KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In 1904, two trains collided head-on in New Market.
The Southern Railway under Gay Street was turned into a makeshift morgue for the 56 killed in the crash. The train cars that once filled the depot were said to house the ghosts of those who rode the rails.
“I asked the spirits whether we were disturbing them—if they were trying to get rest. Literally, the lights above us turned on. We don’t know how that could have happened,” Paranormal Historian J-Adam Smith said.
Maple Hall Bowling Lanes sits on the site of 1897’s Million Dollar Fire, an event that destroyed an entire city block of downtown Knoxville. Five people died in the fire that began at Hotel Knox. Perhaps it’s those who perished in the fire that still haunt the bowling alley to this day.
“We’ve got some oddities that occur. We’ve had apparitions. We’ve had shadow people," Maple Hall general manager Ryan Sheley said.
A little further down Gay Street is what historians call the most haunted place in Knoxville: The Bijou Theater.
Used as a hospital during the Civil War, General William Sanders died in the bridal suite after being shot by a Confederate sharpshooter.
“I got the women’s room clean. I went over to the men’s room and there was a man standing there in a uniform with the gold buttons going down it. He was so solid, there was a gleam off the buttons. I saw him. I ran. I didn’t know I could run that fast. I got the impression it was William,” Bijou employee Sharlene Bousch said.
Once standing near Market Square, the Second Presbyterian Church was home to the experiment of Knoxville’s very own Dr. Frankenstein, Stephen Foster.
Foster had a freshly hanged body delivered to him at the church where a witness claims that Foster laid the body onto a table and attached a battery to it.
The witness claimed that the body "breathed once, twice, three times.”
Thankfully, Dr. Foster did not create a monster. He cut off the current after satisfying his curiosity about the effects of electricity on the human body.