Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary

Tennessee's first maximum-security prison when it opened in 1896, Brushy Mountain was called "End of the Line" for the state's worst criminals including James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. The prison closed in 2009 but offers ghost tours.

Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, known as 'the end of the line,' was Tennessee's first and oldest maximum-security prison, and its origin story is as violent as its reputation. Before the penitentiary existed, Petros was a coal mining town that used convict labor from the 1860s through the early 1890s. Local coal miners, fed up with losing work to prison laborers, ignited the Coal Creek War in 1891, burning the old state prison to the ground along with its stockades and mines. Brushy Mountain was then built by the very prisoners it would house, opening in 1896 on the site of the destroyed facility.

For over a century, Brushy Mountain confined Tennessee's most dangerous criminals within its granite walls, nestled in a remote mountain valley where escape was nearly impossible -- though many tried. The prison's most infamous inmate was James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who briefly escaped in 1977 before being recaptured after three days in the surrounding wilderness. An estimated 10,000 men died while the prison was in operation, and at least 100 executions were carried out. At its worst, the prison averaged one murder per week, and guards rarely maintained full control of the population.

When Brushy Mountain finally closed on June 11, 2009, the violence that had saturated its walls for over a century did not leave with the inmates. The most terrifying entity reported is 'The Creeper,' a spirit connected to the death of a prisoner who was stabbed in the throat in the auditorium and then placed in a padded cell, where he slowly bled to death. Since then, a figure has been seen crawling across the auditorium floor, believed to be the murdered inmate reenacting his final moments as he desperately tried to reach help.

Cell 28 -- James Earl Ray's former cell -- generates its own paranormal activity. Visitors to the cell report feeling an oppressive, suffocating presence and sudden drops in temperature. The Hole, the prison's solitary confinement area, is another hotspot where visitors feel someone touching them or pushing them from behind. Intense cold spots settle in the chapel with no apparent source. Shadow figures and apparitions are seen in peripheral vision throughout the facility, particularly in the cell blocks and the mess hall. Disembodied growling and voices echo through corridors, and unexplained banging sounds reverberate through the building's stone walls.

EVP recordings captured during paranormal investigations have produced voices and sounds with no living source. Footsteps follow visitors through empty cell blocks. The hospital wing, where untold numbers of inmates died from violence, disease, and neglect, is reported to be among the most active areas.

Brushy Mountain now operates as a historic tourism destination offering regular tours, overnight paranormal investigations, and a distillery. The granite walls still stand, and according to those who have walked them after dark, so do many of the men who died within them.