Tusculum College in Tusculum is said to have a museum that is haunted by a piano-playing ghost and a building where disembodied screams can sometimes be heard.According to a post on The Shadowlands on the website "Haunted Places Index – Tennessee” on the Doak House Museum: “Several people have reported hearing an piano/organ play upstairs, but there’s no one there.” (The Shadowlands) Folklore maintains this is the second wife of Tusculum College founder Sarah Houston McEwen. A website titled “More about the Reverend Samuel Witherspoon Doak” by Tusculum College records that the Doak family built the house in 1830 and Samuel Doak (1749 – 1830) started Tusculum Academy; the first semester there was only four students. The very next year, Sarah passed away. Since then, phantom piano music sometimes drifts downstairs. Some nights, the sedate campus is shattered by a blood-curdling scream from Virginia Hall. According to a post on The Shadowlands on the website "Haunted Places Index – Tennessee”: “The head mother’s room was in the attic. The [dormitory] caught on fire but the head mother couldn’t get out. The girls could hear her screaming.” (The Shadowlands) This tale is suspicious because no record of a fire can be found. In fact, according to the book Tusculum College, Tennessee by Frank T. Wheeler, Virginia Hall, built in 1901, was designed to be more fire safe: “Abundant provisions were made against fire . . . each floor being equipped with water connection, hose and fire escapes.” (Wheeler, p. 36)Another explanation was proposed by a man who wished to remain anonymous to Justin H. Guess of Haunt Masters Club: Tri-Cities Parapsychological Research & Investigation; he said the screams were from a suicide victim. The alumni graduated from Tusculum College in the late 1970s and said that when he was a student he had heard a young lady had hanged herself from the tree in front of Virginia Hall and it was her screams that echoed through the night. This death was verified by a Kingsport News article from 11/06/1972 entitled "'Apparent Suicide' in Tusculum Student’s Death”:A Tusculum [College] freshman was found early Monday hanging from an oak tree in the middle of the college campus.Greene County coroner Buster Greenway said the death of Richard Hartle, [19], of Morristown, [New Jersey], was “an apparent suicide.”The body was found by another student at the college, Julie Stanley.Sheriff David Davis said a loop from a homemade swing was around the victim’s neck, and his knees were touching the ground. Time of death was placed at around [8:00 PM] Sunday.Davis said that Hartle was described by his fellow students as a “loner” He said no motive for the apparent suicide was found.Hartle would have been 20 years of age Monday. (Kingsport News) Perhaps this ghost story is a more interesting way of retaining the tragedy of young Richard Hartle.
