History Corner

Ben Allen, Nashville's Mystic

By Ridley Wills II

In the early 1900s, Nashville children would have been terrified at the thought of walking or running by the tall brick home of the city’s mystic, the elegant Ben Allen, at 125 Eighth Avenue South (Rosa Parks Boulevard). Born in New Orleans in 1855, Ben moved to Nashville with his parents as a small child. His father, Joseph W. Allen, had made a fortune as a cotton broker in New Orleans and in Nashville helped found Third National Bank that later merged with First American National Bank. He also helped organize the Nashville Gas Company. Allen and his wife built their imposing town house with its tall arched windows in 1869 on what was then one of the fashionable residential streets, the part of Spruce Street that lay just south of Broadway. Mrs. Allen was such a perfectionist that she would not allow coal to be brought in the house until the coal had been washed. Ben, although studious, dropped out of college to pursue his own studies. In 1883, he married a young widow, Susan Dorothy Perkins, eight years his senior.

Later, his parents turned over their big house to Ben and “Miss Sue” and moved to a smaller house. Ben built a workshop in the back of his house where he designed jewelry and engraved silver. Ben Allen joined Nashville’s Scottish Rite, a fraternal organization, while his gregarious wife entertained friends at small dinner parties in their home. Allen became a Mason in 1888 when he was 33. He later rose to the lofty rank of 33rd degree Mason. Ben Allen was considered a genius. Starting in boyhood, he delved into scholarly books on philosophy, astronomy, astrology, Oriental history and the history of art. He became a collector of paintings, statues and oriental rugs. Tall and slender with piercing blue eyes and a carefully groomed beard, Allen was always elegantly dressed, often in white linen. Stories of his mystic powers grew as more and more people attended his seances, which he held three times a week. There, the participants, usually friends or neighbors, sat around a table, touched fingers and waited for messages to come from the spirit world. Strangely, it was “Miss Sue'' who received the messages. “The thing” came rushing in, rustling the ladies’s voluminous petticoats. Some participants said “the thing” felt like a large cat rubbing against their legs. It unbuttoned high top shoes, rattled silver and china, and even caused the table to rise and push aside the people around it. When Robert Love Taylor was governor between 1897 and 1899, he and his wife lived in the Maxwell House Hotel. Their grandson, Peter Taylor, the author, told the story of the morning when his grandmother Taylor suffered from a terrible headache. She tried to wait it out by sitting on the balcony overlooking the lobby. Without her knowledge, Allen hypnotized her and cured her of the headache. She was grateful and told the governor what happened. He replied, “I don’t want you to be hypnotized again.” Once a skeptic at one of Allen’s seances turned on the lights to expose what he considered a hoax. He was followed home that summer night by “the thing” that pulled off his bed covers several nights in a row.

When, Ben Allen, Nashville’s wellbred gentleman of leisure, grew seriously ill at age 53, some Nashvillians thought that he had “brain fever.” When he died in 1910, at 55, the city was stunned. His funeral was held at McKendree Methodist Church. At the stroke of midnight on Thursday, July 14, the eerie ceremony began. The Preceptor, Joseph Toy Howell, the only one wearing a white robe, took his place at the head of the casket. Four Knights with swords guarded the casket. Allen’s own sword, shining with diamonds, rubies, amethysts and other precious stones, lay on top of the casket. In the darkened church, Howell asked the Knights several questions, which they answered while kneeling beside the casket. The Preceptor then showly struck an iron cross three times.

The black-robed Knights then removed Allen’s jeweled sword and other symbols of the riches of the world and solumely left the church in a procession. The service took an hour. Today, people who travel Ben Allen Road in East Nashville have no idea who Ben Allen was.