Haunted Places in Memphis

In 1878 this city nearly stopped existing - and then legally did, for about fifteen years. Where the dead are, which story holds up, and what any of it costs.

The year Memphis stopped being a city

Kate Bionda, who kept a restaurant, died of yellow fever on 13 August 1878. Within days something like twenty thousand people - around half the population - had left. More than five thousand of those who stayed died. By July 1879 the population had fallen from about forty thousand to 16,110, the city was bankrupt, and Tennessee revoked its charter: Memphis ceased to be a city and became a taxing district, and it took roughly fifteen years to get its charter back. No other American city of that size has been erased by an epidemic and had to apply to exist again.

No Man's Land

Four public lots at Elmwood Cemetery, known together as No Man's Land, hold at least fourteen hundred victims of the epidemics of 1873, 1878 and 1879; around twenty-five hundred of the city's fever dead lie at Elmwood in total. There are no individual names on most of it, because there was no time and no one left to record them. Elmwood is a working cemetery, open daily, and it is the most substantial thing on any haunted-Memphis itinerary - which is also why it is the one most often skipped.

The Martyrs of Memphis

Two priests and four Episcopal sisters - Constance, Thecla, Ruth and Frances - stayed to nurse the sick when almost everyone who could leave had left, and died of the fever doing it. The sisters are buried at Elmwood with their graves set out as a cross. In 1985 the Episcopal Church added Constance and her Companions to its calendar, and they are commemorated every year on 9 September. It is the part of this story that is actually about the city rather than about ghosts, and it is free to go and stand in front of.

Mary at the Orpheum, and where the story contradicts itself

The theatre's ghost is a girl of about twelve. Some accounts have her killed by a vehicle on Beale Street in 1921, others in a fire at the theatre in 1923, and a seat on the mezzanine is said to be kept unsold for her; Yul Brynner reportedly saw her during a run of The King and I in 1982. The disagreement is the point. A documented death has one date. Two competing causes eighty years on is the signature of a story that grew rather than happened - which does not make the Orpheum less worth seeing, only worth hearing honestly.

Free, paid, and what a tour is for

Elmwood is open daily and costs nothing to walk, and No Man's Land and the martyrs' graves are the two things here that genuinely repay a visit. The Orpheum is a working theatre - the way inside is a ticket to a show or one of its own backstage tours. Beale Street is free and loud. So a Memphis ghost tour is selling narration over a city whose real horror is a matter of public record, and the good ones lead with 1878 rather than with the theatre.

That sits in the typical band for the category, whose median is $30.

Memphis ghost tours

2 of the 2 Memphis tours we track . Ordered by review depth.

Questions people actually ask

What is the most haunted location in Memphis?
By reputation, the Orpheum Theatre and its ghost Mary. By history, Elmwood Cemetery - specifically No Man's Land, four public lots holding at least fourteen hundred people who died in the yellow fever epidemics of 1873, 1878 and 1879, most of them unnamed. The theatre has the anecdotes and the famous witness. The cemetery has the fourteen hundred.
Is there a haunted house in Memphis?
The Woodruff-Fontaine House in Victorian Village is the one usually named, and it is open as a house museum with an admission charge. Beyond it, most of the city's ghost material attaches to public buildings - the Orpheum, the Peabody, Earnestine and Hazel's - rather than to houses, and to Elmwood Cemetery, which is the substantial stop and costs nothing.
Is the Peabody Hotel haunted?
It collects the stories a grand old hotel collects - it opened in its present building in 1925 and has been continuously in the middle of the city's life since. None of it is documented in the way the 1878 epidemic is documented. It is a working hotel, so the lobby is open to anyone who walks in and that is the whole of the visit; no ghost tour has access to the guest floors.
Where are the victims of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic buried?
Mostly at Elmwood Cemetery, in four public lots known collectively as No Man's Land, which hold at least fourteen hundred victims of the 1873, 1878 and 1879 epidemics; roughly twenty-five hundred of the city's fever dead are at Elmwood altogether. Most are unnamed. The four Episcopal sisters who stayed to nurse the sick and died of it are buried there too, their graves laid out as a cross.
What is the most haunted location?
For Memphis, the answer that survives scrutiny is Elmwood Cemetery. Nationally, the question does not have an answer - nobody measures this, and the buildings that carry the title carry it because they are promoted, not because anything was counted. The useful version of the question is which places have a documented death behind them, and in Memphis that is 1878 and the cemetery it filled.