According to some visitors, only “good spirits” haunt the Baker-Peters House in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you’re hunting for less intense paranormal activity than spooks on a Bell-Witch level, this dinner spot has all the cozy history vibes. Sitting on 9000 Peters Road in West Knoxville, this gorgeous brick mansion with white front columns has served as a private residence, a hip jazz club, and an upscale Irish tavern.
The house’s comfortable ghostly reputation comes with a violent history.
Built in 1830 by Dr. James Harvey Baker, the house experienced its first bloodshed during the Civil War. During the war between the states, Tennessee experienced bitter conflict due to both Unionist and Confederate sympathizers living in the same areas. The family’s pro-Southern sympathies became clear when Dr. Baker’s son Abner enlisted in the Confederate Army. In June 1863, Union troops riding along the Kingston Pike launched a raid on the town of Knoxville. Although there are rumors that Union troops attacked Dr. Baker as he treated wounded Confederate soldiers in a makeshift hospital that he set up in his house, historian Joan Markel at the McClung Museum states that there is no evidence that Baker ever used his home as a hospital for Confederate troops. Instead, when Union raiders marched through Knox County, they approached the Baker house. When they found the door barricaded, they fired through the door, killing Dr. Baker in an upstairs bedroom. When Abner returned from the war, he tracked down and shot a local Unionist postmaster named William Hall. Abner believed that Hall betrayed his father’s Confederate activities to the Union soldiers. Caught and locked in a Knoxville jail, Abner never stood trial. On the night of September 4, 1865, less than a day after the shooting, an enraged Unionist mob attacked the jail. They Abner outside and lynched him from a tree downtown near the modern intersection at Walnut Street-Hill Avenue. In the late 19th century, the Bakers sold the house to a man named George Peters. Today, you can have a meal there at Finn’s Restaurant ; Tavern.
With its neon sign, the Baker-Peters house offers both a hot meal and a wealth of ghost stories. If you enter the tavern, you can still see the upstairs bedroom door, covered in bullet holes, that Dr. Baker hid behind before he died. Sometimes, Abner is seen standing staring out the window or looking over the railings. Abner’s poltergeist is known to flick lights on and off, smash glasses, or seize passersby with his cold hand. A staircase still leads from Dr. Baker’s upstairs bedroom down to the dark basement. A slaveholder, with a possible harsh reputation, Dr. Baker kept enslaved people in their quarters in the cellar. The direct stairwell ensured that he could check on or punish the people that he owned at any hour of the night. According to the tavern staff, the place is haunted by fifteen different spirits that roam the Green Room. Once a nursey, the Green Room is inhabited by playful, invisible children that might tap your head, flick your ear, or rap on your ankles as you pass by. A photograph of the last four children that lived in the Baker home still hangs in the tavern. Although visitors claim to see Abner’s ghost swinging from his gallows tree, none of the paranormal presences feel vengeful today. Although they don’t pick up the bar tab at the tavern, employees report that the house’s spectral history gives it a warm historical aura.
Leave a Reply