GALLATIN, Tenn. (WKRN) – A historic site with dozens of haunted stories.
The historic Rose Mont house in Gallatin has been a place of spooky stories for decades.
“I think it’s four that are here all the time from different generations, but we seem to be almost like a battery, it coincides with lightning strikes and storms,” Site Director Eli Geery said.
Judge Josephus Conn Guild built Rose Mont in the mid 1800s. The Guild family lived the property until 2005.
Originally a 500 acre racing horse farm, Judge Guild raised thoroughbreds to the notably wealthy. Judge Guild was friends with President Andrew Jackson, who often visited Rose Mont.
“The Hermitage would even purchase horses from Rose Mont after Jackson’s death,” Geery said.
Geery now shares the history of Rose Mont, as well as the haunted tales, during public tours for several months out of the year.
Each day spooky sights and sounds fill the Creole-style home.
“People walking in and out of the rooms, doors opening and closing. Footsteps up and down the staircase. Occasionally voices, but most of the time it’s just stuff like that,” Geery said.
Geery said through personality traits he knows who is at the home most of the time. But he tries to talk with family members as often as he can through a flashlight.
“They will communicate with you through devices, you can ask them questions,” Geery said. “And you can get them to turn it on and off for yes and no. And through a bunch of questions find out who you’re talking to.”
But others that visit Rose Mont on tours are able to see Guild family members as well.
“Very rarely does a week go by that somebody doesn’t ask me about a lady in that room,” Geery said.
Judge Guild’s daughter-in-law, Betty, is the most often seen by visitors. Specifically women report seeing Betty looking out windows in the upstairs bedrooms.
“I was explaining that Ms. Betty doesn’t really come near me and doesn’t ever expose herself, and about that time it felt like someone wrapped their hand around my arm but it was ice cold,” Geery said.
Betty’s son, Walter Jr., is also seen by visitors often. But gives the Rose Mont alarm company scares daily.
“At 3:50 in the morning if I leave my office, my internal office door closed, it will pop open and set off all the motion sensors,” Geery said.
Walter Jr., Geery said, died at 14-years-old from epilepsy. He went into his parent’s bedroom at 3:50 in the morning the night that he died.
“People report seeing somebody standing there, a boy standing there, holding his head in that doorway,” Geery said.
Geery said the master bedroom is now his office. And nothing gave him a more chilling experience than a sighting in that room two months ago.
“I went back into the kitchen and came out and when my left foot hit the carpet I looked up and a guy walked right in front of me. Not a foot in front of my nose. I could feel the air displaced and that’s what really messed me up,” Geery said.
Geery said most of the time the family doesn’t seem to notice his presence in the home. It often times, as he described, it feels as though a family is carrying out their daily routine there.
While Rose Mont was always known for it’s history, Geery is slowly sharing more and more of the spooky stories in order to attract more attention to the beautiful site.
