PARKER HOUSE
Location: The Old Parker House is private property in the shadow of Harris Mountain near Cloverton, Tennessee, south of Livingston, the county seat of Overton County, on Highway 84.
Description: The imposing two story stone and brick Tudor-style mansion was designed by the same architect who created Cloverton City Hall. The rustic edifice has wood floors, antique Victorian furniture, high ceilings, a grand staircase, mahogany furnishings and an old-fashioned turn-of-the-century kitchen. The personal belongings of its last residents are left behind in upstairs rooms adding to the presence of the supernatural here. The location is also riddled with secret passageways and corridors left over from Prohibition. A gazebo and veranda fill the property.
Ghostly Manifestations: Since the last family member to live in the house, the Parker House has fit the description of Cloverton's local reputed haunted house. Located on the fringe out-skirts of town, the house was actually at the source of a long-ranging local police investigation. After the death of her father, Elizabeth Parker had sealed herself up in the house to close herself off from the world, and it was her unexpected disappearance that seems to play at the source of the house's so-called hauntings. For those who believe the house is haunted, it seems the ghost of Elizabeth Parker is reaching out to the living to reveal her final resting place.
A surprisingly large number of stories have come from the house despite the fact that no one lives in the forlorn structure. Police officers, local merchants, curious teenagers and even the random caretaker has described a long list of supposed sightings. Elizabeth Parker had left behind a considerable inheritance, and her attorneys oversee the upkeep of the residence by hiring local help to tend to the grounds but hardly anyone ever goes inside the place because it seems someone is in there looking out from the top floors. A shadowy figure has been reported several times from the upstairs looking out and sounds of rumbling come from the ground. The noise has been described as that of the house trying to pull itself down. One groundskeeper tending the gardens up close to the house describing hearing a door slam inside the supposedly empty house and became too scared to lift his head and look inside for fear something would be looking back at him.
Today, however, the Old Parker House is a residence in some matter for Penelope "Penny" Parker, Elizabeth's niece. Her early days taking custody of the house certainly challenged her on a more than personal level. Although a "confirmed" California native, the young ingénue confesses to being intimidated by the old house and has yet to decide what to do with her family's ancestral estate.
"I don't want to live there." She remarks with a childlike demeanor. "But not because it's haunted; it's more because of career choice.
"I had come to the house back in 1988 with a friend of mine to look it over." She continues. "I should have known it was haunted just by looking at it, but I guess I was just excited to owning my own house and finding all these belongings from Aunt Betty. A lot of it I gave away, but some of it I kept for myself, like her music box."
The music box has a a reputation of itself. Penny had heard it in the house before she even knew it had existed and had followed the music it made to its source. To this day, she's not sure what made it come on.
"I like to think it was Aunt Betty welcoming me to the house." Penny confesses. "I guess when most people think of ghosts they have this image of frightening undead monsters, but I try to think of them as being more like angels who can be kind and friendly except when they get a little scary."
In addition to the music box playing untouched, Penny experienced much of the same phenomenon as others at the structure. From outside the house, she's seen the vague image watching from the windows of her Aunt Betty's old bedroom and even heard the loud rumbling from under the foundation, even going as far as comparing it to "a jumbo jet plowing through the walls."
"Strange thing about Aunt Betty's room." Penny recalls back to the day she discovered the house. "When MacGyver and I arrived, the whole house was a mess. The furniture was all covered, there was dust everywhere and cobwebs filled ever nook and cranny. The whole house was like that except for Aunt Betty's room which was clean and spotless like a shrine with fresh flowers. Another thing, all the windows along the first floor and second floor were locked up tight except in Aunt Betty's room. It was almost as if she had never been gone."
Penny also describes odd breezes passing through the house, but then she knows how drafty an old house can be. She's had eerie feelings of being watched and once ran from the house fearing something was coming to get her. The eclectic layout of the interior certainly plays upon the imagination of those within it and the noises, actual or not, combined with the remote location definitely contribute to the haunting reputation.
"To tell the truth, I don't think I can be scared of the house as long as I feel Aunt Betty doesn't want to scare me." Penny adds. "I don't think she's going to hurt me either because one morning I woke up with flowers next to my bed. They weren't there when I went to bed and MacGyver said he hadn't put them there. I think it was the spirit of my aunt welcoming me home."
History: Built in the 1850s, Parker House was built by Bradford Parker, an itinerant from Illinois who became a Southern sympathizer during the Civil War to protect his property from the Confederacy. The location has a historical background by being used as a location for Confederate officers to gather and plan their military stragedies, but it's not until the days of Prohibition that the structure actually became notorious. Bradford Parker had left the property to be shared by his three sons, but one had died childless while another moved west. The surviving son distilled illegal whiskey in the house and his son continued the tradition, even going as far as making ties with reputed notorious Mafia figures from the East coast. Bootlegging had made him rich, but it had also made him a marked man. After his bullet-ridden body was found, it was alleged but never confirmed that his murder had been orchestrated by rival Mafia figures. Elizabeth Parker inherited the house from her father and surreptitiously continued his bootlegging business until the day she vanished. For over thirty years, it was believed her father's murderers had killed her until 1988 when her bones were washed up on the property after a storm and processed by the Nashville CSI. In October of that year, Elizabeth's niece, Penelope Parker, had been tracked down living in California after spending years traveling abroad as a struggling actress. Her plans with the house have yet to be revealed.
Identity of Ghosts: Almost everyone agrees that Elizabeth Parker seems to be haunting the place. According to the forensic analysis of her bones, the wine being produced by her father's bootleg equipment had enough lead in it from the machinery to be potentially fatal in large doses. It's believed she might have tumbled her from her bedroom window by accident to her death.
"There was so much lead phosphate in her bones that they sparked when I dragged my knife across them." MacGyver adds.
Source/Comments: MacGyver, TV-Series (Episode: "The Secret of Parker House"), Phenomenon based on Cragfont Mansion in Castalian Springs, Tennessee and the Eakin House in Savannah, Tennessee