Bemburg Buildings (cartercountyhistory.com)

As we cover many supernatural stories throughout East Tennessee, today, we’re going to discuss a haunting at the Bemberg Rayon Plant located in Elizabethton.

The building is a historic site that operated as a factory from 1926 to the late 1970s. The factory employed over 2,000 staff members at a time, but was known for intense labor strikes during the first few years of operation.

During the first few years of operation, while these strikes were active, workers believed that this was the worst it could get, with the poor pay and even worse conditions. But in 1929, 10 individuals were killed during a strike.  This naturally started talk around town of the building being haunted, but it doesn’t stop there.

In 1932, a fire broke out, and there was a massive explosion that killed nearly 100 workers. This fire caused such irreparable damage that the factory had to shut down for a short time. During this time, construction workers reported hearing screams, especially at night, coming from all over the factory with no explanation. This heightened the town’s fear of the building.

Though the factory stayed open for another 40 years, different tales of hauntings continued. Once the factory was condemned in the 1980s, there was another tragic incident where a woman either fell over or was pushed to her death from a top-story window. For years, people claimed that they saw a woman falling from this position again and again, only to find that there was nothing at the scene. 

Following the rule of threes, after this woman’s death, no other fatalities were reported. Nowadays, the site is on private property and is prohibited from entry. Along with seeing the woman fall from the building, people still state that they can hear screams from the site at night, just like the construction workers did. Now, whether or not any of this is true, there’s definitely a haunting history with this building, with over 100 lives being lost in less than 100 years in gruesome ways. The Bemberg building remains a historic site with a tragic past.

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