Early in October, contributor Ripley Scott sent out a call for real-life stories of paranormal experiences — and our readers delivered. Read “Part I: SoKno Edition” and “Part II: Outside of Knoxville.” Part III takes us from Sassy Ann’s to Old Gray Cemetery to a bustling downtown restaurant … with stops along the way in Knoxville’s past. The veil is thin. Happy All Hallows’ Eve, y’all.
Knoxville knows how to party, but this week, when I see the color orange, I think of pumpkins, not football. (Go Vols!)
According to the Knoxville History Project’s research, one of the city’s first recorded Halloween celebrations was a masquerade dance downtown in 1893, when about 40 people filled the Catholic Young Men’s Institute with masks, candles and a bricklaying tradition. That first recorded Halloween masquerade was held at Gay and Vine, just down the hill from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the same block where construction cranes now hover beside the Crowne Plaza.
By the early 1900s, Knoxville was celebrating the season in its own way: part neighborhood gathering, part experiment in the strange. Residents lit pumpkins with coal oil, played tricks that occasionally went too far and tried their hand at old-fashioned fortune-telling. The holiday never really lost that balance between play and the uncanny.
More than a century later, it still hasn’t. The same week that I—and I’m sure several others—am in a last-minute scramble to find a costume for Pilot Light’s annual Halloween blowout at the Mill & Mine, the city stirs with that familiar tension: rain, reflection and anticipation.
The rain had finally eased one night this week when I met Raz outside Sassy Ann’s in Fourth and Gill just after dark.
It was one of those cold October nights when the air feels heavy after days of rain. Water beaded on the railing and pooled in the cracks of the brick walkway. The porch light glowed through the mist, and the smell of rain mixed with old wood.
Raz carried a jar of kibble and had a flashlight in one hand. We were meeting to feed the cats that live at Sassy Ann’s, the small, skittish colony that knows every back stair and hiding place of the old Victorian. This part of town, between Fourth and Gill and Old North Knoxville, was one of the city’s first streetcar suburbs.
By the 1880s, Knoxville’s growth had started to spill north from downtown, and rows of wooden houses followed the trolley line. Many of them are still here, their porches sagging slightly but their bones solid. The house that most recently opened as Sassy Ann’s Club was built around the turn of the century—most records list 1906, though others say it could be as early as 1899.
It’s been everything from a boardinghouse to a restaurant to one of Knoxville’s best-known bars. It officially opened to the public as Sassy Ann’s in 1995 and stayed open for about 20 years.
Raz worked in the kitchen at Sassy’s years ago, and his friend Rick told him stories about playing in the house as a child when it was still residential and his elderly relative lived there.
The woman’s portrait remained over the mantle of the first floor’s fireplace when it was sold to new owners and became a restaurant, and it has held its place on the wall there ever since.
Raz remembers working one night when the staff was preparing for a holiday party. They decorated for the event and decided to move the painting upstairs, hanging it above the second-floor fireplace.
When they came in the next day to continue setting up, they found the portrait facedown on the floor. They rehung it and went on with their work.
The party was a success — a packed house, loud music, and hours of dancing on the upper floors. Raz stayed late to clean and was glad to see everything in good shape when he left.
But when he arrived for his shift the next day, the portrait had once again found its way to the floor. Facedown, glass intact and the frame unbroken.
At that point, everyone decided it would probably be best to return the portrait to its original resting place on the wall, the previous owner’s old spot, and it’s stayed there ever since with no record of falling again.
Raz figures The lady in the portrait must have enjoyed hosting since Rick spent so much time there as a child.
He told me, “I think she’s probably like, ‘Oh, these people are having fun! They’re having a party in my house every night.’”
Standing outside of what I still think of as Sassy’s just a few nights ago, I thought that perhaps maybe the woman who lived here long ago simply wants to keep watch over the comings and goings. The whole place felt alive in a soft, stubborn way, like the house itself was still deciding who belongs.
After a quick 15 minutes of walking down mostly empty streets, I found myself at the entrance of Old Gray Cemetery …
… one of Knoxville’s oldest burial grounds.
Founded in 1850, it was part of the city’s effort to create a “rural cemetery” outside the crowded downtown churchyards, a place designed as much for walking as for mourning.
By now, readers of this series probably know Danette Welch, my go-to historical lifeline and reference wizard at the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection. She’s been an invaluable guide through Knoxville’s haunted corners, unearthing the details that make each story linger just a little longer. Danette once told me that Old Gray is full of families whose stories never really left Knoxville, and she wasn’t exaggerating.
The Woody family alone could fill a novel. Martin Woody was a contractor and builder whose name once carried weight in Knoxville. In 1879, his mistress, Annie Lowe, shot and killed him, then turned the gun on herself. It was a scandal that consumed the city for weeks. His wife, Mary Crush Woody, outlived them both.
She tried to hold onto what was left of his business, but the losses and rumors eventually overtook her. By the time she died, the legend had already begun. For years, people claimed to see a woman in white wandering near Martin’s grave in Old Gray, her figure pale against the pines. Some said it was Annie. Others swore it was Mary herself, returning to the one place she could still find him.
Nearby lies Don Lusby, one of the men caught in the violent May–O’Connor feud of the 1880s. His father, Moses Lusby, was killed in a courthouse shooting, and Don met a similar fate months later on Gay Street. The Lusbys were part of the same tangled web of families that wound through Knoxville’s early history.
Don and Mary Crush Woody were cousins and their stories overlap in strange ways. Some say both men can still be found here, Don at Old Gray, Moses at the National Cemetery just behind it, separated in death only by a fence.
By the turn of the century, people began treating Old Gray like a park, picnicking among the graves while continuing to tell stories that blurred fact and folklore. By the time I stood at the gate to leave that night, the rain had stopped completely and the marble markers gleamed in the streetlight like they were winking at me. So, with their encouragement, I decided to keep walking.
I crossed into Emory Place where the streetlights gave way to longer shadows before finding myself near the heart of downtown …
… passing the very spot where Knoxville’s first recorded Halloween masquerade was held more than a century ago.
I continued down Gay Street, the pavement reflecting the glow of restaurant signs and taillights. The night was alive again.
I noticed that Chivo was still busy feeding the masses. That’s where Bill’s story begins. He told me it happened just a few months ago at Chivo on Gay Street. He’d gone out for dinner with a date. Nothing unusual, just a relaxed night downtown, at least that’s what he was expecting.
They ordered an appetizer, and both had small plates in front of them. They weren’t drinking, weren’t distracted, just talking and enjoying the food. “I was looking at her across the table,” Bill said, “and then my plate just moved. It slid about six inches like somebody pushed it.”
He stopped mid-sentence, blinking at it, and asked if she’d seen the same thing. “She said, yeah—she definitely did.” The table wasn’t wet, and the plate hadn’t been nudged by a sleeve or glass. It just moved.
Bill picked it up, checked underneath, even laid his phone flat on the table to test the angle. “Everything looked level,” he said. “Then I used the level app on my phone, and it said the table had tilted one degree upward.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh that comes from amusement. “I’ve told almost everyone,” he admitted. “It just blew my mind. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
I left him with my own mind spinning a little.
If a plate can move of its own accord, is it alive? Or is something else moving through it?
My stroll had become more existential than meditative by this point, and I decided to walk just a little farther down Gay Street as my mind turned to Susan McKeehan and her family. I haven’t been able to forget a word of what Danette told me of her story a couple of weeks ago.
The McKeehans were an unusual bunch, known for both their independence and their scandals. But Susan stands out, even in a city full of ghost stories. In 1901, she was 53 when she was shot six times on Gay Street by a much younger man named Clarence Lillard, who owned a billiard parlor nearby.
He fired again and again, through her hand, her stomach and her back, and she survived every shot. Newspapers printed the details like it was a serial drama. When he was arrested, Lillard claimed self-defense, calling Susan and her sisters “a desperate gang.” The way he told it, you’d think she was something other than human, some force that couldn’t be stopped. Maybe that’s why the jury believed him.
He walked free. Years later, Lillard killed another man on Gay Street. This time he was convicted, sentenced to 20 years and released on appeal, only to drop dead soon after.
On Susan’s birthday.
Knoxville’s ghosts have always been more than whispers or shadows.
They’re the people who built, broke, loved and lingered long enough to be remembered.
They show up in the places we pass every day. Reflections in quarry water. A chip in the center of a blue table. Even the quiet shift of a dinner plate.
By the time I reached home, I could almost hear my mom’s voice in my head, scolding me for walking alone so late and warning me about the nightmares that were sure to follow. But when I finally curled up on the couch with my dog, I felt more peaceful than I had all day.
Because deep down, I like to believe there’s life all around me, even if it’s not exactly life as we know it. It’s not the ghosts that make this city feel haunted, it’s how alive everything seems. And that doesn’t have to be scary at all.