Number, Please?
On the other end of the line, there use to be a smile and a voice…
A Ghost Tour of 333 E Main
Two October nights inside a Johnson City building that was a bank, insurance company, and the switchboard that connected the whole town.
SATURDAY October 17th - 9:00 PM
SATURDAY October 24th - 9:00 PM
Your hosts work these tours on tips. If you have a good night, they'd be grateful.
$20 per person · about 90 minutes · 10 people per tour
WHAT THIS IS
History · Lore · Paranormal
We bought a bookstore and inherited a building, and then we started noticing odd things and reading old newspapers.
What came back was stranger and better than anything we could have made up: the historic telephone exchange, a 1765 chandelier imported from France, a brick wall in the basement with something on the other side of it, and a line in a 1922 newspaper about a tunnel under the business district.
Some of what you'll hear is documented, and we'll show you where it came from. Some of it is Appalachian tall tale, and we'll tell you which is which as we go. And some of it is what people have felt in these rooms throughout the 100 years of history, which we'll pass along without telling you what to make of it.
WHERE WE GO
Four stops, one building.
01 — The Shop Floor
Where the bank lobby was. Built around a Chandelier that was a prized possession of the bank. Hand-made in France in 1765. It hung in a Paris town house belonging to the family of one of Napoleon's officers, and it came to Johnson City by way of New Orleans in 1952. Forty-two candle cups, Baccarat crystal, and a story its own owners couldn't keep straight.
From 1923 this was the telephone exchange for the whole town. Sixty-four operators, a million-plus calls a month, working days and nights in a room built to be soundproof. The women who ran that board are the reason this tour has its name.
03 — The Old Switchboard
02 — The Basement
An assembly room with a raised stage, a bank's worth of dead air, and a wall that somebody bricked up. We'll tell you what the 1923 papers say is on the other side of it, and what the city's own legends say instead.
04 — The phone that isn't connected
There's a telephone in the shop that doesn't go anywhere. We put it there for a plain and ordinary reason, before we knew what this building used to be. We'll finish the tour with it and discuss the stories that fill our shelves.
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