Cotton Mill Money and the Haunted Falcon Rest at McMinnville

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 18, 2026 · How we verify

Talk of a haunted Falcon Rest tends to arrive before the history does, which is a shame, because the history of this Queen Anne house in Warren County, Tennessee, is the more solid half of the story. Also known as the Clay Faulkner House, it stands near McMinnville and was built in 1896 and 1897 for a cotton mill owner with money to spend and a family to house.

Quick orientation: the house has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992, it operated as a bed and breakfast from 1993, and since 2000 it has worked as a historic attraction with tours, events and facility rentals rather than as an inn under its own roof.

Clay Faulkner, the Great Falls Cotton Mill and a House Built to Impress

Clay Faulkner was the son of Asa Faulkner, a politician and mill owner whose own home was called Falconhurst. Clay owned the Great Falls Cotton Mill, and the house he commissioned in the mid 1890s reflected that position. He lived there with his wife, Mary King Saunders, and their five children.

That single generation of Faulkner occupancy gives the house its name in the record books, but it is only the first chapter of a long run of changing hands.

The Doctor, the Mayor and the Years as a Hospital

From 1929 to 1941 the house belonged to Dr. Herman Reynolds, who welcomed patients into his home. W. V. Jones, mayor of McMinnville, owned it from 1943 to 1945. Later the building was used as a hospital outright, before the Grissom and McGlothin families remodelled it as a private residence in the 1980s.

It is worth noting how much of the property’s reputation leans on that medical stretch. A house where people were treated, and where some presumably died, collects stories the way a plain farmhouse does not. The sources confirm the medical use. They do not record any specific death, and neither should anyone repeating the tale.

Gingerbread Trim and Queen Anne Lines

The design is Queen Anne, with a gingerbread porch that extends from the front and wraps around one side of the house. That ornamented, deep shadowed exterior is exactly the silhouette popular imagination reaches for when it pictures a haunted house, and the visual shorthand almost certainly does the reputation some favours.

What Is Actually Claimed About Falcon Rest

Here the honest answer is short. The available record states only that some people claim the house is haunted. There is no documented incident, no named apparition, no verified event in the source material to attach a ghost story to.

Anyone visiting expecting a catalogue of specific reported phenomena should know that those accounts, where they exist, come from visitors and local retelling rather than from the historical record. The house’s own promotional identity as an attraction blends history and entertainment, so it pays to keep the two separated in your own notes.

Visiting Falcon Rest Near McMinnville

Falcon Rest became a bed and breakfast in 1993. Since 2000, guest rooms have been offered on the grounds instead of inside the mansion, while the house itself operates as a historic attraction with guided historic tours, events and facility rentals. That makes a daytime tour the usual way to see the interior, with overnight stays handled separately on the property.

Go for the architecture and the layered ownership history, which are documented and genuinely interesting. Treat the hauntings as an unverified local claim, because that is all the record supports.

Address: Near McMinnville, Warren County, Tennessee

See Falcon Rest for Yourself

Sources

• National Register of Historic Places Weekly Lists for 1992 (National Park Service)
• Bed & Restpite
• Haunted Tennessee: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Volunteer State
• NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
• Tennessee Mansion Tour, Falcon Rest, McMinnville, Tenn.
• Wikipedia: Falcon Rest

Ghost Tours Nearby

Murder & Mayhem Haunted History Walking Tour★ 4.6 (421)from $26Chattanooga Ghosts & Legends: Family-Friendly Walking Tour★ 4.6 (76)from $30Cursed in Chattanooga Haunted Walking Tour★ 4.4 (95)from $35

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