Gatlinburg’s Mysterious Mansion reigns as the area’s top haunted house…and it might really be haunted!
If you love getting down with some nitty-gritty haunted-house heebie-jeebies, there’s only one place you need to go in the tourist mecca of Gatlinburg, Tenn.
The Mysterious Mansion is not only the scariest place in town, it’s also one of the oldest, most established attractions in the area. It’s a family-owned business that opened back in 1980, and it continues today as a classic “old-fashioned walk-through haunt,” according to general manager Kenneth Counahan. “We have a dedicated staff that absolutely loves what they do.”
By “staff,” he’s talking about all the Mansion’s employees, but particularly the “characters,” who dress like something out of your horror-movie nightmares and lurk throughout the three-story structure, built and detailed to resemble a decrepit and intensely forbidding Victorian manor. They appear and disappear from the maze-like halls and pitch-black passageways, creep up quietly behind you or suddenly confront you around dark corners. When I went through recently, there was a hyperkinetic young woman who looked like she popped out of The Ring, a tattooed and dreadlocked slaughterhouse butcher wearing a mask resembling human flesh, and a hulking “executioner” who might have been taking a smoke break from working the guillotine. It’s like friends of Jason from Friday the 13th, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Freddy Krueger moved in together—and made plans to scare the bejeesus out of anyone nervy enough to crash their party. “They’re always present, whether you see them or not,” says Counahan. “My guys are ‘on’ you from the moment you step into the house until the moment you leave, ready to give you that excitement you came looking for.”
There’s plenty of gory disturbia, like a blood-spattered bathroom and a double sink filled with very realistic severed body-part props and viscera. There are spooky stairwells and a fog-filled space where you can’t see where your next step is taking you. You make your way blindly through a closet packed with old clothes and other places where your eyes really aren’t much use. The scare factor is considerably heightened by not knowing what, or who, might be beside you, behind you, or just inches away from your face. There are flashing lights, strange noises, voices, and a lot of jolty gotchas.
“It’s not just walking through and looking at stuff,” Counahan says. “You’re totally immersed in the environment to the point you might question if you’re gonna make it out OK.” And if you get completely freaked in the middle of your “visit,” there are a couple of “emergency exit” doors that will end your tour pronto.
The Mansion is designed as an actual house, a multi-level, many-roomed manor from a long-ago time—and perhaps still inhabited by the spirits of its former owners. Maybe there’s also some honest-to-gosh ghosts, hints Counahan, who points out the house’s location beside a seven-story hotel, where many years ago a young woman fell from one of the balconies to her death. Sometimes, he says, “people tell us they’ve seen a little girl running around the house, laughing and giggling.” Hmmmm… Then there’s the story (perhaps also true) that the Mansion’s current owner, when she was a little girl, remembers a medium coming to the house to “open a portal between this realm and the next, to invite spirits to come and pass freely inside,” and never closed the door.
Most of the staff have experienced things even they can’t explain—footsteps, voices, laughter, shadows darker than the darkness, and a strange “energy” they feel when walking inside. So, the Mansion not only depicts a haunted house, it might really be a haunted house.
“There’s always that question of the paranormal, what happens after we leave our bodies here and what happens to us after our time here is done,” Counahan says. “It’s that unknown, and the excitement of wanting to know, that keeps bringing people back.”
It all adds up to a supremely scarifying experience, unlike anything you’ll encounter elsewhere in the area…and one that keeps visitors to the Smoky Mountains returning for hefty new haunted-house doses of thrills, chills and good ol’ fright-night fun. It’s open year-round, and the staff continually updates the scares and surprises. But be warned: It’s probably too intense for younger kids, even though none of the characters can touch or make any physical contact with guests. And if you’re mobility challenged, all the stairs and narrow passageways aren’t for you.
The Mansion is a particularly busy during October, when people flock to the Smokies to see the fall colors—and get in the trick-or-treat spirit. During the week of Halloween, the Mysterious Mansion may see upward of 800 visitors a day. But any time is a great time to be spooked at Gatlinburg’s original spookhouse, where the hauntings might be real, the ghouls are always lurking, and the staff really enjoys their work…scaring you.
“For us,” says Counahan with a grin, “every day is Halloween.”
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 