HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Knoxville's 1874 Alfred B. Mullett-designed federal Custom House and Post Office, now home to the East Tennessee Historical Society museum and archives; staff report footsteps in locked rooms and the sound of books falling from empty shelves.
601 S Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Museum of East Tennessee History admission $7 adults, $6 seniors/students, free for kids 16 and under. Archives (Knox County Archives, McClung Historical Collection) free to access.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved entry; elevator access between floors of the 2004 BarberMcMurry extension and the 1874 historic building
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1874 · Alfred B. Mullett federal architecture · Knoxville's first federal building · Italianate marble construction · Continuous public-history use since 1976
Knoxville's Custom House began life as a federal infrastructure project authorized by Congress in 1856 to provide a permanent home for the city's post office, federal courts, and customs and excise functions. The Civil War interrupted plans; Congress reappropriated funds in 1869, and construction began in 1871 to a design by Alfred B. Mullett, the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury (1866-1874) responsible for some of the most prominent federal buildings of the Reconstruction era, including the State, War, and Navy Building in Washington and — later — Knoxville's own Greystone Mansion for E.C. Camp.
The Custom House opened in 1874 as a three-story Italianate building clad in East Tennessee marble, with rusticated stonework, a heavy bracketed cornice, and a refined neoclassical interior. The third-floor courtroom retains particular architectural integrity. The building served as Knoxville's principal federal facility for the next six decades.
By the early twentieth century, growing post office volume forced expansion. A new federal post office opened on Main Street in 1934, and the original Custom House transferred to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which used it as administrative offices from 1934 until 1976. In 1976 — the U.S. Bicentennial year — the building was transferred to local civic use and became home to the East Tennessee Historical Society. Today the facility is collectively known as the East Tennessee History Center; it houses the Society's Museum of East Tennessee History, the Knox County Archives, the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, and Knox County Public Library's East Tennessee history holdings. A 28,000-square-foot eastern addition designed by BarberMcMurry Architects opened in 2004, doubling the institution's exhibit and archival space.
Sources
According to Knoxville ghost-tour operators and local Halloween-season coverage, staff at the East Tennessee History Center have reported footsteps in locked rooms and the sound of books falling from empty shelves in the archive stacks. These reports are consistent with the most common 'archive ghost' pattern documented at similar institutions across the country: large quiet buildings holding deep historical records, with night and weekend staff present in long empty corridors, generate auditory anomalies that often defy easy explanation.
The Center is a stop on the US Ghost Adventures Knoxville Ghost Tour route. No formal paranormal investigations of the building have been independently documented in materials consulted for this entry.
Readers may encounter aggregated ghost-tourism content asserting that the Center is connected to specific named murder cases — for example, claims linking the building to the 1974/1975 Knoxville murder of Martha Cunningham by serial killer Samuel Little. These claims are conflations. Martha Cunningham's body was discovered in a remote field off Oglesby Road in rural East Knox County near Interstate 40, not at the Custom House. Little's case files may be among the millions of pages of records in the Center's archival holdings, but Little has no documented physical or biographical connection to this building. We have stripped such claims from this entry; the Center's paranormal reputation rests on the more general archive-ghost phenomena reported by its staff: footsteps in locked rooms and books falling from empty shelves.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Tour the principal museum of the East Tennessee Historical Society in Knoxville's 1874 Custom House. Permanent exhibits cover settlement, Civil War, mountain communities, and industry. The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection and Knox County Archives are accessible to researchers. The Center is a stop on the US Ghost Adventures Knoxville Ghost Tour route.
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