The Wren's Nest

Joel Chandler Harris's 1870s farmhouse turned Queen Anne Victorian in Atlanta's West End, where he wrote the Uncle Remus tales, is haunted by his grandchildren Pierre and Charles (seen playing on the stairs), Harris himself (in his rocking chair), and a former worker named Chloe. A 2019 paranormal investigation captured whispered voices and responsive knocking.

Museum director Melissa Swindell was driving Joel Chandler Harris's typewriter to a new location when her car shut down. No warning lights, no mechanical explanation. The car refused to start until she turned around and brought the typewriter back.

The Wren's Nest, Atlanta's oldest house museum, sits in the West End neighborhood where Harris lived from 1881 until his death in 1908. He rented the Queen Anne Victorian first, then bought it after Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings sold 10,000 copies in its first four months. In 1884 he added six rooms and a new facade. A furnace, indoor plumbing, and electricity followed around 1900. The house got its name in 1895 when the family found wrens nesting in their mailbox and built a new one rather than disturb the birds.

Harris was an Atlanta Constitution editor who compiled African American folktales into the Uncle Remus stories, featuring Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and the Tar Baby. The work is culturally complicated. Harris, a white man, profited from Black storytelling traditions. The museum today addresses that legacy directly. Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley visited in 1900, and Harris's children nicknamed him Uncle Jeems. The house became a museum in 1913 and received National Historic Landmark status on December 19, 1962.

The paranormal reports started in the early 2000s. Two young boys, roughly three and five years old, appear on the stairs and in the yard. They play, they run, they seem happy. Staff believe they're Pierre and Charles, Harris's grandchildren, who both died on the property in infancy. The children don't seem to know they're being watched.

A portly figure sits in Harris's rocking chair. The shape matches Harris himself, who was a short, stocky man. A tall, thin man shows up in the bedroom and dining room, possibly Harris's son Evelyn. A woman peers through the curtains between the library and parlor, and witnesses who've seen the framed photos on the wall say she looks like Chloe, a former worker at the house.

In February 2019, the Southeastern Institute of Paranormal Research ran a month-long investigation. They brought digital voice recorders, infrared cameras, EMF meters, temperature sensors, and a device called Boo Bear. Their findings were specific. Audio recordings picked up loud banging in the basement that nobody heard during the investigation itself. Whispered voices said "That's crazy," "here?," and "now." When investigators asked spirits to knock, something knocked back. The library smelled suddenly of burning candle wax with no candles lit. A flashlight turned on and off in response to yes-or-no questions.

The institute's conclusion: "We believe that there is paranormal activity at the Wren's Nest. We believe there is a residual haunting as well as an intelligent haunting."

The house runs storytelling performances every Saturday. Professional storytellers share the Br'er Rabbit tales that made Harris famous, in the same rooms where his grandchildren are still seen playing on the stairs. There's something fitting about a house built on stories becoming a place where the stories include the people who lived and died there. The wrens still nest in the mailbox, 130 years after the first ones showed up.