98  Cumberlands

Chapter 15

Phantoms of the
New Morgue
In recent years, the once-sedate city of Nashville has experienced
rapid growth. People from all over are dying to move to Music City.
Much like the ever-widening interstates with their growing traffic
jams, Nashville’s city morgue experienced a logjam as well. Most who
pass peacefully (and prosperously) have their neighborhood funeral
home prepare them for the great voyage. But the poor, the dispossessed,
and the disreputable must needs resort to the municipal morgue. Luck-
less losers with no home, petty hoodlums iced in deals gone bad, winos
sleeping under piers when the river rises—all end up under the medical
examiner’s scalpel in the morgue.
For decades, a rambling complex of stone and brick buildings on a
bluff overlooking a bend of the Cumberland was home to Metro Gen-
eral Hospital. Part of that complex housed the morgue. Although the
morgue warehoused the less fortunate only briefly, the spirits of the
dead often stayed long after their bodies moved on.
A popular theory as to what causes ghosts holds that when some-
 Phantoms of the New Morgue  99

one dies a violent or premature death or dies with important business

unfulfilled, the spirit fails to move on, instead staying bound to the
earthly plane. Since the city morgue housed the bodies of many such
individuals, it is perhaps not surprising that it collected spirits as a mat-
ter of course.
Originally, the morgue was housed on the top floor of the oldest
wing of the hospital. Nurses and aides frequently referred to that floor
as “the Haunted House.” The aging Victorian brick structure looked
eerie enough to give the House of Usher a run for its money.
Over the years, many on the hospital staff had weird experiences in
the old morgue. So common were spooky encounters that attendants
became reluctant to go to the top floor, to the point that, when com-
pelled to bring a corpse up there, they would hastily leave the gurney
bearing the body sticking halfway out the swinging doors, then make a
quick retreat. Often as not, a nurse with more grit would end up going
upstairs to store the body properly.
Finally, as the need for storage space increased and the need for fo-
rensic exams grew apace, the city morgue was moved to a larger facility,
a gray stone outbuilding at 84 Hermitage Avenue. No doubt, many in
the hospital breathed a sigh of relief.
But the transition to more spacious quarters in no way brought a
halt to the morgue’s spectral visitations. The squarish brick-and-stone
two-story building’s basement became the morgue’s new home. Soon,
it began experiencing uncanny phenomena much as the old morgue
had. Medical investigators working there witnessed strange sights. A
shadow without any accompanying object was seen levitating across a
room and disappearing inside the opposite wall. Notations written on a
message board in the lab vanished without cause or explanation.
As time went on, the incidents became even harder to explain. On
one occasion, a staffer caught a glimpse of a man in a striped coat re-
flected in a window. When he turned around, no one was there. An-
other time, a large metal tray was heard loudly clattering to the floor
in the M.E.’s office in the dark of night. When someone went to inves-
tigate the commotion, nothing was out of place. More commonly, staff
100  Cumberlands
members working in the new morgue admitted to the eerie sensation of
being watched or of feeling they were not alone when no one living was
there besides themselves.
Over the years, employees of the city morgue became convinced
that the facility was genuinely haunted, although few were willing to
discuss such things on the record. An exception to this was medical
investigator Gary Biggs. On at least one occasion, Biggs gave journalists
a long history of encounters he had in the new morgue.
For example, he told of the instance when he spied a lady in a vivid
yellow dress, only to see her disappear before his eyes. Then there was
the time he saw a man out of the corner of his eye coming down the
hallway. The man seemed to be looking over his shoulder at something.
When Biggs turned to look directly as the mysterious gent, the spec-
tral visitor was not there. While Biggs seems to have been more sensi-
tive than most to paranormal phenomena, his experiences in the new
morgue were far from unique. Even staff members who had no such
dramatic encounters did not question the morgue’s haunted reputation.
By its very nature, the morgue was prone to being a favorite haunt
of restless spirits. However, the paranormal activity on Hermitage Ave-
nue may owe its origin to events farther in the past than the old general
hospital and city morgue.
Only a few blocks from Metro General lies the site of an Indian
massacre dating to the city’s early days. On the western shoulder of
Rutledge Hill, a violent clash took place between settlers and Indians.
Afterward, the bodies of the slain were hastily tossed in a shallow grave
somewhere in the vicinity. Later, in the Civil War, a Union fort stood
where the hospital later went up. During the Battle of Nashville, men
fought and died on the same turf where the morgues, old and new, were
located. Then, too, a “contraband camp” sprouted just downhill from
the fort during the war. Fugitive slaves camped there in their bid for
freedom. Lacking food, money, and decent shelter, many of them died
from exposure and starvation in that place and were unceremoniously
buried in unmarked graves.
 Phantoms of the New Morgue  101

And if all this was not sufficient to attract the spirits of the restless
dead, the old University of Nashville’s medical department once stood a
block from the city morgue. Cadavers were stored there in days gone by.
After the Civil War, the university went out of existence, but its medical
school was grafted onto the new Vanderbilt University. A staid Vic-
torian building still proudly bears the name of the department in the
arch over its entrance. Not surprisingly, spectral goings-on have been
reported at the former medical school on Second Avenue South as well.
If old Metro General witnessed pain and suffering, it also helped
many folks in need and saved untold lives over the decades. But as
Nashville grew, so, too, did the demand for a newer facility to better
serve the city. The new millennium witnessed the move of Nashville
General Hospital to a more up-to-date facility in another part of town.
Not long after that, the medical examiner’s department also departed
Hermitage Avenue. In July 2001, in an arrangement involving the state,
the city, and a private forensic medical group, the examiner’s operations
were moved to a state-of-the-art facility adjacent to the Tennessee
Bureau of Investigation’s new headquarters—one stop chopping, as it
were. The medical buildings on Rolling Mill Hill were left vacant—ex-
cept, of course, for the spirits of the dead.
Today, the grounds of the old city hospital are undergoing yet an-
other transformation. Once a frontier trail, then a Civil War fort, then
an inner-city hospital, they are now being converted into a complex of
upscale townhouses, condominiums, and shops. The “new” morgue at
84 Hermitage Avenue is gone completely, the building razed along with
most of the rambling hospital complex. But the oldest section of Metro
General—the Victorian wing known as “the Haunted House”—has
been preserved and renovated for residential use.
Amid all these changes, one question remains unanswered: will the
new, young urban pioneers who move to the old hospital grounds be
able to reach an accommodation with their spectral neighbors? Only
time will tell.