On Christmas Eve in 1989 in Johnson City, the retirement home the John Sevier Center caught on fire. The flames were only on the first floor but the thick black smoke claimed 16 lives that night. Firefighters on scene and residents since have had encounters with the deceased patients and passerbys sometimes see ghostly faces of desperate senior citizens hanging out of windows.The report "Sixteen-Fatality Fire in High-rise Residence for the Elderly Johnson City, Tennessee” from the United States Fire Administration gives the names and ages of the 14 residence and two visitors that lost their lives: Juanita Ward, 76, Fred Kidd, 66, Ivan Atwood, 68, Carmen Baughan, 79, Lori Carlisle, 78, Brian Cozad, 29, Ethel Francis, 76, William Carl Ogburne, 51,,Cleo Range, 89, Doris Riening, 72, Emma Shade, 85, Blanche Shell, 83, Ethel Shelton, 80, Lora Shook, 88, Carolyn Somitch, 31 and Josephine Eager, 82.In his book Haints, Witches, and Boogers: Tales from Upper East Tennessee, Charles Edwin Price documents a conversation with a construction worker who, four days after the fire, was given a valuable lesson by one of the building’s recently deceased residents. The construction worker was on the third floor alone and decided to start looting, when “I seen this old man standing down there, kind of watching me. He had his walker and he looked pretty feeble.” (Price, p. 103) The construction worker continues by saying the senior walked around a corner and when the looter went after him, the elderly man simply vanished. Victims of the fire are rumored to still appear at the John Sevier Center. Perhaps they are residual memories; visions that somehow have been recorded in the halls and at certain times and to certain people still appear. 
