Louisville, Kentucky, Circa 1930
Eight-year-old Mary walked into the kitchen of her family’s row house on St. Catherine Street and sat beside her great-grandmother. The woman had lived in the house most of her life. It was down from the Gothic Walnut Street Baptist Church, at the corner of Third and St. Catherine, and had been passed down through the generations.
“Grandmother, tell me again about the bat monster,” Mary said, her eyes large with excitement. Although the stories frightened her, she still loved to hear them.
“I recall one evening I saw it while I sat on the porch. It was a warm night, and the stars were extra bright. I could see the church very clearly. Oh, the neighbors were so angry about that church! It outgrew its space on Walnut Street, so it set its sights on our neighborhood. But it didn’t stop with its purchased lot. The church bought up all the land around it and, without any care or concern for the neighbors, built their front door right up to the sidewalk! All those mansion owners were so angry,” she repeated.
“Yes, but tell me about the creature,” said Mary.
Sometimes, her great-grandmother got sidetracked.
Grandmother paused to take a sip of tea. She pushed a small plate filled with cookies toward Mary. “Have one. Have two … I won’t tell.”
Mary smiled and took a cookie in each hand.
“I heard it before I saw it. It was like someone shaking out a sheet before they hang it on the clothes line to dry. I’d seen that creature many times before, so I wasn’t surprised to look up at the tall steeple and see it hopping around on the roof of the church, next to the gargoyles. He would always set his talons on the rooftop then give his huge, black, bat-like wings a mighty flap, and he’d rise before setting down again.”
“Was it as big as Grandaddy?” Mary asked.
“Even bigger,” Grandmother replied. “And it also had a horrible hooked beak.”
“What’d you do?”
“I hightailed it into the house,” Grandmother replied. “I wasn’t sticking around to say hello to that thing.”
Approximately 1981
Sam waited for his girlfriend to finish getting ready. She’d come home from her waitress shift at the country club, and they were going to meet friends for the last hours of the night at a nearby bar.
Sam wandered through her gorgeous apartment. His was more convenient for late-night studying and early morning classes because it was closer to the University of Louisville, but hers was definitely cooler. It took up half of the floor of a second-story mansion on Third Street, in a part of town known as Old Louisville.
The whole neighborhood consisted mostly of mansions built in the late 1800s for the city’s opulent elite. Now, most of the once single-family homes had been split into apartments, thereby sharing their historical wealth with the masses.
Filled with character and just oozing with charm, his girlfriend’s apartment even had a little balcony, only big enough for two tiny lawnchairs. Having to crawl out the window to get to it only added to its eclectic appeal.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. A noise sounded like it was coming from the attic … or maybe the roof.
Sam went to the window to see what might be causing the sound. Peering through the curtains, he noticed something perched on the balcony.
His heart skipped a beat.
The thing was huge, much too big to be a bird. The bright streetlight illuminated the dark figure as it stood and stretched out its bat-like wings, which must have been around 10 feet wide.
Sam wondered, rather seriously for a minute, if one of the gargoyles from the Walnut Street Baptist Church rooftop had come to life.
Before he could study it further, the monster jumped into the air. Sam could see its bird-like feet, complete with sharp talons.
“We should go,” his girlfriend shouted from the front of her apartment.
Her voice distracted Sam’s gaze from the window. When he looked back, the winged creature was gone.
“Yeah … let’s go,” he said.
Once outside, he quickly led her away from the front of the house, where he’d seen the thing.
When they returned an hour later, he couldn’t get into the house fast enough.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked his girlfriend. “You’ve been looking over your shoulder all night!”
“Nothing,” he answered. How could he ever explain that he’d seen a large bat-bird creature on her balcony?
Through the night, he convinced himself that his mind had been playing tricks on him. But the next day, Sam ventured onto the balcony.
There were massive, scratched imprints in the railing where he’d seen the thing—evidence that something large had been there. He shook his head in amazement. He didn’t believe in ghosts and inexplicable phenomena. But something unexplainable had definitely landed on that balcony. His brain couldn’t dispute the tangible proof in front of him.
The Louisville Demon Leaper sightings span decades, yet the description is always the same. Is there something lurking about the Gothic church steeple at the Walnut Baptist Church in Old Louisville?