County of house: Hardeman County
Location of house: SW corner, Bills St. & S. Lauderdale St., Bolivar
Original Owner: Wilbur Armistead
Current Owner: Unknown
Built: 1860
Architect: Fletcher Sloan
"Bolivar, Tennessee -It can't be the wind. That's what people in
Bolivar say about the rocking chair that sits on the porch of the old
house called the "Wren's Nest." It's too old. It takes some work to
make it rock, even when you're sitting in it. But sometimes... late at
night. Dunavant and Peggy Mask can hear it. "It has one bad rocker
that causes it to bump when it rocks", Dunavant Mask says, "At night
sometimes or early morning it would bump. You'd hear it bump, bump
bump bump bump. All by itself."
"That's not the only evidence that something else lives in this house.
When Mr. Mask was just a teenager, he had a close encounter with
something. Something to this day he can't explain. "The house was
locked and I walked up on the porch and a sound like a dead weight or
a body fell in the attic over my head. I got a pistol and a flashlight
and my father got a shotgun and stood at the foot of the stairs and I
went up in the attic. He stood guard at the foot and I went up with a
flashlight and a pistol. There was nothing up there. There hadn't been
anything up there. But something fell up there."
"The house was built in the late 1800's and was a wedding gift for a
girl named Lucy Bills. A woman who may still live here. Peggy Mask
says "after mother was ill and was awake late at night. She would talk
to Lucy. And the nurses would say Mrs. Elizabeth is talking to Lucy,
who's Lucy? I think maybe mother was talking to Ms. Lucy about her
house. But we needed nurses and I never did, they didn't know who Lucy
was and I didn't say a word."
"The Masks have learned to live with the stories ... And the spooky
presence of whatever or whoever is still in this house. But they know
it isn't Lucy who makes this old chair go bump bump in the night.
Legend has it, it's a man who lived here, around the turn of the
century and may still live here today. Dunavant Mask says "my father
always attributed the presence to Dave Parran. Uncle Dave Parran he
was called who owned the house and lived here at one time."
"Someone once took a picture of the Wren's Nest, sometime in the early
1900s. If you look closely at the front porch...you'll see uncle Dave
Parran, sitting and rocking. Some people think he still sits there
today. "I don't know the ghost personally but sometimes there's this
sensation of a light or a presence. It's pleasant, it's not scary. You
just look around and think 'there's something else here with me' and I
don't see anything but there's that presence."
"But if you ever walk past the Wren's Nest in Bolivar... Take a glance
at the front porch. You might even want to wave. Who knows...maybe
uncle Dave will rock for you." ~ by Jamey Tucker, Haunted Tennessee (see link below)
"This home was a wedding gift for Lucy Bills, the youngest daughter of The Pillar's owner John Houston Bills. Lucy married Wilbur Armistead, the editor of The Bolivar Bulletin. The home received its name because a nesting wren held up final painting of the home in 1870.
"The house was designed by Fletcher Sloan an architect well known for his Swiss chalet cottages. It originally consisted of four rooms on the ground floor with a detached kitchen, which later was connected to the house. Fletcher Sloan designed the home in the Victorian architecture style seen in the intricate dental work, called "gingerbread trim".
"The Armisteads sold the property to the Parran Family who owned it for three generations. Then it was acquired by the Mask family in 1939." ~ Visit Bolivar