1847 Antebellum Octagonal House Museum
6040 Bowling Green Road, Franklin, KY 42134
Age
All Ages for daytime tours; minimum age applies for paranormal investigations
Cost
$$
Daytime museum tour admission and paranormal investigation pricing vary; check Octagon Hall Museum for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Historic house with multiple floors and an exterior cemetery
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1847 · National Register of Historic Places (1980) · Octagonal Architecture (Fowler Influence) · Civil War Hospital and Confederate Hideout · Enslaved Persons Burial Site on Grounds
Octagon Hall was constructed in 1847 by Andrew Jackson Caldwell on what is now Bowling Green Road in Franklin, Kentucky. The house is a two-story red-brick structure built on an octagonal plan, with a high basement. The octagonal form was briefly fashionable in mid-nineteenth-century American architecture following Orson Squire Fowler's 1848 book A Home for All; Octagon Hall is one of two surviving examples in Kentucky.
The Caldwell family held the property through the Civil War. On February 13, 1862, between 8,000 and 10,000 Confederate soldiers camped on the surrounding grounds during their retreat to Tennessee. Local accounts and the museum's interpretive program describe the house's basement and upper floors as having served both as a field hospital for soldiers of both Union and Confederate armies, and as a hideout for Confederate soldiers separated from their units. The museum's interpretive program also addresses the lives of the enslaved people held by the Caldwell family, with a slave cemetery and historic gardens on the surrounding grounds.
The house was later used as a residence and as a Masonic meeting lodge. The Octagon Hall Foundation acquired the property in 2001 and operates it as a museum. The collection includes Civil War artifacts, regional Native American artifacts, and Caldwell-family genealogical material.
Octagon Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as a representative of the brief mid-century octagonal-house movement and as a Civil War-era site.
Sources
The Octagon Hall Foundation publishes a paranormal-activity history that draws on house tradition, museum staff observation, and televised investigations. The Foundation associates reported phenomena with several groups of historical occupants: members of the Caldwell family who lived in the house, enslaved people who lived and worked on the property and are buried in the slave cemetery on the grounds, and Confederate and Union soldiers who reportedly died in the basement field-hospital area during the Civil War.
The most frequently reported phenomena documented by the museum's investigators include disembodied voices in the second-floor bedrooms, footsteps on the staircase, the apparition of a young female figure attributed in tradition to a Caldwell daughter who is said to have died in the house, and EMF and EVP anomalies recorded during organized investigation events.
Octagon Hall has been featured on Syfy's Ghost Hunters, A&E's My Ghost Story, and the Travel Channel's Most Unsettling Places in America and Haunted Live. The museum's Haunted Novice Ghost Hunts each October are typically booked weeks in advance.
In accordance with archival practice, the museum and the Foundation present the enslaved-persons history of the property as a documented dimension of the Caldwell family's role rather than as a paranormal-narrative device. Visitors interested in this dimension should request the dedicated interpretive material on the slave cemetery and the lives of the enslaved people held at the Hall.
Media Appearances
Tour an 1847 red-brick two-story octagonal house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Interpretive exhibits cover the house's antebellum origins, its use as a Confederate hideout and field hospital during the Civil War, the Caldwell family who lived here, and the lives of enslaved people associated with the property.
Octagon Hall hosts paranormal investigation events, including its annual Haunted Novice Ghost Hunts held Friday and Saturday nights in October. Experienced investigators lead small groups through the house and grounds.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Franklin, KY
Andrew Jackson Caldwell laid the foundation of Octagon Hall in 1847, completing the distinctive eight-sided brick residence by approximately 1860. Built on 300 acres in Franklin, Kentucky, it served as a hospital for both Confederate and Union soldiers during the Civil War and as a hiding place for retreating Confederate troops. The Octagon Hall Foundation acquired the site in 2001 and operates it as a museum and investigation venue.
Marietta, GA
The Kennesaw House was built in 1845 as a cotton warehouse on what is now Marietta Square, adjacent to the railroad tracks that would define its Civil War history. Purchased by Dix Fletcher in 1855 and converted into the Fletcher House hotel, it served as both a staging point for the famous Great Locomotive Chase of April 1862 and as a hospital and morgue for Confederate and Union forces during Sherman's Atlanta campaign. Today it houses the Marietta History Center.
Kansas City, MO
Alexander Majors built this antebellum mansion in 1856 at the height of his success as co-owner of Russell, Majors, and Waddell — the largest overland freighting company in the American West. In 1860, Majors partnered with Russell and Waddell to launch the Pony Express, a relay mail service that operated for just 18 months before the transcontinental telegraph made it obsolete.