Rotherwood Mansion

Built in 1818, Rotherwood Mansion overlooks the Holston River and is considered one of the most haunted locations in East Tennessee. The home witnessed multiple tragedies that left their supernatural mark.

Rotherwood Mansion stands where the two forks of the Holston River converge in Kingsport, and its history reads like a Southern Gothic novel written in blood and grief. The Reverend Frederick A. Ross built the grand estate in 1818, naming it after the fictional Rotherwood from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Ross laid out the town that would become Kingsport and raised his family in elegance -- but tragedy had already claimed his daughter Rowena.

Rowena Ross was beautiful and educated, the jewel of East Tennessee society. Her first love drowned in the Holston River on their wedding day when their boat capsized, plunging her into a devastating depression. She eventually recovered enough to marry a Knoxville man, who then died of yellow fever shortly after the wedding. After roughly a decade of seclusion, she married a third time and had a daughter, finding temporary happiness. But during a visit to Rotherwood, Rowena claimed to see her first love's ghost beckoning to her from the river waters. That night, she slipped into her wedding gown and waded barefoot into the Holston River, walking until the water closed over her head.

The mansion's second chapter was far darker. When financial ruin forced Ross to sell, the estate passed to his overseer Joshua Phipps, who became notorious for extraordinary cruelty toward the enslaved people he held. Phipps constructed basement cells with dirt walls, dirt floors, and no windows, and installed a third-floor whipping post. Former enslaved woman Virgealia Ellis later recalled that 'the stench was embedded in the ground' and that 'one could imagine hearing the moaning' of captives. Neighboring plantations reportedly could hear screams echoing off the surrounding mountains.

Phipps's death in the summer of 1861 was as bizarre as his life was brutal. According to the legend, as he lay ill, hundreds of black flies materialized in mid-air, forming a thick swarm that descended on his face, crawling into his eyes, nose, and mouth until he suffocated. When help arrived, Phipps lay dead, but not a single fly remained in the room. His funeral procession encountered supernatural resistance -- horses struggled against inexplicable weight, lightning struck a tree to block the path, and the casket vibrated violently. As lightning flashed across the sky, witnesses claimed a gigantic black dog leaped from the coffin and ran howling down the hill into the wilderness. Two weeks later, according to local lore, his grave was opened and found empty except for black animal hairs. The monstrous creature became known as the 'Hound of Hell,' and on dark, stormy nights, locals say its spine-tingling howl still resounds through the hills of Kingsport.

The haunting of Rotherwood has persisted into modern times. During renovations in the mid-to-late 1940s, a worker in the basement reported seeing a man materialize from a wall dressed in a dark suit, accompanied by a large black dog with glowing red eyes that bared its teeth and growled -- the worker fled and refused to return. Rowena's ghost, the lady in white, has been seen walking the grounds at night, forever searching for the lover who drowned in the river below. Phipps's evil laughter has been heard echoing through the mansion during thunderstorms, and apparitions of both the cruel master and his hellhound have been reported on the property for over a century and a half.

Rotherwood Mansion remains privately owned, its red brick facade overlooking the same convergence of waters where Rowena Ross walked to her death in her wedding gown.