Location: About fifty miles northeast of Nashville on Highway 31E, Gallatin is in south central Sumner County on the Cumberland River. The Tisdale House ruins are located down off of Highway 109 (Water Avenue) and deep into the woods off Odom Road, the last road to the left before the river. Trespassing is not allowed, although with near inaccessibility of the location, this is not much of a problem.

Description of Place: There are no known photos of the house, but written descriptions describe a mansion built in English Tudor of brick and stone with two fireplaces, twelve to fifteen bedrooms, a parlor, grand staircase and cupola on the roof. Today, two brick chimneys and a foundation atop a steep hill hidden by trees mark the location.

Ghostly Manifestations: A brief look of the house suggests the tenants have not been gone long. A book rests open on the sofa, the kitchen is askew, the dining table is set with candles, old books are stacked along the staircase, a bed is disturbed... Everything suggests the owners will be back. Upstairs, the hallways are crowded with excess furniture against the walls, one room is inhabited by naked and incomplete mannequins, a canopy bed in a cluttered bedroom is surrounded by dust-covered sheets - the same kind of sheets covering a tower room. The house is obviously deserted and abandoned with just its contents. This is how the police found the house when they came to check on the people who once lived here.

The date was March 18, 1953. The missing tenants were John and Mary Smith (not their real names). He was a retired military officer, and she was an assistant manager at the local dress shop. Mary had failed to return to work, and her relatives were concerned after not hearing from her from over a week. Usually when she came home from vacation, she picked up her small dog from her sister before heading home, but this time, she failed to get her beloved poodle. Did something happen on their trip to Florida or coming back from it?

To answer the mystery, one needs to go back in time more than a hundred years to April 1837. Jack and Sara Tisdale (again, not their real names) were landowners in Virginia traveling to Nashville with their nine kids. Jack had acquired either dishonestly or legitimately a plot of hilly land in what is now part of Gallatin called Hooker's Hollow. It was unclaimed wilderness, miles of pasture and woodland covered with huge oak trees, thick brush, deer and an occasional bear. He built a huge house and built a good reputation as a successful farmer and horse trader, but something from Virginia must have followed him because things when down from there.

Things started simply at first. The eldest son, Joe, saw something lurking in the fields near the house. It looked like a shadow that moved and floated over the ground. It would follow him on the long path up the hill to the house and hide behind trees when he tried to look at it. Sometimes it looked like a bird, but not one he was familiar with. Once it took the form of a large dog, but when he took a shot at it, it remained there looking at him before turning away and wandering off into the brush.

Strange sounds started in the house. The children started hearing strange noises at night from the rafters. It was described as if rats were climbing up inside the walls while the family cat just ran and hid in another room. The sounds came from everywhere and no where. They'd travel around the house when searched upon. Jack wedged himself into a hole and went exploring the crawlspace under the front porch then came out as fast as he could. He reported that as he was fumbling through the darkness that he saw two eyes in the distance looking at him.

The noises eventually turned into distant whispering, but no one could tell what they were saying. It seemed to be a multitude of voices chanting with one voice higher than the rest. Family members had a heard time sleeping at night and soon began sleeping downstairs in the main parlor. A family friend prayed for the family then came by and blessed the house. It seemed to work as the noises went away for a while, but if anything, they had unwittingly made contact because things started to escalate.

The form of a small presence started running through the house. It looked like a small child, but no one new if it was a boy or a girl. Rachel, the middle daughter, saw it sitting on a rafter over her bed upstairs then jump down and vanish down the hall. To her, it looked like a small blonde boy with a wicked look on his face and long thin arms and legs. Her mother surprised a small blonde girl with white hair who jumped out of a closet and vanished unseen through the house. Other figures began making themselves known. Lizzie, the oldest daughter, woke one night to a woman with long dark hair standing over her bed then opening her arms wide as if to hug her. Their father heard footsteps on the roof. Everyone became scared to enter the cellar. There was a feeling of being watched. The kids started staying with friends because they could not take the activity in the house. The local priest came to re-bless the house and was driven from it by the smell of rotting flesh.

By now, Jack Tisdale had acquired a local general store in Portland, and the family moved in upstairs. The older kids had by now married or moved elsewhere leaving behind their four siblings. A few families tried renting the house on the hill. They heard the sounds, they saw the shadows, but they were not as bothered by them. One day, Jack went out to the house to get it ready for new renters and failed to return to Portland for three days. Rachel's husband, a military lieutenant, went out to look for him and found him hanging by the neck over the staircase. Rumors were he had surprised outlaws hiding in the house, but the family believed the house finally got him.

Over the years, more renters came and went without incident. The Civil War then occurred and eleven Confederate soldiers lost in Hooker's Hollow invaded the house to use it for lodging. One of them were from nearby Castalian Springs and knew the stories about the dilapidated edifice supposedly being haunted. However, as they day wore out, the shadows in the once grand house grew longer, night encroached the land and the sounds of the house came out. They heard the tapping noises, the footsteps creaking on the stairs and the distant sound of voices. They kept a constant patrol of the premises and never saw a thing. According to a book printed in 1873, Sgt. Michael H. Lilienthal of Nashville's 52nd Calvary: "The voices seemed to encircle us. They would appear to be all around us, and no where at the same time. We wondered if we were going mad from whiskey or fatigue. We saw no hide nor hair of who was encroaching this night. Lt. James Clincher raised his rifle and ordered our assailants to show themselves, and it was at this time we felt their voices became louder, joined by cackling from another room we had searched just few minutes before. We were sure the house was sealed and locked before, but these persons did not seem to exist. We had no idea what they wanted nor why they did not show themselves. Clincher became even more irrational and fired straight into the darkness. The explosion of his rifle seemed to break through the noise of voices, and we had peace for the rest of the night, but we never felt completely alone. Our unsettled sleep remained bothered by the fact that we felt watched for the rest of our stay."

Renovations to the house in 1912 revealed what looked to be Civil War musket shells and bullets from Winchester rifle filled through the walls of the house.

Through the 1870s to the turn of the century, the edifice turned out to be along the one of the routes between Nashville and Knoxville. The location became a roadside inn for travelers to stay the night. Known as the Wayside Inn, it was acquired through relatives of the Tisdale Family who knew the stories about the place. It was during this time the location started to make its reputation. Guests woke to see shadowy figures by their beds, unidentified persons marched up and down the stairs and hallways, voices and conversations came from empty rooms, a tower window constantly opened itself and had to be nailed shut and portrait of Jack Tisdale constantly fell off the wall no matter where it was hung. Despite the activity, seven assorted innkeepers tried to keep the place open. Much of their experiences were recorded in a diary kept by Lionel Berry, who ran the inn from 1883 to 1904.

By 1911, the hotel was a private home once again. The Castellari family were a prominent Nashville family who had made their money in real estate and had increased it on with the paper mills along the Cumberland River. They restored the house to its full prominence and added another wing with an attacked greenhouse. However, shortly after moving in, James Castellari felt the house never seemed to feel right.

"He claimed the house felt full." His grand-daughter, Lisa, recalls his ghost stories. "To him, it had a presence that was very obvious at night. He heard strange sounds like someone dragging a crate up the stairs, or something falling from the attic room. Voices had conversations in empty rooms, doors that were locked supposedly opened, water faucets came on... Even during the day, it was as if someone was always loitering around the porch and peeking in the windows.

"During the renovation," Lisa continues. "I understand they found a closet that had been hidden behind a huge armoire in the upstairs hallway. It was full of old dresses and hat boxes, boxes of old albums and huge bedspreads, but when they emptied it out, they discovered it had a false back. Someone allegedly had sealed up another room behind it; so they broke a hole through it, my great-grandfather poked his head in and they found a skeleton embedded in the wall. He described it as very mummified with a huge clump of dried black hair up top. They stopped making renovations and called the police while my great-grandmother took my grandfather and his siblings out to stay elsewhere. Apparently, she didn't want the kids to see a body pulled out of the wall, but all they found out about it anyway. Long story short, the police come and tear open the wall, but the skeleton is gone, but there's an old Army pistol wedged in the wall. Turns out, the room was left over from an unused nursery. 

"The story I remember most..." Justin Castellari adds. "Is that every time they tried to light a fire in the upstairs fireplace that screams would come from it. Within lighting a fire, a blood-curdling scream would echo through the house and just as soon as you'd forget about it, it would happen again. I asked grandpa, "Was there another body in it?" and he'd tilt his head back think about it, and tell me, "We never looked." T this day, I want to go by the house and tear down the chimney to find out for myself."

"The house definitely had a sinister sort of reputation about it." Lisa describes. "My dad was eighteen when he visited the house, and just based on the stories, he was always checking the windows for faces, but he never went inside. He even became friends with some of the Perrys who moved in after us, and I know they told him a lot about what the ghosts did to them."

"I used to spend a ton of time in the Tisdale Mansion after coming home from elementary school." Wallace Burkhart was friends with Ashton Castellari, the younger brother of Mason, Justin and Lisa's grandfather. "This was one of those homes where you were frightened just walking down the halls in the middle of the day. Doors would open and close constantly, and I think the family just got used to it. I couldn't really tell you if there were ghosts living in the Tisdale Mansion, but it was by far the eeriest place I have ever seen. The sheer enormity of the building made you feel that way. It's been over fifty years since I have been in the house, but I think I would like to walk through it one more time just to remember the crazy days I had there as a kid."

After the Perry family, much of Hooker's Hollow was cleared and bulldozed during the late Forties and Fifties. The Tennessee Valley Authority relocated residents and took over properties for the creation of Old Hickory Lake, the local reservoir. The main road through the area as well as several homes disappeared under several feet of water. Nearby Rock Castle Museum in Nashville lost over 1700 acres to the lake or to residential development that had once been the Smith Family Plantation. The Tisdale Manor ended up on a small cleft of land that became part of modern day Gallatin, but access was not quite so easy as before. Separated by 58 acres of forest from the surrounding homes, the house was acquired by former State Senator Dennis Redman, but he never lived there. He sold it to attorney Sheldon Holloway who hired contractors to lay a mile and a half of driveway to get to it from Odom Road, but after month and a half of living there, his wife, Darlene, became tired of the voices, footsteps, rumbling noises in the attic and terrifying isolation and moved back to Nashville.

Their in-laws, Howard and Penny Wanamaker tried living there a month, but one morning, Penny entered the dining room and noticed a strange woman with dark hair sitting at the table with a terrified look on her face. They moved out on August 12, 1951.

After the Smiths moved out of the house in 1953, the house stood empty for several years and access once again became impossible. In August 1967, a hiker following the shore of the river noticed the house in the distance and feeling quite a bit curious decided to explore it. Slipping in through a loose greenhouse door left open, he found the house crowded with furniture, boxes, store mannequins, loose books, vinyl records plied on chairs and every other sort of memento. It's suggested he may have camped out in the house for a while because by time the Holloways decided to check on the condition of the house, they found it cleaned, straightened, the objects organized in the rooms, and in an even more chilling tableau, the female mannequins dressed and posed around the house in scenes reading, watching television, sleeping in beds or staring out the upstairs windows. They thought the ghosts might have been behind it until the hiker's confession turned up in a newspaper article after being passed on by locals who had heard the tale from others.

Since 1965, fisherman and boaters have claimed to see the house on the hill all lit up at night as if a party was going in the house. What's unusual about this is that there is no electricity going to house.

History: There is no confirmed history to the antebellum history to the house; records predating the Civil War were lost in the 1950s during the creation of the lake. No one knows where the name "Tisdale" comes from; it was first applied to the house in 1957 for the newspaper article, "What Ghosts Lurk At The Tisdale?" by Chelsea Fitzpatrick, The Gallatin News Examiner (October 13, 1957), based on the memories of former tenants.  

Sadly, the house deteriorated to the point that it collapsed during a storm in 1978. Not much of it exists today and the property is now owned by the local Department of Water and Power..

Identity Of Ghosts: There are no names to go with any of the ghosts which include a little girl on an exterior porch swing, a strange blonde boy, a prostrate figure under the floorboards, a woman with long dark hair and a sullen figure of a man who may be Jack Tisdale loitering on the staircase and staring to the front windows.

Source/Comments: (Don't Go Near) The House On The Lake (1958) - Activity based on the Old Bell Farm in Adams, Tennessee, Schweppe Mansion in St. Louis, Missouri, Summerwind in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin and the Beckwith House in Mansfield, Connecticut