We sat down on antique furniture and began our interview in the parlor, which was adorned with the black fabric hangings that would have been de rigeur on the passing of a loved one, all for the home’s current exhibit Mourning Memphis. I asked Ms. Elena to tell me about the home’s most famous ghost, Mollie Woodruff. Ms. Elena explained that Mollie, the daughter of Amos Woodruff, was married in the home to the first of her two husbands. Mollie never had a child that survived to adulthood despite three miscarriages and a stillborn baby.
But the goosebumps began when Ms. Elena told me about her experience with another ghost, Elliott Fontaine. One afternoon at dusk, she came up to the house to double-check everything for a big tour group that was coming through the next day. She figured that, if anything spooky were going to happen, it would be in Mollie’s room. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred, so she made her way up to the third floor. As she came up the staircase, there was man sitting at the foot of the stairs to the fourth floor tower room. “It was very… I don’t know what the word is beyond frightening,” she said. Initially she thought it was a guest that had been locked in the museum after closing. The man was completely lifelike, not translucent as some spirits are. She then realized it was an apparition of Elliott Fontaine, the son of the second family to live in the mansion, whom she recognized from photographs. Ms. Elena closed her eyes, opened them, and he was gone. It was, she said “so frightening. Your mind can’t believe what your eyes are seeing.”
The Woodruff-Fontaine House, 680 Adams Ave., is open for visits Wednesday through Sundays noon to 4pm. Coming this December, don’t miss the Dead Poets’ Society Dinner, where guests dress in costume and entertainers portray dead poets of the past. For details visit www.woodruff-fontaine.com, or call 901-526-1469.