206-acre rural-style cemetery established in 1856 by Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley and John Buddeke and modeled after Mount Auburn, home to seven Confederate generals at the Confederate Circle and the focus of long-running Nashville cemetery folklore.
1101 Lebanon Pike, Nashville, TN 37210
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter during posted daylight hours. Respect grieving families.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved cemetery roads suitable for wheelchairs and strollers; some grave sections on grass with uneven footing
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1856 · 1856 rural-cemetery movement site · Confederate Circle with seven Confederate generals · 1870s Gothic Revival chapel by Hugh Cathcart Thompson (lost in 2015 fire)
Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley and John Buddeke established Mount Olivet Cemetery in 1856 on a 206-acre tract along Lebanon Pike, approximately two miles east of downtown Nashville. The founders modeled the cemetery on Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts — the first major rural-style cemetery in the United States — with curving carriage paths, planted lawns, and family plots arranged across a landscape designed to resemble a park rather than a churchyard.
In the years following the Civil War, the Confederate Memorial Association arranged for the reinterment of approximately 1,500 Confederate soldiers killed in the battles around Nashville at a feature known as Confederate Circle. Seven Confederate generals were buried at or around the Circle: William B. Bate, William N. R. Bealle, Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, William H. Jackson, George E. Maney, James E. Rains, and Thomas Benton Smith. A 45-foot granite monument marks the center of the Circle.
In the 1870s, architect Hugh Cathcart Thompson — who later designed the Ryman Auditorium — designed a Gothic Revival chapel for the cemetery office. The chapel was added to the National Register of Historic Places and burned on January 25, 2015.
Mount Olivet is the final resting place of Tennessee governors, U.S. senators, Nashville mayors, business figures, and Adelicia Acklen (of Belmont Mansion), among many other prominent figures from 19th and 20th-century Nashville. The cemetery remains in active use and is owned and operated as a commercial cemetery and funeral home today.
Sources
According to the Paranormal Investigation Society of Tennessee's past-investigations write-up and the Only In Your State 'Haunted Cemeteries in Nashville' feature, Mount Olivet generates the kinds of reports common at large 19th-century cemeteries. Investigators document orbs and unexplained lights in photographs, anomalous EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), and visitor accounts of unattributable voices and footsteps.
A persistent piece of Nashville folklore — recorded in both Only In Your State and locally-circulated cemetery walking guides — holds that the voices sometimes heard near the politicians' graves are those of buried Tennessee governors and senators 'practicing speeches' from beyond. This is framed as light folklore rather than serious paranormal claim.
Confederate Circle is the focal point of much of the activity in the published accounts. Witnesses describe cold spots at the central monument and visual anomalies at dawn and dusk. The lore should be read in the context of the documented reinterments of approximately 1,500 Confederate dead and the politically loaded nature of Lost Cause-era memorialization, rather than as evidence of specific haunting agency.
Reports remain anecdotal; no published investigation has produced specific corroborated evidence, and the cemetery operates as a commercial, actively-used burial ground rather than a paranormal attraction.
Notable Entities
Walk the 206-acre rural-style cemetery established in 1856, with Confederate Circle and notable graves of Tennessee governors, senators, and Civil War figures. The 1870s Gothic Revival chapel by Hugh Cathcart Thompson burned in 2015.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a 62-acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, founded in 1899 as Hollywood Cemetery on a 100-acre tract of former farmland. Paramount Pictures' studios occupy 40 acres of the original cemetery property. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and Hollywood Forever in 1998 after a 1990s bankruptcy and revival. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Franklin, TN
Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee was built in 1826 by Randal McGavock and became one of the most consequential sites of the November 30, 1864 Battle of Franklin. More than 1,750 men died in the battle; Carnton served as the primary Confederate field hospital, with surgeons operating through the night. The McGavock family established the adjacent Confederate cemetery in 1866, and Carrie McGavock personally maintained it and catalogued its 1,500 dead for the rest of her life.
Knoxville, TN
Old Gray Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee, was established in 1850 and named for English poet Thomas Gray, author of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." The thirteen-acre cemetery contains roughly 5,700 graves, including those of a Tennessee governor, U.S. senators, mayors, and Civil War-era figures, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.