The Lotz House

Built in 1858 by German immigrant Johann Albert Lotz, this home sat directly in the path of the Confederate assault during the Battle of Franklin. The family fled to the Carter House basement as fighting engulfed their property.

Johann Albert Lotz, a German immigrant and master carpenter born in 1820, purchased five acres from Fountain Branch Carter in 1855 and spent three years building his dream home by hand. A classically trained piano maker, Lotz incorporated architectural details meant to showcase his skills -- three fireplace mantels in different styles and a stairway newel post crafted from a piano leg. The house was finished in 1858, and the Lotz family had just six years of peace before the Civil War arrived at their doorstep.

On November 30, 1864, the Battle of Franklin erupted directly around the Lotz House. As the fighting began, Johann, his wife Margaretha, and their children fled across the street to hide in the Carter family's basement. For five hours, they endured the sounds of one of the bloodiest engagements of the entire Civil War -- intense hand-to-hand combat that left approximately 10,000 soldiers dead or wounded. When the Lotz family emerged, they were horrified to find bodies of dead soldiers piled six feet deep between the Carter House and their own home, with seventeen dead horses lying in their yard and six Confederate generals among the fallen. The south wall of their house had been completely blasted away by cannon fire, and burns from the bombardment remain visible inside the house to this day.

The damaged Lotz House was immediately pressed into service as a field hospital, where wounded soldiers from both sides were treated and many died of their injuries. The approximately 1,481 Confederate dead from the battle were later buried in the nearby McGavock Confederate Cemetery, the largest privately owned military cemetery in the nation.

The trauma of that November night has never fully left the property. Since the house opened as a museum in 2008, staff, volunteers, and visitors have reported persistent and varied paranormal activity. In 2010, the Travel Channel named the Lotz House the 'Second-Most Terrifying Place in America,' and the network returned in 2011 and again in 2018 for 'Haunted Live,' in which the Tennessee Wraith Chasers conducted experiments seeking definitive proof of ghosts at the location.

The most commonly reported phenomena center on the Lotz children. The twins Julius and Julia, who died at the age of two -- possibly from contaminated water or drowning -- are believed to still inhabit the house. A little girl has been seen staring out of an upstairs window, and visitors in the upstairs bedrooms hear distinct creaking and popping sounds with no apparent source. One staff member encountered a frantic woman at the top of the staircase who asked 'Where is Anne?' before vanishing. Objects move on their own throughout the house -- cannonball pieces appear in different room corners, souvenir t-shirts have been thrown from gift shop shelves onto the floor, and items disappear only to reappear in hallways.

Outside, the grounds echo with the sounds of battle. Visitors report disembodied yells and screams of men, the rhythmic pounding of war drums, and what sounds like distant cannon fire. Semi-transparent figures of men in Civil War uniforms have been seen creeping around the exterior of the museum, and a 'lady in white' has been observed before disappearing. Phantom faces appear in photographs taken on the property, and sudden booming knocks reverberate through the empty house.

After the war, Johann Lotz carved an American eagle holding an American flag upward and a Confederate flag pointing downward into a piano he had built. Outraged Confederate sympathizers threatened his life, forcing the family to sell the house at a financial loss and flee west in a covered wagon to San Jose, California. The house changed hands many times before being restored and opened to the public in 2008 as a privately owned nonprofit museum. It is now TripAdvisor's highest-rated attraction in Franklin, offering both historical tours and ghost tours that take visitors through the eerie rooms where so many suffered and died.