Carter Mansion

The Carter Mansion in Elizabethton is said to be haunted by two spirits that could not be more different. One is a little girl and the other is a blood-thirsty Native North American Chickamauga Indian.

It is said that the image of a little girl in dated nightclothes is occasionally seen staring out one of the second-floor windows. Folklore maintains the image is of a child that fell to her death from the window and sightings of the unanimous ghost is often accompanied by a scream.

In the late 1980’s retired ETSU Professor Dr. Nancy Hamblen Acuff was investigating the home for a purposed book on ghost stories and with the work of an unnamed person claiming psychic facilities came up with a different reason for the scream and the feeling of uneasiness some people report while on the second floor. Johnson City Press staff writer Lisa Kereluk explained the investigation in an article titled “Where Spirits Dwell”:

With the help of a psychic to pick up impressions of the mansion’s past, the story slowly emerged.

It was about 1800, and one of the early Carters and his wife had settled comfortably into the mansion with their two young

children. One night, while her husband was out, the Carters had a strange visitor.

He had come from upriver, the man told her, and had some business with Mr. Carter. As was the custom of the time, Mrs.

Carter invited the stranger in and offered him lodging. Later, after her husband had still not returned, the family and their guest

settled in for the night.

As Mrs. Carter slept, alone and unprotected, the guest crept stealthily into her room. Mrs. Carter was stabbed to death in

the ensuing struggle.

But the gruesome store does not end there. Sleeping in the upstairs loft, they children heard their mother’s screams.

To a man already crazed with violence, there was only one solution. These small witnesses had to be silenced.

Now, centuries later, the mother’s and children’s feelings of terror still provide the house, according to Acuff. And in the

upstairs rooms, screams can be heard. (Kereluk, pgs. 35 & 48)

In an Elizabethton Star article titled "Some say ghost of Dragging Canoe regularly visits the Carter Mansion", staff writer Rozella Hardin discusses another frequent spiritual visitor to the property, one with a dangerous reputation.

One of the ghost stories often related about the Mansion involves Dragging Canoe, a young Cherokee brave, who no

doubt visited the Carters from time to time on the Watauga River, and perhaps traded with them. After the Transylvania

Purchase, Dragging Canoe became an enemy of the settlers and often attacked them.

Long after the Carters had died and before the Mansion was sold to the state to be restored as a historical site, families

who lived there and nearby often saw an Indian walk around the corner of the house and sometimes go into and out of the

house. Always, it was in the evening just at dark. His footsteps were soft. Most believed it was the ghost of Dragging Canoe.

(Hardin)

In his book Nancy Ward, Cherokee Chieftainess, Dragging Canoe, Cherokee-Chickamauga War Chief, former Unicoi County, Tennessee historian Pat Alderman explains why Dragging Canoe was such a dangerous character. After the Transylvania Purchase on March 14, 1775 in which 20-million acres of Cherokee land was sold to a private company, he joined with separatist Native Americans and formed the Chickamauga tribe with the intent to eradicate settlers on the ceded land.

Today, historic Carter Mansion on Broad Street is a tourist attraction; one that may offer visitors a brief glimpse into the distant past.