Location: Mount Abbott is a small unincorporated community south of Knoxville on Highway 129 near Loudoun Lake on what was once the southwesterly route to Chattanooga in the south, but the opening of Interstate 75 and the Tennessee Valley Authority closed Route 72 and Route 16 (which ends at a collapsed bridge once heading into North Carolina) in 1958. The mob used to traffic guns and liquor through the area in the Thirties and the Forties, and one of their stops was the old Forresters Tavern (now Forresters Inn) at 1959 Samuel Howard Road (Old Rural Route 17). 

Description Of Place: Located at the end of a tree-lined road with a circular driveway out front, the Forrester's Tavern is a large rambling three-story American Federal mansion with four chimneys, fourteen bedrooms, a formal dining room and a full kitchen with a large basement. Dating back to Prohibition, the location was once fitted with secret panels to hide and conceal slot machines, card tables and roulette games, a feature still noticeable today.

Ghostly Manifestations: Located out off of Highway 129 and tucked back into the woods, the Forresters Tavern was once the scene of Mafia and gang activity from the late Twenties to the mid-Forties. Disguised as a small hotel during Prohibition, customers came out here to drink from a bar that was hidden behind a bookcase that slid behind the wall and gamble in two secret casinos upstairs remodeled from two of the bedrooms. In case the police came around to break up the illegal partying and gambling, the owners would just roll the walls aside and hide the evidence, but with all the partying and gambling going on, it's believed a few murders might have occurred here as well.

Dan and Tracy Eddowes purchased the former hotel in 1998 with the hopes of transforming the location into a bed and breakfast. Dan was a struggling chef recently unemployed from Tuttle's, a local bankrupt bistro in Memphis. Tracy was a burned-out accountant looking for something else when they found the place. With them, they brought Pudgie, a 5-year-old Yorkshire terrier, and Caesar, a seven-year old Doberman pinscher. Both Pudgie and Caesar barked at the house on arrival and wouldn't go inside, so Dan left Caesar in the car and carried Pudgie inside on his arm. Once inside, Dan placed Pudgie down to run around, and the dog ran straight into the kitchen barking along the way.

"We were getting the place ready to open and the dog just disappeared," Dan recalls. "There's no way an eight-pound dog could get the door open, but he somehow got into the basement. When we found him, he was shaking and shivering, and he has barely returned to the kitchen since."

"There are a lot of great ghost stories from people who've been in that building," George Wyrick is a local contractor and handyman who helped the Eddowes bring the location back to life. "Whether or not you're open to that kind of stuff, the building has an incredible history that makes you open to connecting the dots.

"Through the Seventies, I heard of motorists traveling down Highway 129 who would hear the partying and see the lights on in the place and then would stop and check it out hoping to become a part of it. They would get as far as the front porch, and the lights and sounds would die away leaving behind the dark and shadowy deserted structure and I imagine quite a few confused motorists.

"One story I heard over the years was about a couple traveling up from Maryville who stopped there and got a room for the night, but when they awoke the next morning ready to leave, they failed to find their guests so they just left money on the counter and left. The gas station attendant they told the story to then told them, "Oh, the Old Forresters Place, that place has been closed for years!" I'm not sure if its true, but I reckon it's been told and retold about a lot of locations over the years."

During the renovations, both Dan and Tracy lived on the property and heard the sounds of someone sneaking through the downstairs. Caesar was constantly barking at the kitchen with his front legs stretched out before him. Pudgie was constantly nervous and stayed near Tracy a lot in those days. Footsteps and knocking noises occurred a lot at night, but the Eddowes attributed them to the sounds of the structure at night. Eventually, rapping sounds occurred and Dan was walking through the house half asleep trying to found out what was causing it, frequently with Caesar by his side nervously looking up and down the upstairs hall.

Forresters keeps a staff of three employees including Carlos "Charlie" De Vasquez as caretaker and usually two housekeepers, but there is a big turnover in the employees. Most housekeepers become aware of the haunting activity on their first day and work with it for the first few weeks, but then something ominous occurs and they leave the next day. Raquel McKeever once worked for the Eddowes for three years, and as she puts it, "the strange noises are not the worst thing to deal with there. It's the uncertainty principle. At night, when the place gets dark and shadows take over the location, it becomes something else. Something else entirely."

"I recall one night we had had a bad thunderstorm in the area." McKeever adds. "The power got knocked out, and I think we had like six to seven guests with us, and we were passing out candles through the hotel until the power came back. As I was heading up to the third floor, I turned round on that landing and was surprised by the figure on the top landing. It was a man in a suit. He had slicked back dark hair, a narrow face and dark eyes, and he's just standing there throwing up and catching this coin, but the most unusual thing is he's not looking at me, he's looking through me and there's something of an unearthly quality to him. I mean, he looked real, but there's something kind of off about him. All I know is, he surprised me pretty quickly and made me drop my lighted candle which went out as I dropped it, leaving me in darkness and sending me rushing back downstairs for a match."

Tracy isn't sure if it was the same storm or not but one guest asked her if they (Dan and Tracy) were trying to scare them. Tracy said no, but the same guest went on to describe their candle moving back and forth by itself on the bureau in the room. It was described as if it was on a rocking ship, sliding back and forth, left and right by the waves. Tracy couldn't explain it, but Robert Costello, the grandson of Ferdinand Jones, a former owner, said his father experienced very much the same thing once downstairs in the dining room.

Over time, Charlie has heard his name called from the basement, but he doesn't know who's calling him. The basement is a very foreboding place. Everyone gets a strange feeling of being watched down there, but Room 11 is kind of notorious. Guests staying there always ask to move to another room. The feeling is that something in there doesn't want to share the room. The window is constantly open, and the door is often locked. 

In July 2008, Bernadette Pehl, a former housekeeper, had to get the key to change the bed linens in that room. As her story goes, she recalled "the room felt very cold, but then the window was open as it usual was and there was a breeze outside. Upon entering the room, I felt a heaviness, as if I was trying to move through water, but I tried ignoring it and pulled down the bed and flip the mattress before replacing the sheets. As you flip the sheets, you can see the light streaming through the window through the sheet, but on this occasion, I saw the outline of a man in the chair by the window. It was just a brief second, but it scared me so bad and I rushed from the room too scared to go back. I made an excuse and got Nancy (Michaels) to finish for me, but after that, I always returned to that room with great trepidation."

Nancy Michaels was another brief employee the the summer of 2008, but both she and Charlie often wondered if someone had died or been murdered in Room 11. Everyone who walked past it got strange re-occurring feelings about like inexplicable feelings of dread near it.

"People were constantly hearing noises from the room even when it was empty," Charlie adds. "But then there was often noises coming from all over the property. Footsteps, knocking noises, doors opening and closing, sounds of an argument in the basement, clicking noises from the furnace, the sound of someone walking through the leaves around the place which is weird because since we put the fence up you can't walk around the house anymore.

"As caretaker," Charlie continues. "I sometimes have to be here quite late, either cutting down tree limbs or doing repairs and Dan and Tracy often let me use one of the rooms to sleep in for the night instead of driving back to town. On this one occasion without thinking, I grabbed the key to Room 11, let myself into it and dropped into the bed. I'm barely asleep when I hear the door knob - creak, creak, creak - turning as someone tried to get in. I called out to them twice, no answer, then finally jumped up and answered it, but there wasn't anybody there. As soon as I got back in bed, creak, creak, creak, it was happening again. Jumping up again, I checked the hall again, still no one there. It was not exactly a restful night what with the door knob rattling and the dreams I had that night with people chasing and screaming at me. I think about them a lot these days."

On February 23, 2012, Dan allowed for members from Tennessee State Paranormal to check out the house and try to confirm the activity. In doing so, they placed a camera in a tripod in the doorway of Room 11 across from the stairs and then went downstairs to conduct some interviews. The second field researcher Jeff Nelson mentions Room 11, there was a loud door slam and a crash. 

Something in the room had slammed the door shut, striking the camera and sending it down the steps behind it, and the video shows absolutely nothing in the room at the time. 

History: The location is almost two hundred years old. Originally a private home, it's history actually begins after Sidney "Moose" Matson, a local gangster, purchased the structure to turn into a secret speakeasy although the alternate legend is that Matson muscled himself into owning the hotel from someone named Forrester. Matson was not as notorious as gangsters like Capone or Dillinger. Known for bootlegging and racketeering, he was not well liked by the mobsters in his employ who he failed to pay generously. Not exactly trusting them either, he hid much of his fortune in hidden spaces and compartments in the house and specifically had his will written to whatever strangers near him when he died. On August 6, 1941, Matson's own men turned state's evidence on him to get the reward money, and the police pursued Mattson down Highway 129 trying to arrest him. Shots fired, and Matson died in his car where it crashed. Two men, Charles Murray and Ferdinand Jones, rushed to save him, but Matson just handed them his will as he breathed his last.

Murray and Jones inherited Forresters as a result, but they were harangued by Matson's gang trying to search the house for his hidden fortune, which was found in the form of cash and bonds through the house. They reopened the location as a jazz club, but Murray's antagonistic attitude and derogatory treatment of Jones lead to a break-up in the their friendship. Jones acquired sole custody of Forrester's as a result, leaving it to his son, Frederick.

By the Sixties, the location closed down with the decline in public entertainment due to the television industry and the opening of the interstate. It was a string of businesses afterward, such as Lou's Place, Sam's Bar, Bud's Roadside Diner and the Highway Inn, but none of these businesses worked, and the place sat empty and deserted for part of the Seventies and much of the Eighties until the Eddowes acquired the location as a bed and breakfast. Attached to the original name of the location, they reopened the inn on February 11, 1990. 

Identity of Ghosts: It is believed the ghost is that of a mobster who used the alias of Charles Smith, a member of Moose's gang, who often stayed in Room 11 because it overlooked the porch and gave him a view of who was coming and going. His real name is unknown, but it is believed he was actually Carel "Carl" Schuster, a two-bit hood wanted for the April 11, 1937 murder of a police officer in New York City. Charlie was apparently murdered in the basement of the house while searching for Moose's money, and his body concealed in the furnace up until the local authorities arrested Matson's men on site. Several people believe his ghost is still searching the house. Other activity seen and felt is believed to be place memories left in the house, energy imbedded in the structure that tends to replay itself.

Source/Comments: Hold That Ghost (1941) - Activity loosely based on the Black Horse Inn in Easton, Pennsylvania and the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, New Jersey.