By Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – When Cindy Elliott Broadbent and her husband, Eddie, bought a house “in the middle of nowhere” – actually, in nearby Springfield – they didn’t anticipate it would already be inhabited. By who? By someone or something that Broadbent calls “a spirit, not a ghost.”
Broadbent would typically scoff at the idea of a real-life haunted house.
“I don’t believe it until I see it,” she says.
But less than a month after moving into a rural house in 2005, she and her husband heard a disembodied female voice.
“Eddie had just finished painting our bedroom,” Broadbent says. “So I went in there and we just stood two feet apart, just looking around. And I was starting to say, ‘I really like this color.’ And when Eddie said something, this female voice spoke at the same time. It was like she was standing right there.”
Broadbent then looked at her husband and tried to speak again, saying something back about the room looking nice.
“And she spoke again when I spoke,” Broadbent says. “At the same time. So we couldn’t hear exactly what she said. And I looked at Eddie and said, ‘Did you hear that?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t want to say anything. It must be the TV.’”
I said, “‘Eddie, there is no TV on in the house.’ It was kind of really strange.”
The Broadbents’ house is not old; it was built in 1979. However, it is the third house on a long, shared driveway; at the second home on the
driveway, there is a family cemetery. And the first house on the driveway was built in the 1850s. So the area possesses some history, if that is indeed what prompts ghostly activity.
A few months after hearing the disembodied voice, Broadbent says she had placed a bag of tea candles on the kitchen table that went missing.
“When I went looking for them the next day, I couldn’t find them,” she says. “It was just Eddie in the house and they were moved off the table into the dining room, right around the corner from the kitchen table, and were sitting on top of a box. That was the second strange thing.”
She says she asked Eddie about the candles.
“He said, ‘I didn’t touch them. What are you talking about?’”
Due to the way the candles were placed – neatly on top of a box – Broadbent knew the move couldn’t have been the cats’ responsibility.
“That was just very weird,” she says.
Broadbent hasn’t experienced anything odd since then – other than unusual “electrical flickers” on clear, sunny days. But she says Eddie has had more experiences.
“My husband has heard a sigh that sounded like, ‘Oh, dear,’” she says. “And at other times he’s felt something brush against his shoulder where there is nothing there.”
She says that Eddie also points out one corner of their bedroom where their beagle and one of their cats will sit and stare at the ceiling when there’s nothing there.
Broadbent says that the house has been “very quiet” for the last several years, but she still wonders what might be the root cause of the seemingly paranormal activity. She points out that there might even be a connection with the famous Bell Witch hauntings in Adams. The area, she said, “is probably about 10 to 15 minutes away as the crow flies.”
Regardless, Broadbent says she has never been afraid.
“I’m more afraid of the coyotes I hear out back with my dogs being out,” she says. “I’ve never been afraid of the spirit, because I don’t feel that she’s threatening. I feel that she’s friendly.”
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.