Standing in downtown Columbia, Tennessee, is the stately home known as “Rally Hill.” It is said that the site was once the location of a spring where people would ‘rally’ to rest and collect water. James Walker, brother-in-law of James K. Polk the eleventh president of the United States, built the home in 1843.
It was the first house to be constructed of brick in Maury County. The interior walls are three-brick thick with 12-foot ceilings downstairs and 10-foot ceilings upstairs. From its grand entrance hall, to the double twin-parlors, and the two-story detached kitchen, it is rich in history.
By the 1970’s, Rally Hill had been divided into apartments. The current owners were in the midst of restoring the old house and lived in the downstairs with two rented apartments upstairs. I lived in one apartment and a friend lived in the apartment across the hall.
Another friend was transferring to an out-of-town college and would be living in a dorm on campus that did not allow pets. This presented a problem for his pet boa constrictor named Satan. My friend across the hall volunteered to take care of Satan while his owner was away at school, but he would need the approval of our landlady. Surprisingly she agreed, but there was a condition – she did not want to wake up and find Satan in bed with her.
Satan was about 3-feet long and spent most of his time in a terrarium made from a large aquarium tank filled with gravel and covered with a screen top. Occasionally he was allowed to lounge on the back of a ladder-back chair in front of the television. My friend worked at night and I worked during the day. Late one afternoon just as I was about to leave work for home and my friend was to leave home for work, he called. Satan was missing. My friend had already searched his apartment and since he needed to go to work, he asked me to search his apartment again.
After arriving home, I went across the hall to my friend’s apartment. There was little doubt that he had made a thorough search of the apartment. My search also came up empty handed and I decided that a search of my own apartment would be wise. However, that search was also fruitless.
The following morning my friend faced the dreaded task of informing our landlady that Satan was lost – presumably somewhere in the house. She actually took it quite well. We all began a search of the downstairs of the house, but this search came up empty as well.
Rally Hill was included on the Majestic Middle Tennessee Fall Tour of historic homes. Since this was September, our landlady and her husband were busy preparing the house and grounds for the upcoming tour in October of which I was a guide. Though they were concerned for the whereabouts of Satan, there was also much to do to prepare the house for the tour. By the time of the tour, Satan still had not been found. We could only assume that he had managed to get outside of the house in search of food. Cold weather would soon arrive and since he was a tropical snake it was believed that the cold would surely mean the end of Satan.
By the following spring, there still had been no sign of Satan. My friend moved from Rally Hill and the owner used his apartment as a storage area for furniture while they continued remodeling the house. The apartment had been rented furnished, so the furniture that my friend had used remained there. The owner decided to use a couch that was still in the apartment for a den downstairs and sent it to a shop to be reupholstered.
Shortly after, the upholstery shop called to say that the remains of a large snake had been found in an arm of the couch. It was theorized that Satan had climbed into the couch and must have died there. The mystery of Satan’s disappearance was solved – or so we thought.
The following September, the owners were again preparing for the fall tour. One day, while preparing to clean their bedroom, the landlady was standing in the thick doorway that led from one of the twin parlors into the bedroom. To her side was a fireplace with a large mirror hanging above the mantel. She noticed something was behind the mirror. Since a teenage son had once used this bedroom as his own, she assumed he had tossed something that had landed behind the mirror. She reached behind the mirror to retrieve the object – and it moved.
She could not tell what the object was but knew it was alive. Her husband was at work, so she called a friend whose husband had recently retired. After arriving, the man unhooked the mirror from the wall and lowered it to the floor. There, coiled up on the mantle, was a large snake. After examining it the man thought it looked more like someone’s pet snake – like a boa constrictor.
The forgotten Satan was now remembered. My friend’s phone number was retrieved and the call made (not by the shaken landlady). He arrived with the long empty terrarium. He approached the snake, stroked its head, lifted him off the mantel and placed him in the terrarium. The mystery of Satan’s disappearance was solved – this time for sure.
Apparently, what the upholsterer found in the arm of the couch was where Satan had shed his skin. In hindsight, the owner remembered that during the winter she had not seen the usual traces of mice in the basement. Also, her dog who would normally only bark if he heard or saw someone outside the house, had been heard barking on several occasions from within another room. When the owner came into the room to investigate by looking out the windows or door, no one would be found. She never thought to look down at the floor. Of course, the irony was that Satan had been found behind the mirror in her bedroom only a few feet from her bed.
For the fall tour of historic homes along with its history and the stories about the Walkers and the Polks, we could now add a new more current tale. As I guided visitors through the grand old home and we came to the room where Satan had been found, I would gather the visitors at the doorway into the room and tell the story of Satan. As I came to the point in the story about the mirror and the object behind it, which was to their side, people would start backing out of the room. There were even visitors who refused to enter the room after hearing the story – even though Satan had departed Rally Hill.
