Est. 1890 · Alfred B. Mullett architecture · Richardsonian Romanesque · Eldad C. Camp (1839-1920) residence · National Register of Historic Places (1973) · Continuous WATE-TV studio use since the 1960s
Eldad Cicero Camp Jr. was born August 1, 1839, on his parents' Mount Vernon, Ohio farm. After teaching school in Kentucky and Missouri he enlisted in the 142nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry at the outbreak of the Civil War, saw action at Island Number Ten and the Siege of Petersburg, and mustered out as sergeant major in 1865 — accompanying General Joseph A. Cooper to Knoxville that February. He stayed.
Camp's postwar career was extraordinary. He served as U.S. District Attorney for East Tennessee under President Grant from 1869 to 1871, organized the Coal Creek Coal Company in the late 1860s — which became one of the largest coal producers in the region — and went on to head the Virginia-Tennessee Coal Company and serve as a director of Knoxville's Third National Bank. He was at one point among the wealthiest men in East Tennessee. (A notorious 1868 street confrontation in which Camp shot and killed Confederate Colonel Henry Ashby outside Camp's law office near Walnut and Main Streets ended without conviction; the charges were dropped.)
In 1885 Camp began construction on Greystone, hiring architect Alfred B. Mullett — the former Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury who had designed Knoxville's downtown Custom House (now the East Tennessee History Center) — to produce a Richardsonian Romanesque country house in pink Tennessee marble and rough-hewn limestone. The five-year build was completed in 1890. The house featured turrets, arched-stone porches, elaborate carved interiors, and a coach house. Camp lived there with his family until his death in Knoxville on November 21, 1920. He was buried at Old Gray Cemetery.
Camp's heirs occupied Greystone until 1935. Maintenance costs forced subdivision into apartments through the mid-twentieth century. WATE-TV purchased the property in the 1960s for $75,000 and undertook a two-year, $1.5 million restoration, building a 13,000-square-foot addition behind the original house to accommodate broadcasting facilities. WATE has occupied the building ever since. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greystone_(Knoxville,_Tennessee)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldad_Cicero_Camp
- https://www.wate.com/haunted-tennessee/greystone-mansion-home-of-wate-6-on-your-side-and-ghosts/
- https://www.southernspiritguide.org/greystone-ghosts-knoxville-tennessee/
Apparitions of a man, woman, and childHair pullingBeing pushed on stairsUnexplained breezesPhantom smell of frying bacon
Greystone Mansion is one of Knoxville's best-documented contemporary haunted sites, in large part because it is occupied by a working television station whose own staff have made and broadcast multiple first-person reports. WATE-TV personnel have described being pushed down a staircase, having their hair pulled, feeling unexplained breezes through interior rooms, and — most peculiarly and most consistently across years — smelling frying bacon when no kitchen activity could account for it.
The most-cited presence is interpreted as Major Eldad Camp himself, who lived in the house from its 1890 completion until his death in 1920 and whose family remained there through 1935. Camp would be associated with the formal first-floor public rooms and his study; the bacon-smell phenomenon is sometimes attributed to the original servants' kitchen.
Two paranormal investigation teams have conducted formal field work at the property: Appalachian Paranormal Investigations and the North American Paranormal Research Team. Both reported evidence consistent with the presence of a woman, a child, and at least one additional man besides Major Camp — readings, audio anomalies, and visual phenomena consistent with multiple distinct presences rather than a single haunting. No specific historical identities have been firmly attached to the woman or child; given the Camp family's 45-year occupancy and the mansion's apartment-era phase, the candidate pool is broad.
WATE has periodically aired Halloween-week features on its own building's ghost reports, lending the phenomena unusual editorial documentation; the reports are first-person from station personnel rather than tour-operator-sourced.
Notable Entities
Major Eldad C. Camp (1839-1920)Unidentified womanUnidentified child
Media Appearances
- WATE-TV 'Haunted Tennessee' feature
- Appalachian Paranormal Investigations
- North American Paranormal Research Team
