of footsteps. Generally these footsteps will be clearly audible even though the people who hear them are certain that they are the only living people within the building.

Many of these footsteps sound very distinctly from a different time period. When downstairs in the house, people will hear the sound of wooden-heeled shoes clicking against the wood floor overhead. The upstairs is accessible only to staff, and even when no staff members are supposedly upstairs, these footsteps are still clearly heard. People will also sometimes hear the sounds of rustling skirts throughout the house, even when there are no women wearing skirts anywhere nearby.

visiting

Entering the downstairs of this building is easy. It is free to tour the downstairs of the building mostly because it is not set up as any kind of museum but rather serves as the offices of the Tennessee Historical Commission. If you want a historic tour of a magnificent mansion, you will be disappointed if you go to Clover Bottom Mansion; but if you want to visit a haunted historic mansion to listen for ghostly footsteps, you couldn’t ask for a better price of admission than free.