Jellico Tennessee - Haunting on Cumberland Ave.

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Now on to our story about the haunting on Cumberland Ave.

There is a house located on Cumberland Ave. that once served as a health clinic for pregnant women in the early 1940's. The best that I can find out through researching the house, it was a small clinic for many years. Directly across the street sits another house that was sometimes used as a birthing clinic. Both places was operated by the Smith family. Dr Smith reportedly passed away in Feb 1947 and is buried in the Jellico Cemetery.

During this time period most women gave birth at home but in some emergency related situations women would be admitted here. Families with a little more money to spare also chose this option on occasion. The babies were delivered in one house where they was cared for by the doctors wife (also a mid-wife) and soon after the mother would be moved across the street to the other house to rest and recuperate.

During this time there was many deaths related to childbirth. They didn't have the medical necessities, medicine and abilities that we have today. Having a baby was considered dangerous for both the baby and the mother. During an emergency when surgery was needed one or the other usually did not make it.

During my glory days as a teenager one of my best friends lived in the "mothers" house. At the time neither of us knew that the house was once a clinic for mothers but what we did know was that some creepy stuff happened there.

THE SCREAM

Late one night we was sitting in the house talking when all of a sudden a chilling scream echoed through the house. Thinking that the scream was from his mother we both took off running into the middle room. We ran smack into my friends mother who had also heard the scream and was running toward us at the same time. The three of us stood there in shock just looking at one another. His father was gone to work and nobody else was in the house, just the three of us. After the scream, the entire house felt cold and eerie. None of us slept that night, we all sit there trying to figure out what we had just heard and where it had came from.

I can still hear the awful sound in my mind still to this day. It was a painful scream from either physical pain or emotional. I wonder now if a mother had just received the news that her baby had not survived and that terrible moment was trapped in time only to be replayed over and over again.

FOOTSTEPS

Because my best friend and his mother stayed in the house alone on most nights, due to his father working the night shift, I was most commonly found spending the night there with them. My family lived close by on a neighboring street and both families were very close friends with one another.

There was no cable TV, no internet, no cell phones or gaming systems back in then. For entertainment on these long nights we had a blanket spread in front of the heating stove. We'd lay there and laugh and talk while his mother sit just across from us knitting and sewing up a storm while she listened to our silly conversations. Sometimes she'd join in but mostly she just listened and smiled occasionally.

On one particular night another terrifying event took place in that house. It was very late (around 1:00-2:00am) his mother was just about to retire from her sewing and she had instructed us boys that it was much too late to be laying in the floor chattering, so we too was about to go to bed.

We all three stopped cold in our tracks as we heard the sound of heavy foot steps walking down the hall. It sounded like a man wearing heavy work boots and he was coming directly up on us. My friends mother rushed to us and wrapped her arms around our shoulders, like a mother hen protecting her chicks. We all three looked toward the doorway expecting to see an intruder approach. The footsteps came all the way to the doorway directly in front of us. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room as we realized that nobody was there.

SOMEONE ON THE ROOF

One night my family was awakened by someone pounding on our door. My friend and his mother had ran through the dark to our house. His mother frantically told my parents that someone was stomping around on the roof of their house. She was pale and visibly shaken by the event. My father rounded up my two older brothers and we went to see who was on top of my friends house.

I remember watching my father climb up onto the roof with nothing but the moon giving him light to see by. My brothers walked around the house in hopes of catching anyone who might jump from the roof. There was nobody there, not even shoe tracks in the mud, nothing. My friends mother began to sob as she continued to tell us about what had unfolded just before they ran to our house for help.

"We was about to go to bed and I was checking on the fire to make sure it didn't go out through the night. Someone was on top of the house stomping on the roof like a maniac. We both heard it! They walked from one side to the other, back and forth. It was no animal, this was a person! They was deliberately trying to scare us because they was making sure to stomp, stomp, stomp specifically right over the middle room where we was at."

My father wanted to believe every word that she said but the look in his eyes was questioning yet concerned. "I believe you" he said "but there should at least be some foot tracks in the mud here." There was nothing to be found other than the dreadful silence that fell amongst us as we all looked at one another.

STRANGER WATCHING

Months later during the Summer months I was yet again staying the night with my friend. The windows were all wide open to allow the fresh night air inside. We were all gathered in the kitchen, sitting around the table. His mother was reading while my friend and I played a game.

The smell of pipe tabaco began to sift through the window. Anyone who knows about pipe tabaco knows that it has a strong, unique smell. Nobody in the house was smoking, his father didn't even smoke (and he wasn't even home). We looked out of the window and up on the hill was the perfect silhouette of a man wearing a hat. He was sitting beneath the apple tree looking straight through the window at us.

His mother opened the door as me and my friend followed right behind her. "You, get out of here!" she scolded. As we made our way toward the apple tree the man vanished but the smell of his pipe lingered in the air.

The next day I was telling my father about the stranger watching. He suggested that they get a guard dog . It was getting to where nobody felt comfortable in that house anymore. Burglaries and people stalking neighborhoods was unheard of, it just didn't happen. My parents began to believe that maybe it was just a bad case of the nerves that made these things seemingly happen. But we knew better. We knew something really strange was going on and we couldn't explain it.

THE DOG RAN AWAY

Eventually my friends father brought a dog home to help watch over things while he was away at night. The dog stayed for three nights before it ran away. My friend had told me that late in the night the dog kept digging at the door and eventually jumped through the window and ran away.

For some reason that dog must have wanted out of that house very badly and resorted to jumping straight through the window to escape. I helped patch up the broken window and walked the neighborhood relentlessly for weeks searching for the dog. We never did find him and he never did come back home.

SPINNING FLOWER POT

One evening my mother went to visit. It was getting dark outside and she sat at the kitchen table drinking tea and chatting with my friends mother. Suddenly a flower pot began to spin for no apparent reason. This scared the bejeebies out of my mother and she quickly gathered me up and rushed home. She never would go back to visit again. From then on she always invited them to come to our house instead.

It wasn't long after, my friend and his family moved out of the house. They relocated in the Newcomb TN area and our friendship slowly faded away. I have never forgotten the nights when those things that we couldn't explain scared us half to death.

FOLLOW UP

Over the years I have talked to several people who lived in that house, it's still there and people still live in it. Almost everyone that I spoke to said that they too have had strange things to happen there. Nothing horrible, just little things that'll spook you right good.

I have seen many for sale signs in the yard over the years. It seems that nobody stays there for long.

The house across the street, it's still there too and people claim to hear a baby crying sometimes. In fact, someone who lived there only a few years ago admitted that they moved away for that exact reason.

I found out that Dr. Smith loved smoking tabaco pipes and that most nights he could be found sitting outside smoking one.

There was also a grounds keeper who helped clean and take care of the two houses. Nobody can recall what his name was only that everyone called him "Moose". He was a tall, heavy man and always wore thick work boots.

I have also learned that cats and dogs are very sensitive to ghostly presence and it is not uncommon for them to refuse to stay in a haunted location. Sometimes they'll even go mad if they can't get away from it.

After speaking with some local elders who can remember the baby clinic, they confirmed that several deaths occurred there. I was also told that the patients in those two houses was usually from other places outside of Jellico.

Behind that house, which looks much different now days, still stands that old apple tree up on the hill. I often drive past and look over, wondering if the old doctor still sits there and smokes his pipe at night. More than anything else I wonder if he still watches over the people who live there.