Dolly Parton ‘Screamed in Horror’ After a Frightening Experience in Her Home

Dolly Parton was in her home when an uneasy feeling settled over her. After a few strange occurrences, Parton had a full-on shock that terrified her. The singer became convinced that her house was haunted.

Dolly Parton believed she had a spirit in her home

Parton and her husband, Carl Dean, shared their first home in Nashville with some of Parton’s siblings and her best friend, Judy. When they traveled back to their hometown, though, Parton and Dean were left alone in the house. They began to hear strange noises, which the couple attributed to Judy returning home early.

“One night we locked the doors and windows, as we routinely did when living in the city, and went off to bed. We soon began to hear noises in the kitchen,” she wrote in her book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, adding, “We heard the familiar sounds of cabinets opening and water running. We weren’t too disturbed because we knew Judy had a key. When we heard footsteps up the stairs and water turning on in the bathroom, I said to Carl, ‘I guess Judy and the kids have come back early.’ And I rolled over to sleep.”

Later in the night, Parton got up to use the bathroom.

“In the wee hours of the morning, I got up to weewee,” she wrote. “Just as I entered the bathroom, the hot water came on full force, all by itself. I screamed in horror, and Carl came running. Now, that was a hard faucet to turn on anyway, and it always took a while for the water to heat up. I was scared.”

Dean still believed Judy had come home early and, somehow, turned on the faucet. When Parton searched the rooms and realized they were alone in the house, he blamed it on “the neighbors, or rats, or built-up water pressure in the pipes, or whatever.”

Her aunt later told a similar story

Not long after this frightening experience, Parton’s aunt told her a similar story.

“Very soon after that night, my Aunt Dorothy Jo told me something odd. She said, ‘I believe that Mama visited me last night.’ Her mother, my Grandma Rena, had recently passed away, at least her earthly self had,” Parton wrote. “Aunt Dorothy Jo explained, ‘I felt Mama’s presence real strong, standing right by my bed.’ Then my willies came back a hundredfold as she went on to say, ‘This morning, I found the kitchen window open.’”

This story was enough to get her to believe in the paranormal. In the future, she likely wouldn’t take Dean’s assurances as quickly.

“I still don’t know what happened, but it made me feel that much more certain that there are spirits and angels with us,” she wrote. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out.”

Dolly Parton said she had a similarly eerie experience in her childhood home

Years before Parton’s spine-tingling night, she had a similar experience. When she was a child, her family heard someone approach their front door as everyone laid down to bed. 

“We all got up. Even the little ones seemed to sense that something strange had happened,” she wrote. “The door was still locked and barred from the inside. My brother, who had been sleeping on the couch, said he felt a faint breeze, as if someone had passed closely by him. We looked at Mama and Daddy for answers. For once, they didn’t have any. They told us not to speak of this to anyone, because it was strange, and people didn’t believe in ghosts.”

Parton’s younger brother had recently died, and her mother feared the death angel had come to visit their home again. Parton wondered if it could have been her brother’s ghost or a manifestation of her grief. Ultimately, though, they never found out.