06/23/2026
🌲👻 The Haunted GSM Road Trip You Didn't Know You Needed 👻🌲
The Great Smoky Mountains are known for breathtaking views and unforgettable adventures ... but after dark, they tell a very different story.
We've mapped out 8 haunted spots tucked along the GSM that will have you looking over your shoulder and sleeping with the lights on. From chilling legends passed down for generations to locations where the unexplained has become the norm, this road trip is not for the faint of heart.
Think you're brave enough to hit all 8?
🔗 Check out the full list and start planning your haunted adventure:
Drop a 👻 in the comments if you'd add this to your travel bucket list — and tag someone brave enough to ride shotgun!
The Haunted Great Smoky Mountains Road Trip takes you to eight of the most unsettling spots in the Smokies:
📍Haunted Old Settlers Trail
📍Elkmont Ghost Town
📍Road to Nowhere Tunnel
📍Lucy The Hitchhiker of Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
📍Cades Cove Glowing Orbs
📍Chilhowee Mountain & The Legend of Spearfinger
📍Little Greenbrier School & Cemetery
📍Greenbrier Restaurant
This eerie mountain route winds through old communities, lonely trails, ghost stories, and places where the past still feels close. Begin at the Tunnel to Nowhere near Bryson City, a dark, unfinished tunnel at the end of Lakeview Drive, where only about six miles of the promised road were ever completed after Fontana Lake covered old roads and cut off former communities. From there, make your way to The Greenbrier Restaurant in Gatlinburg, a former mountain lodge from the 1930s where the well-known tale of Lydia, the ghostly bride, is still part of its story. Along Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, watch for the legend of Lucy, the woman in white said to appear beside the road before disappearing into the trees.
Cades Cove adds another uneasy stop, with its old churches, cabins, cemeteries, and stories of strange lights after dark. Chilhowee Mountain brings in one of the Smokies’ oldest and most frightening legends, Spearfinger, the Cherokee figure said to haunt the mountains. The route continues through Elkmont Ghost Town, once shaped by logging and later by vacation cabins built between 1910 and 1935, where preserved buildings still sit quietly in the forest. Old Settlers Trail adds stone walls, old homesites, and cemetery remnants from families who once lived deep in the mountains. End at Little Greenbrier School and Cemetery, where the one-room schoolhouse was built from tulip poplar logs in 1881 and served as a school, church, and gathering place for the mountain community. Together, these stops make this one of the Smokies’ creepiest road trips, mixing real history, folklore, abandoned places, and mountain legends into one unforgettable drive.
