This story was told when the informant was explaining the local legends of growing up in Eastern Tennessee.

“So there’s other little town called Jefferson city, it’s pretty small, pretty rural, all farms and shit, it’s kinda like midway between Bullsgap and Morristown which is my hometown, it’s kind of off the map places in east tenessee, but Jefferson City is particularly interesting because there’s this very, very big beautiful victorian house that’s like white and has a sprawling landscape and whatever, and nobody lives it, ever, it’s never ever been bought and I don’t think it’s even for sale anymore but that’s because there was a lady who lived in the house, and she had like fifty pets I think? Like, very many cats and dogs, so she died one day, because she was old, and then no one really, and she didn’t have family or anything, so she just, like, stayed there, dead, and eventually her pets, once they ran out of things to eat they started dying too. So by the time anybody came, they came because they could smell like the rot, overwhelming, so they come, and see this absolute horror scene of rotting bodies and stuff and they clean it out eventually and try to put the house back on the market. And every time it goes on the market and someone moves in, they say they cannot sleep because they hear the dogs and the cats all night rattling and moving around the house all night, and you can smell the rot and the decay still. Which is crazy! But there it is.”

Analysis:

The story is interesting because the house is empty now, and the local legends have become so engrained in the culture that it would be strange to occupy the house because you of the suggestion of the cats and dogs running around, you’d probably hear them!