Prospect Hill B&B, Mountain City: The Friendly Ghosts of an 1889 Mansion

Prospect Hill is a six-thousand-square-foot Victorian mansion of hand-made brick on a hill above Main Street in Mountain City, close to the Virginia and North Carolina lines. Built in 1889 by a Union Army veteran, it was home to one family for three generations before it was converted into a bed and breakfast, which ran for close to twenty years with five guest rooms, fireplaces and a garden for small mountain weddings.

Its ghosts were famously friendly. Guests wrote about waking to the smell of baking, footsteps on the main staircase and a soldier at a window, and the innkeepers welcomed the stories. We keep this guide because people still search for it, but the inn no longer appears to take guests.

The ghost stories of Prospect Hill

Breakfast before breakfast

One guest described being woken early in the morning by the smell of muffins, peanut butter and cookies, with traces of bourbon and rose perfume in the air, long before anyone was in the kitchen.

Footsteps and doors

Guests reported footsteps going up and down the main staircase when no one was there, doors opening by themselves, and the laundry room door shutting and opening on its own.

The soldier and the baby

A woman staying at the inn said she saw a Civil War soldier staring out of a window, a fitting story for a house built by a Union veteran. Others heard a baby crying when there were no children in the house.

Strange photographs

Couples married at the inn found orbs in their wedding photos, and pictures taken in front of the fireplace were said to show flames when no fire was lit. Two glasses in a bathroom were reported to have shattered on their own.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The main staircase: Where footsteps were heard most often.
• The front windows: Where the soldier was seen looking out.
• The fireplace: The backdrop for photographs with flames that were not there.
• The laundry room: A door that would not stay shut.

History of Prospect Hill Bed & Breakfast

The house was built in 1889 of hand-made brick by Joseph Wagner, who had been a major in the Union Army. In 1910 it was bought by the Rambo family, who added plumbing, central heat and electricity, and three generations of Rambos lived there before it was sold in 1991.

Robert and Judy Hotchkiss of Atlanta then bought the mansion, modernized it and opened it as Prospect Hill Bed & Breakfast, with five individually decorated rooms, whirlpool or claw-foot tubs, fireplaces and porches looking toward the mountains. Later innkeepers kept it going as a small wedding and elopement venue.

The property was listed for sale for several years and sold in August 2021 for about $500,000. The inn’s website domain has since lapsed, and we have found no current listing for overnight stays.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Do not visit expecting a room: the inn is closed and the house is private.
• For a haunted stay nearby, the Historic Eureka Inn in Jonesborough and the General Morgan Inn in Greeneville are both within about an hour and a half.
• Haunted Rooms runs overnight ghost hunts at the Thomas House Hotel in middle Tennessee if you want to investigate rather than just stay.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Haunted hotels in Tennessee: open haunted stays across the state
• Balsam Mountain Inn, North Carolina: a haunted mountain inn across the Smokies
• Thomas House Hotel, Red Boiling Springs: Tennessee’s best-known haunted hotel
• Haunted hotels in Tennessee

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Johnson County Chamber: Prospect Hill Bed & Breakfast
• The Old House Life: Prospect Hill for sale, 2021
• Estately: 801 W Main Street sale record
• OnlyInYourState: The creepiest B&B in Tennessee (2017)