Union Station Nashville Yards Room 711

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On my recent trip to Nashville, I finally made it a point to tour The Union Station Nashville Yards Hotel, A Marriot Autograph Collection.    We were eating breakfast at the hotel we were staying at and the server, Emma had worked at the Union Station Hotel for around 12 years.   She was telling us about her experience there.

First, It was built in the 1900s as a train depot on the L&N Railroad, stood abandoned, and then was transformed into a hotel in the mid-1980s. 

Emma went on to tell us about Room 711 and the spirit named Abigail.    The story goes that Abigail, a young woman in her 20's, came to the depot during World War II to see her beau who was headed to the frontlines in France off.

When the war was over, she went back to the same spot to greet him.  Sadly the soldier never came home.   He was killed in battle.  The story goes that stricken by grief Abigail returned to the railway station and threw herself in front of a train.

Abigail’s spirit seems to reside at the hotel, and in particular in the legendary Room 711.   Emma said when she worked there guests reported all sorts of unexplained phenomena, among them strange noises from within and above the room; and sounds of furniture dragging overhead, through Room 711’s on the top floor of the hotel. Flickering lights, figures photographed in mirrors, sudden plunges of temperature.   A night spent in Room 711 can be an intriguing one, to say the least!

Emma also told us that when she worked the night shift the phones would ring and nobody was there.  

Why Room 711? One idea is that Abigail favors it for the view it allows of the railroad tracks below.

There have also been anecdotes about a uniformed soldier out on the tracks—thought by some to be Abigail’s lost love, returned in the spirit dimension to reunite with her.