The Hauntings at the Carter House

Fountain Branch Carter built his home in 1830, a modest but sturdy brick dwelling on Columbia Avenue in Franklin, Tennessee. He was a successful farmer, a pillar of the community, and the patriarch of a large and loving family. The Carters were well-respected—Fountain even sold some of his land to his neighbor Johann Lotz, who built his own home just across the street.

Tod Carter was Fountain's middle son, born in 1840. He grew up running through these rooms, playing in these fields, dreaming the dreams that young men dream in the years before war changes everything. When the Civil War broke out, Tod enlisted with the 20th Tennessee Infantry, leaving behind his aging father and his sister Annie, who had become his closest confidant.

The war was hard on Tod. He was captured at the Battle of Missionary Ridge and sent to Johnson's Island, a Union prisoner-of-war camp on Lake Erie. The conditions there were brutal—freezing winters, inadequate food, rampant disease. But Tod survived. He escaped. And when he rejoined the Confederate Army, fate placed him in General John Bell Hood's forces as they marched toward Nashville in late 1864.

Their route would take them directly through Franklin. Through Tod Carter's hometown. Past Tod Carter's home.

When the Battle of Franklin began on the afternoon of November 30, 1864, the Carter House became Union headquarters. Brigadier General Jacob D. Cox commandeered the property, setting up his command post inside while his men dug in along the defensive line that ran through the Carters' property. The family—Fountain, Annie, and twenty-three other civilians—retreated to the basement.

For five hours, they huddled in the darkness as the world above them descended into chaos. The Confederate assault was massive, desperate, and doomed. Eighteen thousand Southern soldiers charged across open ground toward entrenched Union positions, many of them engaging in hand-to-hand combat as night fell. The fighting around the Carter House was particularly savage—this was where the Union line was strongest, and this was where Confederate casualties mounted highest.

The farm office and smokehouse, which still stand today, absorbed over a thousand rounds of ammunition. Walk around them now and you can still see the bullet holes, so dense in places that the bricks look like they've been attacked by wasps. Preservationists consider these structures among the most heavily battle-damaged buildings from the Civil War to survive to the present day.

Somewhere in that maelstrom of lead and fire, Tod Carter rode toward home on his horse Rosencrantz. He made it to within 200 yards of the house before he fell, struck by nine separate bullets. He lay in the field all night, among the dead and dying, while his family waited in the basement wondering if the world would ever be quiet again.

When morning came and the shooting stopped, the Carter family emerged from their basement into a landscape of horror. Bodies lay everywhere. Wounded men cried for water, for their mothers, for death. And somewhere out there, they learned, was Tod.

Search parties fanned out across the battlefield, and somehow—miraculously—they found him. He was still alive. They carried him into the house, into the very bedroom where he'd slept as a boy, and laid him on the bed where he'd dreamed of soldiers and glory before he knew what either word truly meant.

Annie was at his side constantly for those final forty-eight hours. She held his hand. She wiped his brow. She listened as he drifted in and out of consciousness, speaking of things only he could see. On December 2, 1864, Captain Tod Carter died in his childhood home, surrounded by the family he'd fought so hard to reach.

He was twenty-four years old.

They buried him at Rest Haven Cemetery just north of town, but those who know the Carter House will tell you that Tod never really left. Neither did Annie. And neither did Rosencrantz, the horse who carried Tod into his final battle.

The Carter House isn't just haunted—it's practically crowded with spirits. The paranormal activity here is so consistent, so varied, and so well-documented that skeptics who visit often leave with their worldview fundamentally shaken.

Tod Carter

Tod's ghost is the most famous presence at the Carter House, and for good reason. Visitors have reported seeing a young man in Confederate uniform standing in the bedroom where he died, sometimes sitting on the bed, sometimes staring out the window toward the fields where he fell. Others have heard his voice, weak and labored, calling out names that no one recognizes anymore.

The room where Tod died is a highlight of the guided tour. Step inside and you might feel what so many others have felt: a profound sadness, a sense of longing, the emotional residue of a young man who made it home only to leave again forever.

Annie Carter

Annie and Tod were inseparable in life, and death hasn't changed that. Staff members and visitors frequently hear the two of them chattering away, their voices just beyond the edge of comprehension. Annie seems to have a mischievous side in the afterlife—many people report feeling their clothes tugged or pulled, as if someone is trying to get their attention. When they turn around, no one is there.

Some believe Annie is still caring for her brother, still keeping him company, still refusing to let him be alone. Others think she's simply playing tricks, the same way she might have as a girl growing up in this house.

Rosencrantz the Warhorse

Perhaps the most unusual haunting at the Carter House doesn't involve a human at all. On quiet nights, visitors and neighbors have reported hearing the sound of hoofbeats in the woods around the property. A horse cantering through the darkness, galloping across the fields, searching for something—or someone.

They call this phantom horse Rosencrantz, after Tod Carter's mount. The animal never reunited with its owner in life. Perhaps, in death, it still searches for the man who rode it into battle one last time.

The Halloween Encounter

One of the most remarkable stories about the Carter House comes from a visitor who came on Halloween night in 2001. They drove up to find people in Civil War period clothing gathered around a bonfire on the property. These figures gave them a tour and directions to Carnton Plantation. But when the visitor pulled back up the driveway just moments later, there was nothing—no people, no fire, not even smoldering ashes. The figures had vanished completely, leaving behind only an empty yard and a profound sense of unease.

The Carter House is now a National Historic Landmark, one of only twenty-nine in all of Tennessee. The interpretation focuses on the Battle of Franklin and its human cost, but the paranormal element is impossible to ignore. The bullet holes remain. The bloodstains remain. And the ghosts remain.

Statues have been reported jumping or moving on their own. Visitors hear voices—sometimes whispers, sometimes shouts—when no living person is speaking. Cold spots appear in rooms that have no draft, no logical explanation. EMF readings spike in the bedroom where Tod Carter died, as if the energy of his passing has left a permanent mark on the electromagnetic field itself.

The museum staff take the hauntings in stride. When you work in a building with this much history, this much trauma, this much residual energy, you learn to coexist with whatever else shares the space. They'll tell you their own stories if you ask—the footsteps they've heard, the shadows they've seen, the moments when they knew, with absolute certainty, that they weren't alone.

The Carter House offers daily tours that take you through the home, the grounds, and the bullet-scarred outbuildings. The guides are knowledgeable and passionate, and they don't shy away from the paranormal aspects of the property. If you want the full experience, ask about special evening programs or ghost-focused tours.

For those of us at Ghost City Tours, the Carter House represents everything we love about this work. It's a place where history and haunting are inseparable, where the stories of the dead demand to be told, where you can stand in the exact spot where a young soldier finally came home and feel the weight of everything that moment meant.

Franklin is full of ghosts. They walk its streets, they linger in its buildings, they refuse to let us forget what happened here in 1864. But nowhere are they more present than at the Carter House, where Tod and Annie Carter still keep each other company, where a phantom horse still gallops through the night, and where the boundary between past and present has never fully healed.

Come visit. Pay your respects. And when you feel that tug on your sleeve, that cold draft on the back of your neck, that unmistakable sense of being watched—don't be afraid. It's just the Carters. They've been waiting for company for a very long time.