Underground Nashville: 3 Dark Secrets Beneath Your Feet Featured on our Nashville Ghost Tour

I've walked many places in my life, as we all have. Some places are have happy memories and are alive with energy, other places feel heavy and dark. I have often wondered why this may be. it is possible some psychological prompt that puts me in a specific frame of mind when visiting certain places. A spooky placebo effect if you will. For instance it is impossible to visit a cemetery (especially an old creepy one) without contemplating death. Or to visit a battlefield without feeling the heaviness of what has taken place there. Its almost as if a dark history can stain the very fabric of a location. That all makes sense for places that are obviously a little creepy or covered in dark history, but what about the locations that have changed to the point of being unrecognizable. In this blog we will visit 3 dark locations that you may have visited and never even knew they were under your feet.

1. Tennessee State Hospital for the Insane

   
   
   
   

   

   Source: Library of Congress Archives - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003662356/

   Opened in 1852 on Murfreesboro pike with 60 patients that had been transferred from the Tennessee Lunatic Asylum. The goal of this new facility was to improve treatment outcomes and the quality of treatment given to the mentally ill. However the treatments the patients received although modern, were barbaric. After all this was the age of Hydrotherapy and Lobotomies. There were countless patients that died on the grounds, many of their deaths attributed to "Exhaustion from Mental Illness". In 1863 there was a massive fire in the building which burned 6 patients alive. These days there is very little left of the old hospital. After the patients were moved to the new facility that opened on Stewarts ferry pike in 1995, this facility was abandoned. In the late 1990's the building was torn down and a Dell computer factory was built over its ruins. All that remains are the countless unmarked graves of patients that met their fate in this place and the original stone gatehouse. Ive also seen pictures of piles of old gravestones that were removed from their original locations.

2. Tennessee State Penitentiary

   

   Courtesy of Tennessee State Library & Archives, photographer unknown.

The original Tennessee State Penitentiary was built in 1831 with a total of 200 cells. This prison was state of the art in its day and was constructed with forced labor from prisoners and from slaves borrowed from local plantations. Even after the prison was opened convicts were expected to work 16 hour days of hard labor to offset the costs of their imprisonment. Many of these prisoners were even used to construct the Tennessee state capital building. Over crowding was always a problem at this prison and when the civil war erupted, things only got worse. In 1863 the union army occupying Nashville began using the prison as a place to put political prisoners and confederate sympathizers. Problems only continued to get worse following the civil war. In 1892 the overcrowding was so bad that male and female prisoners were housed together. This structure was largely destroyed in the late 1890's when the new prison was build. Today all that stands there is a typical midtown commercial complex called the "state prison subdivision". It is home to a popular restaurant.

3. The Nashville Slave Market

   While walking down Charlotte Avenue in downtown Nashville. Most people admire the State Capital and other government buildings that seem to be on every corner. At the corner of 4th street and Charlotte there is a building that looks a little different, it seems to be older that the rest. Today it is called the Morris Building. It was built in 1925 and is home to the National Baptist Convention. The building that formerly stood on this site was much different. It was called the Capital Hotel, in the 1850's this was Nashville's Sale Market. It was used as home offices for many of the slave agents in the area. I can only imagine the kind of darkness that this location has seen throughout the years.

   
   

Nashville Adventures Ghost Tours

If you like discovering this kind of hidden history, join us for one of our history tours! If you prefer to learn about the dark side of Nashville....the Hidden side consider joining us for one of our Ghost Tours! What makes our Nashville Ghost Tours truly special isn’t just the eerie stories we tell—it’s the truth behind them. Our tours are grounded in real history, researched by local historians, and delivered by guides who care deeply about the city and its past. We don’t rely on jump scares or costumes. Instead, we take you to the very places where tragic fires, unspeakable suffering, and long-forgotten secrets still linger under the surface of the modern city. From sites like the old State Hospital for the Insane to hidden graveyards and repurposed prisons, we peel back the layers of Nashville’s polished exterior to reveal something deeper—something that makes the hair on your neck stand up because it actually happened. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of the city's haunted past and why some places just feel different. These aren’t just ghost stories—they’re reflections of a city built on both beauty and darkness. Our Nashville Ghost Tours are where folklore meets fact, and where history doesn’t just whisper…it haunts.