The Music Wasn’t Part of the Tour

My husband and I visited Carnton while we were spending a few days in Franklin. I’m not a huge Civil War history person, but my husband is, so touring the house was mostly his idea.

After the tour we stayed for a while and walked around the grounds. At some point I could hear music coming from the direction of the house. It was really faint, but it sounded like someone playing an old string instrument. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, maybe a violin or fiddle.

I assumed it was part of the tour. A lot of historic places have music playing quietly in certain rooms to add to the atmosphere, so I didn’t think anything of it.

I mentioned it to my husband and he had no idea what I was talking about.

We stopped walking for a minute so he could listen, but he couldn’t hear it. I still could. It wasn’t loud, but there was definitely a melody. I remember joking that apparently my hearing was better than his.

As we walked farther from the house I stopped hearing it.

Before we left, we went back toward the visitor area and I mentioned the music to one of the people working there. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I basically told her I liked that they had old-fashioned music playing because it added something to the experience.

She looked confused and told me they didn’t have music playing in the house.

I thought maybe I’d heard someone’s phone or another visitor, but she asked me where I’d been when I heard it and what it sounded like. When I told her, she said there had been stories over the years about people hearing music around the property when no one was playing anything.

That was the first I’d heard about any of it.

Of course my husband thought this was hilarious because he’d been standing right next to me and hadn’t heard a thing.

I looked it up later and found stories about people hearing fiddle music at Carnton, which made the whole thing a lot stranger.

I’m sure sound could have carried from somewhere else, especially outside. There were other people around that day and someone could have had music playing where I couldn’t see them.

I just don’t know why I could hear it so clearly and my husband couldn’t.

And I definitely didn’t know people had reported hearing music there before it happened.