CLINTON, Tenn. (WATE) — This time of year we hear all kinds of stories about haunted houses and buildings. In Clinton — those types of stories lead you to the J.R. Daugherty building on Main Street.
It was a furniture store and apartment complex for half a century. Today — the walls and ceilings are peeling apart, the stairs and floor creek with every step, windows are broken, and some say — this building is also the home of a ghost.
“Back here is where a lot of people feel people touching them. Chills. Hair on their arms,” Melissa Kay said.
Kay has spent a lot of time in the old J.R. Daughtery Furniture Store building. She has had some unexplained incidents happen while inside the 85-year-old structure.
“Just about right about here and I heard somebody come running up the stairs behind me — so, I just moved to the side … I jumped to the side to let whoever it was past, but no one was there,” she told WATE.
Kay said she can’t explain what happened.
“I think there is a lot we don’t know. Even though we may say it’s a ghost or something — we don’t know or we don’t have the equipment to understand or the intelligence to understand.”
Kay explained her experience as just one of many that people have reported at the old building. According to her, the paranormal is normal — a window opening on its own. Lights turn on and off on their own. Furniture moving around on its own.
Kay said the former owner of the store — J.R. Daugherty — died in his upstairs apartment 35 years ago.
She has come to believe that his body was removed, but he never left. “The activity has come and gone. And it seems when Craig Hansen first bought the building and was working on it — they were experiencing a lot of things. Furniture was moving around on its own. Footsteps were everywhere, but no one was in the building.”
She said when Mr. Hansen — the current owner of the building and the owner of the Cadence Craft and Trade store inside — moved Mr. Daugherty’s belongings out of his apartment and locked up the building, someone or something didn’t like it.
“He comes down here and all the lights are on. All the alarms are going off and all this stuff was smashed and broken everywhere. And there was no sign of a break-in or anyone coming in.”
Kay wonders if that was J.R. Daugherty and wonders if he was behind the constant opening of a closed window.
“I kept my eyes on it and watched the window because I wanted to see it actually open on its own … I for 20 minutes watching and watching and we got distracted and looked away for 20 seconds and looked back over and it was open,” she said.
She continued, “Somebody couldn’t have run by and opened it and disappeared in that amount of time that we weren’t looking.”
Some things in the old store – like this doll case that Kay set up – just add to the curiosity of the building.
“Dolls are creepy. Who doesn’t like a creepy doll,” she said. “The one with no hair and spider on its head … that was a special touch.”
But stories about the ghost of the former owner reacting to what he was seeing in his store really make you wonder.
The old building is being sold and will be remodeled. There will be a store on the lower level and apartments on the other levels.
Kay said it will be interesting to see if the paranormal activity will come to an end or continue when that happens.
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