William Root House

Marietta's oldest surviving home (c. 1845) is haunted by Mrs. Root, who peers from the bedroom window at passersby. Staff tighten the antique rope bed every evening, and every morning it looks slept in again. Museum director Trevor Beemon keeps a list of questions ready in case staff get a chance to talk to her.

Every morning, museum staff tighten the antique rope bed in the main bedroom. Every morning, they find it looking slept in again.

The William Root House is the oldest surviving home in Marietta, built around 1845 for a Philadelphia-born druggist named William Root who came to town in 1839 to open a mercantile store. He married Hannah Rhemer Simpson in 1840, bought a lot on the corner of Church and Lemon Streets in 1844, and built a modest clapboard house that looked nothing like the columned plantation mansions Hollywood would later make famous. This was a middle-class home. Root sold medicine and dry goods, founded St. James Episcopal Church, taught Sunday School for years, and served two terms as county coroner. The family had five children. They lost a young son in the house, which was common enough in the 1840s that the community barely paused.

The house survived Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, which burned most of what surrounded it. Root kept ownership until 1886. In 1893 the building was rotated to face Lemon Street and remodeled in Victorian style. By the 1940s it had been carved into three apartments. By the 1980s it was falling apart and headed for demolition.

Cobb Landmarks and Historical Society acquired the house in 1989 from Marguerite and William Bullard, then moved it two blocks to 80 North Marietta Parkway. Architectural analysis guided the restoration of the exterior back to its 1845 appearance. The interior is furnished with 1860s period pieces, the grounds include a recreated cookhouse with an 1850s stove, and the gardens are planted from historical research. It became the first house museum in the country to offer a fully self-guided touchscreen tour.

The ghost is almost certainly Mrs. Root. Passersby on the street have looked up at the main bedroom window and seen a woman staring out. Not a reflection, not a curtain. A woman, watching. Staff arrive in the morning to find the bed disturbed despite being the last ones in the building the night before. Director Trevor Beemon says staff haven't had direct personal interactions with whatever lives in the house, but they keep a list of questions ready in case they get the chance.

In October, the museum leans into its reputation. Flashlight tours take visitors through the darkened rooms. A Victorian Funeral exhibit displays 1800s embalming equipment, mourning jewelry made from human hair, and a restored embalming table. Lectures cover William's son who served as the city's coroner, and the Victorian obsession with spirit photography, where bereaved families posed the dead in lifelike positions for final portraits. Root himself would have been familiar with all of this. He was a pharmacist and a coroner. Death was part of his professional life. That it followed him into the afterlife feels almost appropriate.

The house has been moved twice, remodeled once, subdivided into apartments, left to decay, rescued from demolition, relocated, and restored to a version of its original self. Through all of that, someone keeps sleeping in the bed.