Thomas House Hotel

The story

Red Boiling Springs is a small town in Macon County, Tennessee. In the 1880s, mineral-spring resorts were booming across the country, inspired by the success of Saratoga Springs in New York, and early in that decade a New York businessman, James F. O. Shaughnessy, bought the Red Boiling Springs tract and began turning it into a summer resort. Visitors came for the mineral waters, and hotels went up to house them.

Two local general-store owners, the brothers Zack and Clay Cloyd, opened the first Cloyd Hotel in 1890 (one source says 1894). It was a two-story white clapboard building with long double verandas, much like the Donoho Hotel, which survives in town. Fire destroyed it in 1924, and the present hotel, a two-story red brick building with a portico, was completed in 1927, at the height of the spring resort's popularity.

The 1986 National Register nomination, filed under the name Cloyd Hotel, describes a U-shaped brick building on a stone foundation, with an arcaded two-story portico, a decorative band of alternating vertical and horizontal bricks near the base, and original wood doors and windows. Inside, the lobby and dining room open onto hallways leading to guest rooms, a lounge and a recreation room; upstairs there were 33 guest rooms, 19 with private baths. Three white wooden outbuildings stood behind the hotel: a washhouse and a cooks' quarters dating from the first hotel around 1890, and a woodshed from the 1920s.

The resort trade around the springs nearly collapsed by 1952, but the Cloyd and the Counts Hotel stayed open. By the mid-1980s the Cloyd was being used as a children's summer camp. In 1986 it was listed on the National Register, together with the Donoho and the Counts, as one of three surviving hotels from the town's early-twentieth-century resort era. It later took the name Thomas House. In the 1990s another fire took one wing, later rebuilt. As of 2025, Wikipedia counts it as one of only two historic hotels still operating in town, with the Counts.

The property also had a swimming pool built in the late 1930s. On July 29, 1961, a seven-year-old boy was found dead in it, a documented tragedy that later became part of the ghost lore. The pool was demolished starting November 11, 2024, to make room for a pavilion.

The legend

No early dated ghost report for the Thomas House has been found. Its national reputation dates from the early 2010s, when paranormal television programs began featuring it, and ghost hunts have been one of the town's draws ever since.

Room 37 is said to be the center of activity and is known as "Sarah's room". Sarah is usually identified as Sarah Cloyd, a young daughter of one of the brothers who built the first hotel. A different version, found only on a ghost-hunt listing, says a girl came to take the waters in 1920 and died within three days of arriving. No record confirms her name, the year or a cause of death, so both versions remain folklore. Wikipedia also mentions a second ghost, a visitor thrown from a horse who drowned in a creek close to the hotel, but gives no source for it.

The pool death of 1961 is the only documented death tied to the lore. For decades people have described seeing a boy's ghost near the pool, and some say he communicates with people inside the hotel. The tragedy is real; the ghost is a story built on it, and the boy's family deserves respect when it is retold.

Other reports come from the hotel's ghost-hunt operator and from TV episodes: a former owner from the early 1900s, unnamed children, a tall male figure, doors that open and shut, a ball caught on camera rolling over the floor, screams, talking, whistling and shadow people. The current owners have described voices, laughter and a piano that plays itself in the dining hall, and an upstairs passage they call the "dark hallway", where shadow figures are seen. They say the atmosphere turned more negative after visitors tried to summon something upstairs.

Ghost Hunters investigated in season 8, episode 4, "Dead & Breakfast", aired February 1, 2012. Portals to Hell followed in season 2, episode 5, "Thomas House Hotel", aired May 7, 2020, with Jack Osbourne, Katrina Weidman and medium Michelle Belanger, who suggested that "elementals", non-human land spirits, were at work. During a séance the team reported knocks, a small blue light and a shadow crossing the room. Notably, Osbourne himself traced a spike on one of the team's meters to the air conditioning.

That episode also shows why some claims need caution. Osbourne stated that toxic spring water had killed many residents and reduced the town from 14,000 people to 800; nothing in other sources supports this. Likewise, the frequently repeated line that CNN ranked the hotel America's second most haunted spot comes from promotional material and could not be verified.

What remains today

The 1927 brick hotel still stands and operates, with its arcaded portico and upper porch. The wing lost in the 1990s fire has been rebuilt, and the 1930s pool is gone since its demolition in late 2024. The hotel remains one of the last physical reminders of Red Boiling Springs' days as a mineral-water resort, alongside the Counts Hotel.

Visiting

The Thomas House is a working hotel, so access is legal for guests and event participants. A private company, Ghost Hunt Weekends, organizes dinner and overnight ghost hunts there several times a month, including a documentary on the hotel's history, and the bravest can book Room 37 for a night-long "challenge". Check the organizer's or hotel's current listings before you go. Respect other guests, stay within the areas you have booked, and remember that the 1961 death is a real family tragedy rather than an attraction.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #86002855 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #86002855) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Corbin, KY 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Red Boiling Springs, TN 1931 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1931 · Public domain (USGS)
5. Celebrate Tennessee: The haunted tales of the Thomas House — NewsChannel 5 Nashville — NewsChannel 5 Nashville
6. Demolition of hotel's 'haunted' pool underway in Red Boiling Springs (Tony Garcia, 12 Nov 2024) — WSMV 4 — WSMV 4
7. Portals to Hell: Thomas House Hotel (14 May 2020) — Higgypop (paranormal news site) — Higgypop (paranormal news site; used for the episode summary
8. Thomas House Hotel ghost hunts feature — WKRN News 2 (Nashville) — WKRN News 2 (Nashville
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.