Haunted place · Tennessee, United States

Tennessee State Prison

Updated November 20269 sources How to visit

11 archive documents

Tennessee State Prison in Nashville: an 1898 penitentiary and execution site, closed in 1992, with ghost stories of clanking bars, screams and footsteps.

The story

Tennessee State Prison stands roughly six miles west of downtown Nashville. It was the state's second penitentiary, replacing an older one on 15th Avenue that dated from 1831. Some sources give 1896 as the year construction was completed, while the prison opened in 1898. It was designed around 800 single-occupancy cells, yet about 1,400 prisoners arrived on the very first day, which set the tone for the overcrowding that would follow it for nearly a century. Over the years it picked up several nicknames: "The Wall", "Old Red Top" and "The Castle".

Its record is a turbulent one. In 1902, sixteen inmates blasted through a wall and escaped; one was shot dead and two were never recaptured. In 1907, convicts drove a locomotive through one of the gates. A mass breakout followed in 1938, along with several serious fires over the decades and riots in 1975 and 1985.

The prison was also the place where Tennessee carried out its executions. The state death chamber and its electric chair stood here, and from about 1915 or 1916 until 1960 the chair was the only method the state used. Tour operators put the number of men electrocuted at around 125, but no official figure has been found, so that number should be treated with caution. Death row moved to the newer Riverbend facility in 1989.

The end came through the courts. In the 1982 federal case Grubbs v. Bradley, a judge ruled that conditions caused by overcrowding were unconstitutional. With Riverbend open, the old prison emptied out and closed for good in June 1992. A federal injunction issued in 1993 forbids it from ever holding inmates again.

The building found a second life in film and music. In 1974 Johnny Cash taped A Concert Behind Prison Walls at the prison, and the prison appears in movies including Ernest Goes to Jail (1990), The Green Mile (1999), The Last Castle (2001) and Walk the Line (2005). Those screen appearances are often folded into the ghost lore, though they are part of its history, not evidence of anything supernatural.

The legend

The haunted reputation of Tennessee State Prison is real in the sense that it is widely repeated, but it is thin on specifics. No named ghost is attached to the site, and no date for the first ghost report has turned up. The stories speak generally of inmates, guards and the men who died in the electric chair.

The phenomena most often listed are cell bars clanking with nobody nearby, screams, and footsteps echoing down empty corridors. A 2024 blog post from the state Department of Economic and Community Development repeats this list, which appears to come from a Nashville ghost tour operator. That operator goes further and claims the screams belong to executed prisoners reliving their final moments, an interpretation with no supporting evidence. An online video channel has described feelings of nausea, dizziness and sadness in the old execution room, but this is unverified. It is also worth remembering that many of these accounts come from people who entered the closed site without permission.

On television, the series Celebrity Paranormal Project filmed at the prison, presenting it under the name "The Walls Maximum Security Prison". Wikipedia ties it to two first-season episodes, "The Warden" and the season finale "Dead Man Walking", though no other source confirms the episode details.

The most grounded account comes from local TV station WKRN, which ran a feature in 2019. It noted only that legend speaks of ghostly encounters, and quoted a photographer hired by the state to document the buildings, who found them "a little bit creepy" but described nothing paranormal. We found no published skeptical investigation, largely because there is no specific claim to test. The prison's grim history, its executions and its decaying cellblocks are what give the stories their pull.

What remains today

The prison still stands, but it is in poor condition. The interior was declared off-limits in 2011 because of asbestos. Then, on March 3, 2020, an EF3 tornado that was part of a wider outbreak across the region caused severe damage to the complex. The Tennessee Department of Correction continues to control the land.

A 2007 photograph shows what was left of the death row execution chamber at that time, and images of the main entrance and exterior are available on Wikimedia Commons. Historical USGS topographic maps from 1903, 1932 and 1959 show the site as it sat on the western edge of Nashville.

Visiting

Tennessee State Prison is not open to the public, and entering it is prohibited. The Department of Correction forbids access because of asbestos and tornado damage; even news crews have been kept at a distance from the buildings. Do not trespass: the structure is unsafe and the property is actively controlled by the state.

There are legal ways to engage with the site. A WKRN piece from 2019 or 2020 described an annual 5K run benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee on the grounds, outside the buildings; check whether it still runs. Some Nashville ghost tours talk about the prison, but they do not go inside. The films shot there, especially The Green Mile and Walk the Line, are the easiest way to get a look at the prison.

If you want to walk through a historic Tennessee prison, do not confuse this one with Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, which does welcome visitors.

The ghosts

Prisoner

Executed prisoners of the electric chair

Said to be Unnamed men electrocuted at the prison (Tennessee used the chair here, exclusively from about 1915/1916 to 1960)

A Nashville ghost tour operator claims that screams heard in the prison come from electrocuted inmates reliving their last moments. No witness, date or investigation is attached to this claim, and the source is commercial.

Screams

Reported by: Ghost City Tours (tour operator)

Prisoner

Unnamed inmates and guards

General accounts describe cell bars clanking with no one present and footsteps in empty halls, attributed to former prisoners and guards. The reports are vague and often come from people who entered the closed site illegally.