Haunted Houses

1. “Elkton’s Halcyon House”

Todd County

We call this old house Halcyon; it s where Joy and I live here in Elkton. The back part of the house was built between 1812 and 1815, and the front was built in 1837. It’s been in the family for years and years. My parents and grandparents lived in this house. Now, you talk about storytelling: boy, they could do it. I just loved to hear them tell these stories when I was a little boy.

There have been strange manifestations in this house that we’ve never been able to explain. The house has always been occupied by the owners, and they have always been interested in family matters. I remember former slaves who came back to visit my grandmother when I was a child.

My mother was born in a house across the street. Christine Carouthers, my mother s close relative, was the last to live in this house. She died in this room—the library. They didn’t want the house to go out of the family. My mother and daddy moved here in my childhood.

We had brought much of the furniture across the street that belonged to my mother’s grandparents and other relatives. We were sitting here one night on the sofa, very quiet. Suddenly, we heard a great crash in the parlor. We went in there and looked. Grandma’s portrait had fallen off the wall.

I helped put Grandmas framed portrait back up on the wall. But about three months later, “Crash.” Grandma had fallen again. Not Grandpa! His portrait was perfectly secured there on the wall. But Grandma had fallen again. When we came back out of the room, Mother said, “I’m not sure that Grandma is happy here in this house.” I started trying to find out why Grandma would not be happy here. So I asked this lady, an old cousin, who was serving as circuit court clerk, if she could give me a reason as to why Grandma wouldn’t be happy in our house.

She couldn’t think of any reason at first, but two weeks later she told me that this couple that lived here, Lucy and her husband, got into some personal family trouble and Lucy made him leave sometime in the 1850s. But she loved him so very much that she didn’t want to be there when he left. So she went back up to her old home place here in Elkton, a frame house built in 1856. When her husband was leaving her and was passing by her house on his way out of town, Lucy was staring out through this narrow windowpane. My grandmother was watching Lucy as Lucy’s husband drove by for the last time.

As already said, Grandmother and Grandfather moved into this house later on. So the reason that my grandmother’s portrait fell from the wall is the fact that she wasn’t happy living in this house that Lucy and her husband had lived in before Lucy ran him off for the last time.

Having found out what this spirit was all about, I got some large blocks of wood and some large steel nails. I drove about six of those deep into those old bricks, then hung Grandma’s portrait up again. She has not fallen since I fixed the frame, but when I walk into that room, she is staring right at me. I feel that she is not happy, even yet.

2. “Mary Lou’s Story”

Lewis County

Mary Lou and her family moved into a house in Lewis County that everybody said was haunted. The house had belonged to a couple who were having marital problems. Because of their trouble, the wife banned her husband from the house. Having no other place to go, he took up residence in a building which was only a few feet from the main dwelling and was connected to it by a walkway.

That summer was very hot, and the temperature must have made the building unbearable for him. On a very hot day, he was found dead in the little hot building. Clearly, he had died of a heat stroke. After his death, people reported seeing his spirit roaming the grounds on hot nights.

Mary Lou’s family moved into the big house in the spring, and everything seemed to go well except they couldn’t keep the door to the small building closed. Finally, in desperation the husband locked it.

One morning, Mary Lou sat in the kitchen alone drinking a second cup of coffee after getting her husband off to work. She heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and then heard the backdoor slam. Funny, she thought, anyone entering the house or leaving would have to pass her first. The footsteps had sounded too heavy for the kids to make, but she checked just to make sure. All were in their beds still asleep. She looked around, and the backdoor was standing open.

The weather turned ghastly hot. She sort of just ignored the noises she heard. Later on that day, she went out into the yard and toiled, then took a cigarette break by sitting down under a tree. Again, the familiar sounds of the door commanded her attention. She looked up at the house and saw the curtains of the kitchen window part as if two hands had lifted them back in order to peer out through them. She again looked, but there was no one there. The window was empty. Then the curtains fell back across the window. As she continued around the house telling herself that she had just imagined all of this, she came upon the open basement door. She was sure that she had locked it. Still thinking it was the heat making her crazy, she locked the door and went back to work. Later, passing by the door, she found it open again. By this time she was really shook up, so she poured out her story to her husband when he got home. He just scolded her for being so silly as to believe that.

Over the next few weeks the weather got hotter, and the unusual occurrences became more frequent. The building in which the old man had died was padlocked, but to her surprise she often found it standing open. She would lock it, only to find it open again. Her husband kept telling her there was a simple explanation for it all, but she continued to witness things.

One morning she heard noises coming from the kitchen. When she got there, she felt the whole room vibrating as if a giant hand was angrily shaking it. Also, there were sounds coming from inside the walls as if someone were tearing at the boards, trying to rip them away.

That night as she lay sleeping, her son came running into the room saying that he heard noises coming from the attic above his room. “It sounds as if someone is up there trying to get out,” the scared child exclaimed. She put him in her bed and lay down beside him to calm his fears. Just as she was about to drop off to sleep, the house was again seized by another fit of shaking. The windows vibrated with such intense tremors that she was sure they would be wrenched from their frames. Her husband, who this time had been witness to what had happened, could no longer deny that some supernatural force was at work here, and that vacating the house was the only answer.

Looking back now, Mary realizes that each occurrence was on extremely hot days or nights. It was as if the poor, tortured soul of the old man kept opening the doors to get air. Mary Lou wonders if someone had locked the door of the building, keeping the old man in there until the hot temperature took its toll on his body, causing him to die and leaving his soul to wander airlessly tearing at the windows and opening doors seeking relief from the devastating heat.

3. “The Blue Lady Ghost in the Keen Johnson Building”

Madison County

College campuses everywhere have a sizable number of ghosts, according to those persons who have reported their sightings. One of EKU’s ghosts is that of the Blue Lady of the Keen Johnson Building. Different explanations exist as to who the ghost is and how she died. One version holds that she was a student actress who didn’t get the part she tried out for, thus decided to quit school. It is said that the train she took derailed, killing several people. Her body was never found, however.

Another version of the legend claims that this student had the lead part in a play but died in a car accident on her way to opening night.

Still another explanation claims that the Blue Lady ghost is that of an actress who played the part of a person who committed suicide in the play. A few nights before the play opened, the actress was up in the bell tower practicing and was so into character that she hanged herself just like the character in the play that she was personifying.

Several people on campus claim to have seen a hazy blue mist hovering around the bell tower late at night. Others say they have heard her voice in the theater when no one else was there.

4. “The Tan Man”

Pike County

These events occurred at Harmons Branch, Pike County, Kentucky. Three houses were built on an old strip mine fill-in back during the 1950s by Rhonda C. Rustin (Clark). Our family was the second family to live there as a whole until 1985. Our youngest son still lives there. He was the only one not to be affected or “sense” what the rest of us saw or felt, with the exception of smelling the roses. Later in the 1980s, this hollow became more prominent. It was then that an FBI agent hid the body of [name withheld] there after he killed her. He was the first FBI agent ever to be convicted of such a crime. Her body had decomposed to just bones when he confessed to the crime. I like to think our “Tan Man” has something else to work with.

We never knew who the Tan Man was but the Ouija board said he had been murdered by two men who were still alive, and he would tell us after they had died and he could rest in peace. We quit asking the board anything because of the obscene language it began to spell out; I threw it away.

I don’t recall when the Tan Mans presence came. It was a gradual awareness by members of our family. Our oldest daughter would often tell us she didn’t like to go into our bedroom or the hallway leading to it; something eerie and strange about it. She had always been afraid of her shadow, so we had never thought much of her remarks.

We had a beagle dog, Sam. He was a grouchy, lazy sort of hound; made his rounds and slept a lot. One day he went nuts. He cried, he cowered, he shook and moaned. The dog was terrified. We called the farm handyman who was good with dogs. He thought Sam had gone mad, and we tried to get ready to put him down. We were all crying and trying to calm the dog, and believe me, it took hours. Thank goodness we didn’t put him down; he was just scared, but by what? This never happened again.

Another event happened during a spring month. As the years passed we would notice April was a busy time for Tan Man. Our eldest son had a souped-up car and had been to Bristol, Virginia, where he attended the auto races. It was 2:30-3:00 A.M. when he arrived home.

As most mothers, I was still awake but in bed and had heard him open the door and start down the hall. He called out to me, “Mother,” then “Mother? then “MOTHER.” By then he was fighting something, grunting and punching all the while, yelling “MOTHER.” I jumped up and went to him. He was pale, scared silly and shaking from head to foot. I took him to the kitchen to calm him down. He said that he saw a figure in the hall and thought it was me, thus the first “Mother.” When he realized it wasn’t me but the outline of a man, he began to fight it.

We sat up for an hour or longer talking it out. I told him that he was exhausted from the long trip and that his car exhaust system must be leaking fumes from the souped-up car. This was my belief at the time. I don’t know if I convinced him, but I was pleased with my idea in my own mind.

I began to notice a really cool icy waft of air playing around my head and upper body as I would sit and read in my lounge chair. So did others. Sometimes it was so heavy my newspaper would move of its own accord. This occurred regularly. I decided I had a bad draft. I lit a candle to try and track the draft down, but no luck. I moved the chair a few feet but still had the icy draft. I accepted that I had a drafty spot in the house. Then things began to happen that made no sense at all. Many times a smoke-like blob would appear in the hall. The odor of the roses filled the doorway between the living room and kitchen. This happened several times, and did after I left the house. My son and daughter have both smelled them. The commode would fully flush and then the bathroom lights would turn on of their own accord. We checked the commode’s “innards” thinking it was leaking water but all was fine and the commode flushed on. The lights have come on as many as 5-6 times in one evening. We’d get up and turn them off, and within a few minutes they were back on and the commode would flush.

I heard my daughter’s flute from her room once. Only thing was, she wasn’t in there! I accused her of going out the window, but she hadn’t.

Since we didn’t want to appear to have lost our minds, we kept everything to ourselves. I had been raised in a funeral home that my parents owned. I was always taught there was no such thing as ghosts. Neither my husband nor I believed in such things. If a ghost was a ghost, wouldn’t a funeral home be the ideal place to show up? I never heard or saw or felt a presence in my parents’ funeral home.

Within a few months of “Tan Man’s coming out,” my neighbor Sue told me about some crazy things going on in her house. Her daughter’s toy piano would play notes by itself. Her volume would go up and down on her television set (so would mine, plus the stereo). She was ironing one day and something kept punching her in the rear. She thought it was her daughter at first and fussed at her, told her to stop, then the child walked in from another room.

One night while making a trip to bathroom, Sue ran into the Tan Man. She said she went on to relieve herself, then called for her husband, and he saw him, too. From that night on, they both went together to the bathroom until they moved out of the house.

My youngest daughter had an old upright piano in her room. She told me many times she could hear a key hit and it would not strike clear but would go “hum, hum, hum.” This daughter had a motor bike. She and a friend would ride around Harmons Branch often. One day they were riding and saw a man in tan clothing standing by a tree on the branch road. It startled them so much that they looked back, and he had disappeared. From that time on, when scary things happened we knew it was the Tan Man. He was dressed in tan working clothes.

He came and went. Sometimes he stayed for long spells. There were times when we had no sense of any presence. He seemed to like the spring months best, but I know now that he was just visiting around.

The most scared I ever was with Tan Man was in bed. My husband and I had just begun to drift off when our bed began to shake just like someone was at the end of it pushing back and forth. I called to my youngest son to quit and go back to bed and leave us alone, but he answered from his room.

I have also seen lights on the wall spinning in a circle. I often prayed to the Lord when I got scared, and for some reason the “happenings” would cease. My husband literally saw the Tan Man. He has also felt Tan Man, who would wake him up by stroking his arm with an icy cold hand.

Tan Man became a part of our life. I would tell him to watch the house if I had to leave. Once I lost my keys to an outside shed and told him to find them. It didn’t happen right away but in 2-3 days the keys were lying on the dryer.

I lived there for twenty-three years and my son still lives there alone. He is thirty-one now and is the only one in the family who has had no encounters with Tan Man. However, he did have a friend up once who claimed that the Tan Man woke him up. It scared him so bad he hasn’t been back.

Our neighbor in the middle house also had a “happening.” She was tending to her baby in her kitchen when she heard the screen door open and heavy footsteps in her living room. She thought it was our other neighbors son, who was retarded and very large, coming in and she called to him. When he didn’t answer, she looked for him but no one was there. Later she heard the steps again and the door slam and she ran to see, but no one was there. She said she had her screen locked. She admitted strange things happened but would never talk about them. She would just shake her head. They moved shortly after this, never wanting to talk about the strange things we were all dealing with.

Many, many uncanny things happened on this hilltop in Harmons Branch. The only thing I can say is if these are ghosts, they are good ones. I have felt Tan Man’s presence many times but I don’t think his intent was ever bad. I never believed in ghosts, but I lived with one for twenty-three years. When you witness and walk in my shoes and live at Harmons Branch where Tan Man lives, you’ll believe “something” is going on.

5. “Ghostly Memories of the Tan Man”

Pike County

When I was a young girl growing up at Harmons Branch in Pike County, there were many unusual occurrences at our house. Too, it seems as if the two other houses beside us were also included in these weird episodes. I may have, in fact, been the first person to ever see the Tan Man, as he became known.

When I was about thirteen years old, a girlfriend and I were motoring home on my Honda 70 trail bike one evening about dusk. As we were starting up the dirt road that led to my house, we saw a man standing beside the road. It struck us unusual because we lived in a rural area and strangers gave rise to curiosity.

I looked over my shoulder as we rode by and there was no one there. I asked my friend if she saw the man, and she said that she had. Needless to say, we went home as fast as the little motorcycle would go. The man we saw was of average height and weight, with khaki or tan work clothes—the Tan Man.

I guess there were things going on before this, however. As children, we were terrified of the ghost. As we grew into adults, it was more like wary acceptance. Occasionally, my mother would mention seeing a misty figure, or hear my flute playing musical scales when I wasn’t playing it. I guess the Tan Man was quite musical, because I remember being awakened at night by a single note being played on the piano in my room. When I would become fully awake, I could still hear the fading vibration of the musical note. I hid under the covers, not daring to peek out.

I remember the smell of roses, very strongly, in the entranceway from the living room to the kitchen. The smell was always in the entrance only, never beyond. This occurred quite often.

I also recall getting a weird feeling from my parents’ room, like maybe the air was a little cooler or “heavier” in there. My parents had no problem keeping me out of their bedroom. In certain areas of the house it wasn’t unusual to feel a cool pocket of air caressing my face and neck.

When I married, I moved just across the yard from our house, as I married the boy next door. My husband, Jim, had heard the Tan Man stories, but had never noticed anything unusual at his house. But his friends had. Jim’s parents’ house was the hangout for our friends, and if Jim was still at work they would usually wait around the house, playing basketball or listening to the stereo until Jim got home.

One day Jack [pseudonym] was waiting for Jim. He was sitting on the couch watching TV when the front door opened, and the sound of footsteps were heard coming into the room. The steps proceeded across the room and on into the kitchen; they exited through the backdoor. Whatever it was, opened and closed that door.

Jack told me that he just sat there and watched, because there wasn’t really anything that he could do about it. It’s funny, as Jack was a Harley-riding biker, and you tend to think of bikers as a tough lot. But, now, Jack was sort of scared. I know how he felt, because smelling roses, seeing, and hearing something like that tends to hold you frozen in place with eyes wide open, and all senses trained on detecting the slightest movement or sound, touch, or smell.

Our other friend, Ben [pseudonym], used to get “touched.” One day he told me that he believed in the Tan Man. He was at our house that day after work and before we got home. He said that he was sitting in a chair reading a magazine when all of a sudden a cool hand stroked his neck. Aggravated, he swiped at the air around him, but the cool pocket of air continued to swirl and dance across his face and neck like cold fingers gently caressing him. He stated that this had happened more than once. A lot of our friends believed in our friendly ghost and were always looking for anything peculiar to happen.

As I said above, not much happened at Jim’s as far as ghostly activities were concerned, but some things did happen. I noticed it when I quit working and was home more at that point in time.

Mom and Dad had moved to Louisa, Kentucky, an hour or so away. I wasn’t afraid of the Tan man as I had been as a little girl. After all, we had known him for many years now. He had never hurt anybody, except to scare the heck out of them. Many nonbelievers in this sort of thing were converted at Harmons Branch. Thus, I found it comforting in a strange way when I noticed things happening every now and then.

One of these things was the phantom car. I don’t know how many times I’d gone to the door and looked to see who was driving by, only to find no one there. This happened almost weekly, it seems.

Another common occurrence was that of seeing the figure of the Tan Man outside the house, always out of the corner of my eye. So sure was I that someone was outside the house that I would sometimes go outside and walk around the house, never finding anyone. I was chagrined because the Tan Man had pulled the wool over my eyes again.

The last common happening that I recall is about the light bulbs. I could never keep light bulbs in the bathroom or kitchen. It seems that they never lasted like the ones in the other rooms; they would often go out within a short time of each other.

We moved to Paintsville a few years ago and bought an old house and remodeled the downstairs. I had said goodbye to Tan Man and Harmons Branch. The granddaughter of the woman from whom we bought our house in Paintsville told me that we had a ghost in it. I thought, no there’s no ghost here. My light bulbs last too long; there are no cool breezes; there is no feeling of someone being in the same room with you, or of being watched. There’s no music in the night, and no one touches you. And, I want you to know, that’s okay with me.

6. “The Stockton House in Richmond”

Madison County

There is a house here in Richmond owned by attorney David M. Jones. This large, three-story white house is on Lancaster Avenue. It was built about 1880 by the Stockton family.

Jones stated that on the first night he and his wife stayed in the house, a picture in the parlor fell from the wall and broke during the middle of the night. And the lamp in the hallway would come on and off while no one was around it.

Jones claimed that back in 1983, he woke up in the middle of the night and raised up in bed and saw the ghostly form of a woman dressed in many layers of clothing—just floating around in the room. The apparition spoke to Jones, mentioning the words “picture” and “funeral.”

Shortly thereafter, Jones was going through a large collection of papers and artifacts in a small attic-like room on the third floor. When he got ready to leave the room, he bent over to crawl through the small doorway. And there he again saw the face of the ghostly woman! In February 1984 he glanced into the gigantic gold-framed mirror in the front hallway and saw her sitting in a chair in the parlor. Jones’ subsequent research indicates that it was the spirit of Mary Katherine Stockton. Although his wife has never seen the spirit, Jones himself has experienced several sightings, the last reported time being in 1993 or ‘94 while decorating the house for Christmas. He saw her reflection in a mirror.

The following Memorial Day, Attorney and Mrs. Jones passed by the Stockton burial grounds in the Richmond Cemetery and noticed that the stone of Matthew Stockton had fallen over.

The lights in the Jones’ house had not dimmed in a strange manner for more than two years. However, the next morning after visiting the cemetery, a lamp in the dining room flashed off and on several times. Jones entered the room and said, “All right, Mrs. Stockton, I’m going to call the cemetery caretaker and have them put Matthew’s tombstone back up.”

After having the stone restored to its upright position, the light has not flickered since, and the ghost of Mary Catherine Stockton has not been seen.

7. “Mysterious Knocks on the Door”

Breckinridge County

An experience that happened to me took place when I was about thirteen years old. We were living in a house that belonged to Mrs. Willie Edith Allen in Brandenburg. It was a gray brick-siding house that was situated right across the old state road from the Brandenburg High School. Later on, we was told that at one time there was a tree on the other side of our driveway, and a black man—this was back in 1910 or 1911—was accused of raping a white woman. They took him and hung him there on that tree. He proclaimed his innocence, that he didn’t have anything to do with it, but they wouldn’t listen to him and hung him.

Come to find out later on, he was innocent. I think the man who really did rape her was caught and he admitted to it. Well, this tree had been cut down. Wasn’t anything there but a stump when we lived there in that house. The house had an upstairs to it, but we didn’t use it very often as no one could sleep up there, because every time you’d try to sleep up there, you’d hear somebody walking up and down the steps, but you’d never see anybody.

That house had a bath and running water; also a living room, and off that room was Mom and Dad’s room. Then there was a kitchen, and Granddad’s room that was off of the kitchen. Then there was a room where the steps went upstairs, and there was a back porch.

I had a little miniature beagle dog at the time, and I had named him Krypto, after Superboy’s dog. I was into superheroes and all that stuff back then. Well, everywhere I was at, Krypto was with me. One day there wasn’t anybody at home but me, Mom, Granddad, and Krypto. I guess this was on a Saturday, as I wasn’t in school. I was in there laying on Granddad’s bed, and had the door shut. I was reading a book. Mom and Granddad were in the kitchen.

As I was laying there, I heard somebody knock on the door. My dog was snoozing, but he raised his head up and his ears perked up. Course, I said, “Come in.”

Well, nobody came in and nobody said anything; nobody done anything. I went back to reading my book again. Well, it wasn’t very long until I heard knocks again on the door. I laid my book down; the dog was looking at the door with his head kindly cocked to one side. His ears perked up. I said, “Come in if you want to.”

Of course, nobody opened the door, or anything. I couldn’t figure it out; just thought it was Mom or Granddad doing something. When I finished that chapter I was reading in that book, I got up and opened the door and walked into the kitchen. Mom was washing dishes, and Granddad was setting there at the table drinking coffee. Dad wasn’t there.

I said, “What did you all want?”

Mom said, “What?”

I said, “What did you all want?”

Said, “I don t know what you’re talking about.”

I said, “Well, somebody knocked on that door, and I said, ‘Come in.’ They knocked on it twice and I said, ‘Come in.’”

Mom said, “I didn’t knock on the door.”

Granddad said he didn’t knock on the door either. Nobody knocked, according to them. But I heard it, and my dog Krypto heard it, and what that was, was never explained.

8. “The Owens House”

Knox County

The Owens house, once located in Barbourville, was built by John Allen Owens in 1894. Eventually, this historic Queen Anne house deteriorated and was torn down in 1977. Ruth Sanders, who lived in the Owens house in its later years, told fascinating stories about her experiences with the ghosts there in the house. At different times, there were ghostly beings in the dining room making sounds just as if someone were actually sitting at the table and eating a meal. The plates and knives and forks could be seen moving around.

Coffee was smelled on many occasions, as though it were being brewed in the kitchen; yet no coffee was being made at all.

Table rappings were rather common. In one instance, the rapping noise got so loud in the upstairs kitchenette that a person who was up there in the room became so scared that she ran out of the room.

Residents of the Owens House, Barbourville, witnessed numerous, varied ghostly visitations over the years. (Photo provided by Margaret Jean Owens)

Cats were known to walk around certain areas in the various rooms, but they would never walk across a particular area in the upstairs hallway. There was something ghostly about that spot, and the cats could sense it.

A rocking chair in the parlor was known to rock and squeak by itself during the night. It was examined, but no clue was given as to why it made these ghostly sounds.

Another example helps to demonstrate that the Owens house was haunted. It seems that one of the Owens relatives of recent years was spending the night there and was sleeping in an upstairs room. The door to the room typically jammed and was hard to open. During the night when the relative was staying there, the door opened of its own accord on numerous occasions, even though the woman who was there in bed kept getting up to close the door. She finally brought her bulldog into the room to sleep at the foot of her bed, but the dog wouldn’t stay there very long. As soon as the lights were turned out, the dog commenced a low growl, which meant that it felt threatened. The woman eventually gave up that same night and went downstairs to sleep.

Not only were strange actions and ghostly noises felt and heard, the ghost of a woman was also seen on numerous occasions. In earlier years, Margaret Jean Owens’ aunts, Ruth and Dorothy, were sharing the house, when one night they heard something making a great deal of noise in the bedroom next to theirs. They were both so frightened that they locked themselves in the room and sat up all night listening to the strange sounds.

They claimed that it sounded like someone was throwing furniture around and breaking things, but the next morning when they got up and mustered up enough courage to look, nothing was even out of place.

Along about that same time, the Shadles, who owned Shadle Funeral Home across the street, saw a woman’s ghost in the Owens house several times before they ever told anyone. “I suppose they didn’t want to frighten my aunt Ruth Sanders, who was living there at that time,” Margaret Owens stated. Owens then went on to comment, “At another time, one of my cousins was there with her daughter, and the little girl asked her mother who was on the stairs. ‘Mama, who is that?’ she wanted to know. When the mother looked, she got just a glimpse of a gray skirt in the stairwell.”

The ghostly woman that they saw is called the Gray Lady, but is not to be confused with the famous Gray Lady of Liberty Hall in Frankfort. The Gray Lady of the Owens house was frequently seen in a white dress, surrounded by a red glow all around her. She was seen on various occasions standing in front of windows, walking on the stairway, or walking down the hallway toward the kitchen.

No one is sure who the Gray Lady was, but it is believed that she was a sister of John Owens, who built the house, a sister who died in 1901 at a rather young age.

9. “Eva Carrigan’s Ghostly House”

Breckinridge County

There’s an old house in Irvington that is still standing. It has been featured on Channel 11, back when Channel 11 was CBS. Byron Crawford did a report on this house for a Halloween special one year. It is a big, two-story house that at one time belonged to Eva Carrigan and her father, Samuel.

Eva never got married, and she and her Dad had all kinds of money. She loved this house. I mean she absolutely adored it. In fact it was said that every time she went someplace, she would say goodbye to her house. She would tell it that she wasn’t going to be gone very long and that she would miss the house until she got back.

Well, Eva Carrigan lived to a ripe old age, ninety or so. She loved to play the piano, read, and wear good-smelling perfume. She was just a well-rounded lady. She got sick, and the doctor came to see her, back when the doctors used to make house calls.

The doctor told her that she had to go, to the hospital. But she refused to go and leave her house. The only way that they could get her out of the house was to give her a shot to knock her out. That way, they could transport her to the hospital. Something went wrong with her metabolism, and she had a negative reaction to the shot that they gave her. Instead of knocking her out, the shot killed her. They took her out of the house but it was against her will. She didn’t know when she left the house, and as far as her ghost knows, she still hasn’t left the house. According to this program that was on television, this nice couple that live there now still witness her presence. They said that Miss Eva still plays the piano; they can lay a book down and then find it upstairs, or find the book moved. They smell her perfume. I think I remember them saying that they’ve seen her there.

I didn’t know about all this. I’d seen the program, while I was living up in Cincinnati. I was married and had children. Mom and Dad and Granddad lived at the time in a trailer court which is real close to this miracle house. Well, we came down. My brother-in-law Dale came down with us to visit Mom and Dad and Granddad.

I had one of those one-step Polaroid instant cameras, the kind that takes its own pictures. We were standing there looking at the old Carrigan house from the blacktop. I took a bunch of pictures, but the pictures never would develop after five minutes or so, and it generally takes only about 60 seconds. You couldn’t see anything. So I took another picture of the house and waited another five minutes or so, and the same thing happened. You couldn’t see the house, just all fog.

Well, I thought I’d ask Miss Eva if I could take a picture of her house. So I said, “Miss Eva, I think that you have a really beautiful house, and I would love to get a picture of it, if you would allow me to.”

After I said words to that effect, I took one more picture of the house, and it came back just as crystal clear as it could possibly be. I’ve still got the picture.

After we stood there and looked at the picture a while, I decided to go up there and see if the people who own the house were at home. I didn’t know them as well then as I do now. I walked up to the front door on the porch and was getting ready to ring the doorbell. Dale and Valerie were with me, and we heard a piano playing on the inside of the house. We rung the doorbell, but the piano then quit playing. A few minutes later a man came to the door and opened it. It wasn’t the owner, but somebody else. I asked him where the owner was.

He said, “They re in Louisville, Christmas shopping.”

I told him that I had seen the program on television and that I would like to go in and see if Miss Eva is there.

He said, “I can’t let you in because the present owners aren’t at home, and Fm only visiting myself. I’m a relative. They won’t be back until late, and they don’t like talking about it. They got so much publicity from the television program that they just don’t like talking about it.”

So I wasn’t able to go in to see if I could see or feel any indication of Miss Eva being there, and I haven’t been able to get in yet. But I have talked to the couple who own the house. They said that Miss Eva is still there but they don’t like talking about it. The woman then told me that she can lay a book down that she’s reading and be gone for five minutes and when she gets back, the book is not there. She’d find the book upstairs and knows full well that she didn’t take it up there because she hadn’t been up there. And she said that the piano plays all the time. She talks like it is Miss Eva’s spirit still playing the piano. And she said that they can still smell her perfume.

Miss Eva was never married. She and her father, Samuel K. Carrigan, are both buried in the Cedar Hill Cemetery, so she still isn’t very far from her home.

10. “The Gray Lady of Liberty Hall”

Franklin County

The tale of the Gray Lady of Liberty Hall in Frankfort is about a house guest who never left. Since 1817, a ghostly figure of a small, trim, gray-haired lady has appeared in the hallways, on the stairways, and in various rooms there at Liberty Hall.

Liberty Hall was the home of John Brown, one of Kentucky’s great statesmen, his wife, Margaretta, and their children. The Gray Lady is thought by many to be the spirit of Margaret Varick, an aunt of Margaretta, who moved from New York to Frankfort to help comfort Margaretta following the loss of her two infant sons or a seven-year-old daughter.

Not long after her arrival in Frankfort, the aunt died in an upstairs bedroom. The woman’s ghost began roaming the hallways soon thereafter, as if to comfort the bereaved family. John Brown and his wife noticed that little things were being done there in the house, and they couldn’t explain how these things got done, unless it was the aunt checking out things and attempting to care for family members. Robert Norman, then Superintendent of Liberty Hall, said that he experienced the ghost of Liberty Hall through mysterious happenings such as seeing the pages of a wall calendar being torn off and falling to the floor, candles pulled from two silver candlestick holders and thrown to the floor, and seeing the ceiling fan in one of the rooms begin turning, even though the electric switch wasn’t turned on. Even now, people driving by at night often see candles going from room to room.

There is a framed photograph that contains an image of the Gray Lady. The photo is the result of pictures taken to document the damage done to the house when a rug fell across a heat duct and began smouldering. One of the pictures contains the ghostly image of a woman in a gray dress there in the hallway.

In an attempt to explain the presence of the Gray Lady, it is felt that the Gray Lady arises at night and seeks her final resting place. Her unsuccessful attempts are attributed to the fact that no grave is found on the grounds there at Liberty Hall, and if she were buried there, her remains were later removed to the Frankfort Cemetery after its establishment, for there her grave is marked. It was believed by some that the location of her real grave was never marked; thus she still searches for it at night.

Another ghost of Liberty Hall is that of a Spanish opera singer. While attending a party at Liberty Hall early in the 1800s, the singer went to the garden for some fresh air and mysteriously disappeared while outside. Her ghost has been seen there in the garden.

Whoever she was or is, some persons who presently work at Liberty Hall claim to have seen or feel the presence of the Gray Lady as she wanders about the premises of this historic mansion.

11. “Ghosts of White Hall State Shrine”

Madison County

Emancipationist Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was defeated in his bid to become governor of Kentucky, later served as ambassador to Russia for several years, primarily in the 1860s. He was married to Mary Jane Gray, the mother of their ten children. History records that she left their Madison County home when, in 1871, a little Russian boy was escorted to White Hall by a Russian ballerina dancer. This reputedly was a son of Cassius. Mary Jane and Cassius were divorced in 1878 after forty-five years of marriage. The big question is, however, did Mary Jane ever really leave White Hall? Persons who have worked there feel that Mary Jane still loved Cassius and the historic mansion as well. Her spirit often acted as hostess of White Hall, and still does.

At age eighty-four, Cassius married a fifteen-year-old sister of one of his sharecroppers. There are stories that claim that Cassius locked his young bride into the room just off the master bedroom so that she would not run away. It is claimed that she leaped from the only window in that room, trying to kill herself. However, a horseman caught her and pulled her onto his horse, thus saving her life. As recently as 1980, two park rangers were there in the house one night. They saw a light in the room in which Cassius had locked his young bride. Yet there were no light sockets in the room, no furniture, and it was closed away from the other rooms. The rangers drew their guns and searched the lighted room, but found nothing to explain the light. As a result, they resigned from their jobs.

Another ranger quit after seeing a woman, generally thought to be Mary Jane, in a black mourning gown, her head veiled in black, standing in the parlor with her hand resting on the bust of Cassius Clay. On another occasion, one of the beds in an upstairs bedroom had a black mourning dress spread out on it, along with a veil and a fan.

Mary Jane’s ghost is still frequently seen by those who work around the house. They report sightings of her on the stairway, in one of the rooms, standing in front of and staring into the fireplace. Recently, she was seen through peripheral vision walking along the second-floor hallway.

In the early 1980s, the housekeeper at White Hall State Shrine reported that about 2:30 A.M. soft violin music drifted toward the room where her daughter was asleep. Downstairs, somebody was playing a violin, but the only one in the house had no strings. Numerous instances have been reported of furniture that was moved to another point in the room, a movement which employees swear they knew nothing about. Staff members comment that Mary Jane typically appears when they are fussing about a cleaning assignment or when some unusual activity is taking place around the house.

And not only Mary Jane Clay has been seen or heard at White Hall. Other ghosts of the Clay family have been seen on occasion, such as a headless ghost in the cellar, the ghost of a young boy kneeling in front of the dining room fireplace, and even Cassius himself sitting on the stairway smiling smugly at the tongue-tied guide. Ghosts have been heard walking up the stairway or along the upstairs hallway; or heard when mirrors and picture frames fall to the floor.

12. “Ghost Mother among Us”

Hardin County

As children, we played a game called ghost-in-the-graveyard. The way you play is to choose a designated deceased, who would then lie on the ground and everyone else would circle them and sing a song, “Ghost in the graveyard, run, run, run; ghost in the graveyard, run, run, run; ghost in the graveyard, run, run, run,” and as you said the last three words, you would run, run, run.

The ghost would get up and chase everybody like a mummy. The tagged kids would become ghosts as well, and tagged everyone until only the last person was left. That person was the first ghost in the next round. Last rule, you could play only after dark.

Every year in August, my grandparents, Harvey and Lena Wooden, hosted the annual family reunion at the Upton Community Center. When some of the close relatives would gather at my grandparents on Friday and Saturday before the reunion on Sunday, we would entertain the kids. We grew up next door.

One year, Uncle Stanley Wooden built a log house on the property between us and my grandparents. That same year, there were more kids than usual down for the reunion weekend. We played the usual games of tag, stick-in-mud, cow-chip-toss, and truth-or-dare. After supper, we decided to play in the log house. It had no windows or doors yet, just the holes for them. We talked the adults into letting us spend the night there. I think there were about eight or ten of us, both boys and girls.

First we settled in, or as my mother would say, we’d make our nests. We spread our pillows and blankets as we wanted them. We set up our cooler and snack bags and boxes, then we played quiet games like cards and telling ghost stories until all the lights at all the houses on either side of us were out. Then we played a whispering version of ghost in the graveyard. It was loads of fun and quite exhilarating to run around in the dark outside after telling ghost stories.

When we went back into the log house, all of our beds were rolled into neat little bed rolls. Our trash had been bagged up, chip bags and snack boxes were now neatly closed and folded shut. Everything that we’d messed up was now cleaned up. We laughed so hard we hurt. We figured that some of our parents had slipped in to check on us and played a funny trick.

We told more ghost stories and laughed at the thought, “What if a ghost mother was among us?” We really laughed but every time that possibility was mentioned, there was an eerie feeling and quietness for a moment. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night, and just to be safe we slept in shifts. Two of us were awake at all times. When we got up the next morning, all the tools used in constructing the log house were very organized, placed back in the toolboxes and so on…. All the sawdust that we’d scattered was gone. None of it was even under our blankets. No one saw or heard a thing that night that might have done all this. There was never any mention of this again, not even up to this day.

13. “Strange Happenings at Grandma’s House”

Butler County

I want to tell you the history of my house and the strange occurrences that have taken place there over the years. This consists of stories told to me by my grandmother, my mother, uncle, great-aunt, and my own personal experience with this house. This house is located in Woodbury, just about five miles out of Morgantown. It was built in the late 1800s as a one-room doctors office. When my grandmother, her two small children, and her parents moved to the house in 1953 from Louisville, the house had grown to a five-room house. There was even an old slave house beside the house, but they immediately tore it down.

My great-grandfather soon began adding on to the old house to make it feel like home to the family. He added a huge concrete porch that wrapped around almost half of the house, and he built on a lovely kitchen and made two rooms out of the one room upstairs. Before long, they were completely comfortable and content with the country life.

Some twenty-five years later, after both of my great-grandparents had passed on and all of my grandmother’s children had moved out (except my invalid uncle, who my grandmother took care of), strange, mysterious things began to frequently take place in the presence of both Granny and Uncle Danny. There had always been peculiar goings-on, but hardly anyone had ever questioned them before.

At times, while they were sitting in the living room watching television, a loud, steady thumping would occur in the ceiling, just above their heads. The air would be virtually wind-free on these days, so it could not have been a limb hitting the roof. They also heard very loud snoring noises as if they were coming out of the same spot in the ceiling. My deceased great-grandparents’ room was directly above that location in the ceiling where all those strange noises were coming from.

Finally, one day during those strange noises, my grandmother couldn’t take it any longer and went upstairs to investigate. As she slo-w-l-y ascended to the top of the stairs, the noises became louder. They were definitely coming from her parents’ old room. She gathered all the courage that she could muster, then cautiously opened the door. She was met with complete and utter silence. She checked everything in the room to see if there was someone or something there, but she couldn’t find a single thing.

Defeated, she went back downstairs and told my uncle of what she discovered—not a thing. Then suddenly, the slow, steady thumping started again in the ceiling above them. This time, determined to solve the problem, she went into her bedroom first and snatched up a small bottle of holy water and once again started back up the stairs. Again, when she opened the door, the noise stopped instantly. She sprinkled some of the holy water around the room, while saying a prayer, and then she went back downstairs. She and my uncle waited for the noise to reappear. The noise had stopped and it has never been heard since.

A few years later after my mother and father got a divorce, my mother and I moved into the house with my grandmother and uncle. I was only two at the time and glad to be living in such an enormous old house. I shared a bed with my grandmother when I was a small child because I did not yet have a room of my own and I was afraid to sleep by myself.

I began to experience unexplainable encounters with mysterious things in the house. One morning, when I was four, I distinctly remember waking up on the floor of my grandmother’s room. I wasn’t frightened, since I was constantly sleepwalking as a child. I sat up and looked out of her open bedroom door and in the hall I saw a very strange figure. It was a dark shadow in the form of a tall, slender man, and he was wearing a cap. I sat there on the floor, mesmerized by its presence. It could not have been my uncle, because he had been confined to a wheelchair his entire life. When the figure disappeared, I quickly ran into the kitchen and told my grandmother what I had seen. Upon listening to my story, her eyes lit up with surprise. She told me that I had just described her dead father perfectly. She took a picture from the bottom of the drawer and showed it to me. I could not believe my eyes. The man in the picture was identical to the figure I had seen in the hall. I still wonder to this day if that was his ghost that I saw standing out in the hall.

One of the strangest occurrences to ever take place in the house happened when I was nine years old. I was in my room one night, sitting on the floor in front of my shelf that contained my boxed dolls. I was looking at a magazine when all of a sudden every one of my musical items in the room all came on at once and began to play music. I sat there, frozen to the floor, completely unable to move. My porcelain clowns moved around in circles while they played the music, my porcelain novelties played their songs, and my jewelry box even played its music. In a feeble attempt to not show my fear, I said, “Is that the best you can do?” I said this in a very mocking tone.

My attempt of defiance was indeed a big mistake, because as soon as I had uttered that question, the boxed dolls above me came crashing down upon my head. I was overcome with shock and surprise. I quickly ran outside to get my mother and grandmother. However, when we got back to my room, the music had stopped. There were only the heap of boxed dolls on the floor as proof of what had just occurred.

My uncle had a very strange experience that we still wonder about to this very day. One night after Granny had put him to bed, his wheelchair began rolling back and forth, colliding into his bed. The mere thought of this actually happening would have been dismissed as impossible because the floor in his room was sharply slanted downhill and Granny always put his wheelchair at the downward end of the floor. How could it have been possible for the wheelchair to go up and down the slanted floor unless someone had been pushing it? My uncle began hollering and my grandmother went to his room, but the wheelchair had stopped rolling and remained still for the rest of the night.

My mother, grandmother, and uncle have all heard mysterious footsteps pacing in the hall and a chorus of voices in the hall. Of course, when they open their bedroom doors, the hall is silent and no movement or sounds anywhere.

My grandmother’s sister, Aunt Helen, came down from Louisville to visit us for a week. She went to my grandmother’s room one afternoon for a short nap. She could not go to sleep, so she was just relaxing in bed, with her eyes shut. While she was lying there, an unusual voice called out to her, “Hey you!” At the exact moment those words were spoken, an unseen hand took a tight grip of her shoulder and gave it a good shake. Startled, she got out of bed and asked if anyone was there. She checked downstairs and upstairs. When she couldn’t find anything, she came on the porch and asked us if we had been in the room. None of us had, since we had been sitting on the porch for over an hour so she could take a nap. She looked bewildered, but she just went back into the house. She waited until the day she was to return home to tell us what had happened to her in my grandmother’s bedroom.

My mother had several frightening experiences upstairs in her room. One Saturday she was cleaning her room and vacuuming her carpet. When she finished vacuuming, she turned the vacuum off, unplugged it, and set it in the corner. She suddenly heard a strange noise, almost like a strong wind blowing in the room. Pictures were knocked off her dresser and her shelves and curtains were moving. All of the windows and doors were shut tight. She turned around, facing a full-length mirror that hung on her door, in time to see an unusual flash go across it. She went to the mirror and gently touched the glass. Her vacuum cleaner suddenly came on, even though it was unplugged. She was terrified for a moment as she approached the running vacuum cleaner. Right before she reached it, the vacuum cleaner shut off.

Another strange experience that my mother had was that her pictures kept falling over. She had pictures of me placed all over the house, such as in the living room, her bedroom, and in the downstairs hall. She would always find these pictures laying facedown or on the floor. At first she thought it was faulty picture frames so she bought new ones, but the pictures kept falling. After about a month, the picture incidents stopped.

The most frightening occurrence happened in the presence of all four of us. We were in the living room watching television, when a copper vase actually floated from one side of the room to the other side. We sat rooted in our chairs in silent terror. A few minutes after this happened, my picture on the television fell over and then completely fell off the television. We never told anyone but our priest about these experiences, because we were afraid they would think we were crazy. After we told our priest of all the unexplainable occurrences, he came to the house and said a blessing over the house. After he did this, we never had any strange occurrences to take place.

I know all this might sound unbelievable, but they are all true. Whether you believe them or not, they should be passed down to future generations by storytelling.

14. “The Old Slave Man”

Hardin County

As a child I grew up just a field away from the Brackett Cemetery. I had always heard ghost stories about this place but chose not to believe them. However, many a night I would lay my pillow in the window next to my bed and fall asleep looking out in the direction of the old cemetery. Often I would see what appeared to be figures or shadows wandering about out there. Sometimes, they even looked as if they had eyes that were glowing and bouncing around. But I was more intrigued than frightened. Most usually, by morning I would have convinced myself that it was flashlights, lanterns, and cigarettes of hunters, although often there was nothing in season to hunt. It made it easier to believe, but I couldn’t help but wonder.

I dated a guy once who told me stories about his family who were buried there. One night he took me there, and when he leaned over to kiss me his car horn went off and got stuck. We had to leave, but the minute we left the grounds, the horn stopped blowing.

Not long after that, some friends and I went camping in my dad’s backfield that bordered Rainey Brackett’s farm. I think the cemetery is on his property. Anyway, the campers and I decided to roam the countryside.

I remembered an old cabin I’d seen and heard stories about, and though it was dark I thought I could find it again. I had always seen it in the daylight and with adults who would not let me go in. I was just dying to see if I could see if the Slave Man stories were true.

When we got to what I thought was the yard, we met an old dog with a limp. This gave us an eerie feeling. Everyone wanted to return to the campsite, but I was so intrigued by the stories, I just knew that I had to enter the old cabin.

As we entered the old well-built cabin, I turned on my small flashlight. As we followed with our eyes trained on the small dot of light across the worn log, mud, and rock walls, and we were beginning to relax our thoughts, we heard what we assumed was a small varmint in the cellar. I wanted to check it out, and the others didn’t want me to do it alone. As I opened the narrow wooden door, it creaked so loudly it echoed for what seemed an eternity. The well-worn, squeaky stairs were so narrow we could barely get down them in our close-knit single-file pattern. As we hit the third or fourth step, we froze in our tracks. We heard this low groaning sound like that of an animal in pain. Then we heard the sound of a chain rattling. We paused, our hearts beating just like they were going to beat right out of our chests. Too far to turn back, too afraid to leave a possibly injured animal, I led the troops ever so slowly down the remaining steps.

By now, I was shaking so much that we couldn’t focus our eyes on anything in the wiggling dot of light. I grasped tightly with both hands in order to steady the light so we could see. When my feet hit the dirt floor, there was an unexpected “drip, drip” sound. We caught reflections of our meager supply of light in a small pool of water in the far corner of the tiny cellar. I laughed as nervously as they did, then I said, “See, gals, there’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

As we prepared to creep back up the narrow stairway, I flashed the light around for one final look. Then I heard a sudden gasp. One of my fellow campers had caught sight of a splattering of blood glistening on the wall. When she pointed our attention to it, no one could make a move or utter a sound.

My small dot of light seemed to have control of itself now. As the light followed the crimson trail on the wall, the light seemed smaller by inches than it was when we left home. Through no effort on my part, the light moved to a hand on a shackle—that of a black man. Then the light followed an arm to a face and eyes that were full of pain and tears. The head was covered in sweat and the chest of the old man was full of stripes as if beaten by a recent cane or whip. He was crying and begging for mercy.

Needless to say, the three of us ran so fast we don’t even recall crossing the two fences between there and home. We totally forgot about our camping gear, and didn’t go back to get it until daylight.

It was at least two weeks before I could close my eyes in sleep for more than just a few minutes without seeing the face of the old slave man and hearing the crack of a whip followed by the pain-filled moans and pleas for our help.

15. “A House Too Haunted to Live In”

Hopkins County

Many communities have haunted houses. In the Beulah neighborhood, the Lynn house was about one mile from any other dwelling. There were old graves around this old house. People said that travelers who stopped there for the night were killed, robbed, and buried in the backyard. These activities took place at least 150 years ago.

Sixty years ago, Sally and Edd Hicks married and set up housekeeping there. Sally, who was considered a truthful woman, was not easily frightened. Edd could easily be frightened. Sally did not like to tell about her ghostly experiences because people laughed at her. She said that perhaps we didn’t have some things now that we did have back then. She told me earnestly that there were weird things that went on at that house.

One night Sally awoke to see a great ball of fire in a corner of her room. She got up to extinguish it, but it wasn’t there, it had just disappeared. It appeared again, but she just covered her head until it was gone.

One night, a large dog reared upon her bed. It was a strange dog and twice as large as any dog she had ever seen. They moved the next day, and the house was never occupied after that.

16. “Dark Secrets of an Old, Abandoned House”

Logan County

One rainy night a traveler stopped at this large house hoping to spend the night to get out of the bad weather. The house was empty and badly in need of repair. When he was eating, he heard footsteps, and a young, beautiful girl and a young man came in. They were really upset and were talking softly, and then she started crying and the man started kissing her, trying to comfort her. Suddenly, loud footsteps were heard and a huge middle-aged man walked in. He scared the girl really bad, and he and the young man started fighting. Finally, the older man killed the young man and took him into a secret room that opened with a hidden panel. The girl ran crying into the room where the old man had put the young man he had killed. The older man just shut the panel and left them both in there.

The traveler had hidden and watched the whole thing, and as soon as he thought the way was clear, he went to the police and told them what had happened. They went to the house to investigate and sure enough they pressed the panel and the door to the room opened, and in the middle of the room were two skeletons clasped in each other s arms.

The police told the man that the owner of the house had taken this young girl who had been engaged to a young man, who was real poor, and married her because her parents wanted the old mans money. Later, the young man disappeared, too, and they had heard that all three had finally died. Nobody ever found out exactly what happened that night in the house, but the next year on the same day the house fell down during a storm and hid its secrets forever.

17. “Daniel Boone’s Ghostly Visit to Henry Clay”

Fayette County

“…. Daniel Boone, a national as well as a local hero, has been rather completely written up but I have heard a story concerning him in a sort of postmortem way, that I do not think has before been published. I heard it from a distinguished member of the family associated with the incident; and, while it is strange, there are too many well-authenticated statements of similar occurrences to lightly doubt the evidence.…

“Back in the times when Burr wore powder and shorts, when Andrew Jackson was a plumed knight, and people still remembered how ill Lord Cornwallis looked on the day of his surrender, Henry Clay was a rising young lawyer—perhaps a member of the State Legislature. Coincidentally, Daniel Boone was the honored and famed pioneer; the aged father of the Commonwealth; the universal encyclopedia of Indian lore and frontier adventure…. He was already an old man, for a tree is shown near the Virginia line with an inscription cut by his own hand, T). Boone killed a barr nere this tree, 1760.’

“A drenching thunder-shower pounded the roof of the [Henry Clay] house and rang chimes on the glass covering of the conservatory, which opened directly out of the library. The conservatory doors had been bolted and padlocked on the inside, and the house locked up for the night. While the storm was at its height, and immediately following a terrific peal of thunder, the family were startled at seeing a tall, lank figure stalk in from the conservatory. The unbidden guest was grizzled and weather-beaten and grim of visage. On his head he wore the historic coon-skin, and his raiment was of buckskin from neck to moccasin. He carried one of the six-foot rifles used a hundred years ago and a powder-horn of huge size and antique appearance hung at his side. From cap, hair, rifle, and every part and garment of the strange visitant water was streaming, and the first thought of those present was that he might be some wanderer from the mountains who had marched in, mountain fashion, without knocking, to escape the rain; but this did not seem a sufficient explanation, for the house was known to be carefully closed, and such costumes had become extinct even in the neighboring hill country twenty-five or thirty years before.

“The figure walked across the room, and without a word, deposited his rifle in the corner and seated himself in a large arm-chair opposite and facing the table at which Mr. Clay had been writing. The statesman was pretty well used to the intrusions of political admirers and lion-hunters, but something about this particular intruder seemed to give him uneasiness; however, he said pleasantly, ‘Friend, it’s a wet night to be out,’ but the man in the buckskin answered never a word, and continued to stare mournfully at his unwilling host for some seconds, after which he shouldered his rifle and departed as he had come.

“Two gentlemen of the family followed instantly, but nothing was to be seen or heard of the wild huntsman. The doors were still bolted and padlocked; nothing had been disturbed, and what was even more remarkable, the dripping rifle in the corner had left not a trace of moisture on the floor where it stood, neither was the thickly upholstered chair, in which the figure rested, the least bit dampened by contact with the streaming clothes of the visitor. The circumstances made a very painful impression on Mr. Clay, and after that night he was never known to refer to it; but his family knew that he had seen his old friend Daniel Boone, and that he regarded the appearance as a warning of impending death. Whether it was so intended or not, it is certain that the great political chieftain died soon afterward.”

18. “The Woman Who Fought Off Indians in a Haunted House”

Anderson County

… A legend has continued to haunt a log house on Ninevah Road for more than 200 years. Close your eyes for a moment, and depending on the scope of your imagination, the sound of walnuts being crushed under the car’s tires on the road becomes eerily not unlike that of crunching bones. The fallen leaves, disturbed by your footsteps, might rustle with the sound of an approach that makes you look back over your shoulder.

Yet, no one is on the path. No one visible.

Built in 1783 by Samuel Hutton, a spy serving under Captain John Hutton, the two-story house sits above a spring—like many homes constructed during the period.

Legend says that Indians entering through an opening in the stone foundation around the spring might have gone up a ladder to the interior of the house and attacked the occupants.

The savage cries that once disturbed the calm of the sloping hills down toward the spring and the house have never been entirely erased by time.

Nancy Hutton, Samuel Hutton’s wife, was left alone during one of his absences to defend their home. Her nerves must have been raw as she warily opened the trap door that led from the house to the lower floor where the spring flowed. But her eyesight was unaffected by the jitters.

Hiding behind the ladder, Nancy Hutton spotted the feathers of a red-skinned man. Her hand closed over an ax.

No one knows how many of the savages Nancy Hutton fought off and killed with her ax as they attempted to rise to the upper floor. No one can say whether it is the spirit of the murdered or of the murderess that still clings tenaciously to the unoccupied, historic dwelling.

Capable not only of fighting off the visitation at the log house, Nancy Hutton stood up to her husband in a way few women of her era dared. In 1800 Samuel Hutton was ordered to appear before the Franklin County Court for nonsupport of an infant.

Apparently, Nancy had left the child at the courthouse in a demand that her husband be made to support her and the baby.

It is not difficult to imagine that a woman of Nancy Hutton’s dauntless spirit might, even now, refuse to leave the home she so valiantly defended.

19. “Brutus and the Teen Square”

Bourbon County

No one actually saw Brutus sitting in the chair at the end of the long line of chairs against the wall. That wasn’t surprising since Brutus was a ghost and none of the kids had noticed Brutus when he was still registering 98.6 and was the apple of his mothers eye. But those days were in the past now, and on this tenth anniversary of his death, Brutus returned to the place where he had spent some of his last hours as a mortal.

The chairs were a motley collection of seats for the less popular kids—a place where they could sit while their more fortunate peers were dancing at Teen Square, the Paris hangout for young people in the 1940s and ‘50s. The chair where Brutus was sitting was almost directly under the memorial on the wall that was dedicated to him, with his initials “BFS” prominently displayed. The memorial had been put up a few weeks after Brutus’s death and was now dusty and showing signs of wear. It had made the kids who ignored him in life feel better, but it had soon become just a part of the furnishings.

Two of the younger girls walked closer to Brutus’s chair. “I dare you to sit in that chair,” said Nancy to her friend Betsy.

Betsy shook her head and exclaimed breathlessly, “I wouldn’t sit there if it was the last chair on earth.”

Several of the Teen Square regulars had sworn that they could see the outline of a boy sitting in the chair—especially around Halloween, the anniversary of Brutus’s death. Some of the older boys claimed they weren’t scared, but everyone gave the chair a wide berth, especially the girls.

Brutus wished that they weren’t all scared of him. He wanted someone to talk to him and tell him that they cared about him and missed him now that he was gone. Somehow, he felt like when that happened, he’d be able to move on to the next phase of not living—whatever that might be. But unless he got that closure, he just might be forced to return to that hated chair every Halloween forever.

Just then, Phyllis walked in the door. She was dressed as a nurse for the Halloween party and Brutus thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He hoped maybe she would be the one, but after ten years he was beginning to lose hope. After all, Phyllis hadn’t even known him when he was still alive. She had moved to Paris just a few months ago and so was on the outside looking in, much like Brutus had been. She hesitated after walking into the room then finally came over and sat down in the chair next to the one in which Brutus was sitting.

Brutus’s ghost. (Photo courtesy of Price Huston)

Some of the other kids noticed her choice of a seat, but no one said anything to her. She seemed nice enough, but the rest of the kids had known each other all of their lives, something she would never be able to share.

The jukebox started playing music, and couples filed onto the dance floor. Brutus sat where he was, as usual. Phyllis sat beside him, and after a while Brutus began to think that she knew he was there. She kept shooting sideways glances at him. The strange thing was, when she looked at him, Brutus began to feel more “real” as if he weren’t a ghost. Finally, Phyllis cleared her throat and said hesitantly, “I’ve never seen you here before.”

From across the room, it looked as if she were talking to an empty chair, but the other kids were too absorbed in each other to notice. In a rusty-sounding voice, Brutus told her that he only came to the Halloween parties now. He asked her if she liked Paris.

“Well, it’s all right, but I wish we still lived in New York,” Phyllis replied wistfully. “I had a lot of friends there, and it isn’t easy fitting in here. So few people move here that they just don’t seem to know how to deal with new kids.”

Brutus nodded. He had once been a new kid, too, and even death couldn’t make him forget how hard it had been. “I know it can be hard, but if you can just stick it out, in a year or two it will be a lot better as everyone gets to know you and you make some friends,” he said hesitantly.

Phyllis looked sad and her lip began to quiver. “I don’t know if I can stand another year,” she said softly, almost to herself.

But Brutus heard her, and it brought back memories of how he had felt his last few days on earth—hopeless and sad. “You know, things will get better, and then you’ll look back on this and be amazed that you were so upset,” he said quickly, the words coming fast now without the rusty sound. In fact, I’ve been watching the other kids over there and that guy named ‘Mike has looked over here several times when he thought you weren’t looking. I think maybe he likes you.”

Phyllis glanced furtively across the room to where Mike was sitting with a couple of other boys. “Do you really think so? I like him. He’s in my English class, and I think he’s cute.”

Already the sadness was fading from her voice and Brutus hoped that he had made her feel better. He knew, though, that the improvement would be only temporary until she made friends in her new home.

Just then, the music started again and the lights dimmed as the juke box began to play a slow tune. Mike got up from his chair across the room and started to walk toward the chairs where Phyllis and Brutus were sitting. They both held their breath, although Brutus just sort of remembered how it felt to hold his breath since air was one of the many things he no longer needed.

Mike stopped in front of Phyllis. “Would you like to dance?” he stammered.

“Yes, thanks,” she replied. “And thanks to you for making me feel so much better,” she whispered to Brutus.

“Who are you talking to?” Mike asked her.

“Why, to that nice boy there in the chair,” she said, glancing behind her as she headed to the dance floor. She stopped in amazement as she saw that the chair was empty.

“I must have been dreaming,” she thought, but wisely decided to keep that to herself as she and Mike began an awkward first dance that would one day lead to love.

20. “Renovations Awaken Mischievous Spirit”

Nelson County

There are things that happen in Ernie and Susan Powell’s South Third Street home that cannot be explained. Closet doors have flung open, trinkets and books have moved when no one was in the room.

“We bought the house from a woman whose mother had passed away,” Susan said. “The day we signed the papers the woman sat back in her chair with a look of relief and said, ‘I am so glad to get rid of that house.”’

The Powells couldn’t understand why anyone would want to get rid of a beautiful, historic home. The house is on a lot purchased from Bardstown’s founder, William Bard, in 1797. They believe a log cabin may have been on the land before their home was built in 1880. The Powells bought the home in 1991.

“When we asked her why she was glad to get rid of the house, she told us strange things had been happening there,” Susan said.

According to Susan, the house had been empty for a while after the woman’s mother’s death. The daughter was responsible for moving furniture and antiques from the house before it was sold.

“She told me the lights and fans would come on by themselves,” Susan said.

Susan said she and her husband didn’t think much about the woman’s comments. “I was the most skeptical person in the world,” she said.

Susan’s skepticism lessened when she and her husband began to renovate the house. The first strange occurrence happened while Susan and a friend were painting the dining room. “He was in one corner and I was in the other. We had our backs to each other and a bucket of paint was on the table in the middle of the room,” she said. “There was a crash and the paint fell off the table, ended up on the floor.”

Susan and her friend could find no explanation as to why the paint spilled or why her friend’s glasses, which had been on the table, were on the floor with both lenses popped out.

Later during the renovation, the Powells took down a chandelier from the dining room and placed it in the front room of the house. One evening Susan was startled by an unexplained sound. When she went to find the noise she saw two glass globes on the chandelier had shattered, but others were untouched.

Throughout the renovation, the Powells would come home and find their lights and fans on when they were certain they had turned them off before they left.

One feature in the house that has the most unusual activity is an antique lawyer’s bookcase in the dining room. “This part of the house was added on,” Susan said. “It used to be part of the courtyard.”

One evening, Susan meticulously arranged books and other items on the top shelf of the bookcase. She left the room and when she returned, one of the books had been moved. Susan could not understand how the book was out of place. “I put it back and made sure it was even with the others,” she said.

But when she came back later, the book was out of place.

“I was home alone and I was tired,” Susan said. “I screamed at it to stop and it did.”

While the Powells had no other occurrences that night, another strange event happened later. The Powells had vacationed in the Caribbean and brought home a sixteenth-century Dutch gin bottle. Susan placed the bottle at the back of the top shelf and put other items in front of it.

One night another crashing sound brought Susan back into the dining room. The gin bottle was shattered on the floor, but all of the items in front of it were untouched.

The renovation process took the Powells about three years. When renovation stopped, so did the ghostly occurrences—until April of 1999.

Ernie Powell, a collector of movie posters, decided to bring a part of his collection into the house because he was thinking of selling them. The Powells put the posters on the top shelf of the closet in their bedroom.

“In the middle of the night, I heard a boom,” Ernie said. “It was like an avalanche.”

When the Powells turned on the light, they were shocked to see both of the closet doors open and posters scattered across the floor.

“We were certain the doors were closed before,” Susan said.

Who is this mischievous ghost on South Third Street? Susan Powell isn’t sure she wants to know. While she thinks neighbors would know if someone died in the house, Susan doesn’t want the answer.

“Sometimes I act like things don’t really happen,” she said. “I used to be scared a lot. I would wait for things to happen, but not anymore.”

21. “The Disappearing Ghost”

Caldwell County

Just outside the city limits of Princeton stands a big, old, deserted mansion. This mansion stands on a dark, lonely hill grown up with weeds that gives it the picture of weirdness.

The overgrown path leads you to a door with creaking hinges. As you ascend the old steps, the loose boards groan with the weight of your footsteps. The dark mysterious stairs wind to the sky and you can see the cobwebs and crawling insects that live in the old house. The furniture, covered with white, gives a ghostly appearance to the eyes. The old clock, now run down with the years, stands on the dust-coated mantle. The “drip, drip” of the faucet in the kitchen rings like an alarm bell in the dense quietness of the night. The night cries of the animals float in through the windows sending chills up your spine. As your proceed further up the stairs and into the hall, a weird cry is heard. The wind, blowing through a broken window, cries like a tormented child. Beneath the house lie many secret tunnels and passages that provide flight after a crime of evil-doing has been committed. In this old, dark deserted house on a dark, stormy night these secret tunnels were used by the owner of the mansion.

Early in the evening a gay party was in process. The leading residents of Princeton were present to celebrate a new industry which had come to Princeton. The women were dressed gaily and were enjoying themselves. The men were congregated in the library discussing the new industry and its possibilities.

As the evening went by everyone pretty well got drunk. One by one the guests began to leave. Finally, all but a few of the men had left. They were discussing politics. The discussion became very heated between the host and one of the guests. It finally broke into a fist fight. The guest drew a knife and went for the host. They fought for a few minutes. Then, as the other guests tried to separate them, the host slipped into one of the secret tunnels. When everyone finally quieted down, they noticed he was gone, but they didn’t know how or where.

The police were called in, but they could never find any clues or any of the secret tunnels. To this day, this man has never been seen again. No one knows where he disappeared to or even if he is dead or alive.

The people of Princeton were shocked by this experience and nobody ever goes near the mansion for fear the host may appear. There are many tales of his appearing around the house in the night, but he always disappears when one tries to move closer. Whatever really became of this man, no one may ever know.

22. “Mysterious Ghostly Noises”

Barren County

When I was in grade school, we lived in a house here in Glasgow at the corner of Liberty Street and West Washington. Both the bedrooms were upstairs, and they had winding steps that went up to each of them. We had to go through the living room to get to one of the bedrooms and through the den to get to the other bedroom. At the bottom of the stairs there were doors with locks on the bedroom side that we would shut and lock at night. They were the kind of locks that had the straight bar that you just slid into the notch. My bed sat at the top of the stairwell.

While we were in bed one night, we heard something running across the floor downstairs. It was running so hard that it made the whole house jar. My dad got up and came to my room and was going to whip me because he thought I was up running around, but I was sitting up in my bed scared to death. He came in and sat down with me and we heard the same noise again. All of a sudden, the lock on my door started clicking back and forth like somebody was trying to open the door. Daddy went and got his shotgun, and we all went downstairs to see what was there.

All the windows were shut and locked, and so were the doors. There was nothing there. Daddy said if he ever lived in a haunted house, that was it. Later on, he found out that this house used to be the old courthouse of Barren County, where they used to hang people.

23. “The Jones House Footsteps”

Lyon County

The Jones house is a dark and mysterious building sitting silently upon a small hill in Lyon County. It is hidden by large, sheltering trees as if it holds a secret it does not want to share. This old house, empty and dark, stands locked inside itself and lives only in the memories of witnesses. To this day, a haunted soul walks through the Jones house searching for a way out. Could it be trapped there by an unfulfilled need, a tragic death, a life cut short? What keeps this soul wandering within the walls of the Jones house? Its not easy to believe the stories about the Jones house, but if you were there, if you heard, its impossible to forget.

The Jones house is a small four-room home built in the 1940s. It has a small front room which opens into the kitchen. In the back corner of the kitchen stands the door to the basement. The old squeaky basement door opens to a dark, empty hole accessed only by a simple wooden plank stairway. It is here where my story begins. It is here where I became a believer.

It was our senior year in high school. Jamie Bundren and I set up our weight equipment at the Jones house. One night while lifting weights we heard sounds over our radio coming from the basement. It sounded like furniture smashing against the walls. One crash after another in an empty basement made our hair stand on end. The sounds grew louder and louder; we were so frightened we ran from the house.

We returned the next day to inspect what had happened in the basement. I worried in fear that someone must have been in the house trying to get out through the small basement windows. As we walked down the wooden stairway into the basement, we were amazed and frightened by what we saw. No furniture, no boxes, just empty space and tightly locked windows. Only four damp concrete walls stood witness to what took place the night before.

Contemporary generations have experienced ghostly footsteps and other sounds in the Jones House. (Photo by Wade White)

A few nights later, we were working out again at the Jones house. After a few minutes we heard noises in the basement. We listened, intent upon pinpointing the cause of the sounds. But next, we experienced what has become the Jones house phenomenon. Someone was walking up the stairway! It was as if silence had fallen upon the world as the loud footsteps on the wooden planks approached the basement door. We heard nothing but the footsteps, which had us frozen in fear. We couldn’t move; we couldn’t run! But just before the footsteps reached the basement door, we ran from the house in pure terror. The sounds we heard were so real, yet so unex-plainable, we no longer wanted to be at the Jones house at night.

Two weeks later, during daylight hours, we were taking down our weight equipment to move it to a new location. Jamie and I were in a small room off the kitchen when we heard someone walk into the house. We looked at each other wondering who it might be. The footsteps walked through the front room and stopped just short of the kitchen. We were only eight feet from where the footsteps had stopped. Just around the corner someone stood silently, or so we thought. We were not afraid at first, but when no one answered my call, we began to worry. So, to see who was there, Jamie ran around the corner bedroom as I stepped into the kitchen. I knew by the sound of the footsteps that I would be face to face with the person who walked into the house, but no one was there. We searched inside and out but found no one, no cars, nothing. We knew something very strange had occurred, something that could not be explained. But this was only the beginning.

Two friends from school, not knowing our story, went to the Jones house one week later. It was a cloudy, dark night. Outside they could hear an approaching thunderstorm. Through the windows, lightning gave brief glimpses of the old trees violently weaving in the wind. Thunder shook the walls like miniature earthquakes. Then, during the midst of the storm, they heard odd noises in the basement. They hoped it was the storm, the wind maybe. But the sounds were like furniture being dragged across the concrete floor. Suddenly, they heard someone walking up the stairway. They were shocked and terrified since no one was supposed to be in the house! Like thunder claps, they heard each step on the wooden planks. They ran out the door and pulled it shut, but something jerked the door back open from the inside. One of them grabbed the door again, and once more it was pulled from his hands. Believing someone was in the house, they ran to the car and quickly drove away.

A few weeks later, I was visiting the home of a man who lives near the Jones house. I told him that my friends and I were planning a small party to be held there over the weekend. He laughed and said that he wouldn’t want to go there at night. At first I thought he was teasing me about what had happened there the last few weeks. But then I realized that he probably didn’t know what had happened. I asked him why he said that, and he told me his story. By the way, his word is as good as gold.

He said that in the 1950s friends of his family lived in the Jones house. He and his family would visit them often and it was common knowledge that something very strange was happening in that house. The family living there told stories of objects missing for days and then reappearing in other locations throughout the house. He told about the old indoor cistern. In a small room of the house lies a deep, dark hole wherein its belly stands some thick, black water. The family told of how they could leave the cistern bucket handle turned a certain way and sometimes it would be turned in the opposite direction when they returned home. But when he began the story of the wooden stairway, my heart almost jumped out of my chest.

He stated that the family often heard footsteps coming up the stairway at night. He witnessed it himself one night while visiting. Knowing the number of steps on the stairway, family members planned to open the door once the sounds reached the top step. During this particular visit, the footsteps began climbing the stairway toward them. The sounds reached the top step and they grabbed for the door. But before they touched the door knob, it began slowly turning back and forth. They were all stunned and frozen in their tracks. Then one of them grabbed the knob to open the door and they heard something quickly run down the stairs. They all went down in the basement but found nothing. I could not believe my ears. It was so similar to what we had heard. This is evidence that the hauntings we were experiencing had been taking place for over forty years.

We planned our party and the story of the Jones house spread throughout the school. We didn’t expect to hear anything during the party, but we were wrong. The band had taken a break and five of my friends were standing outside on the porch enjoying the cool air. They heard someone walk from the front room to the doorway where they were standing. All five looked to see who was coming outside. The footsteps stopped, but no one was there.

Many from school wanted to go to the Jones house and hear the footsteps. My closest friends and I took over twenty people there to witness the sounds. Many times nothing happened, but when it did, I watched nonbelievers become believers. The chilling sounds echoing through the small house with each footstep was more than anyone expected. Those who heard the footsteps on the wooden stairway never imagined it would be so real or so overwhelming. It left each person speechless after they were spooked from the house by an entity which shouldn’t exist. Though many laughed at our stories of the footsteps, those who witnessed the sounds never questioned again the existence of the Jones house supernatural phenomenon.

One night during a small get-together, my friend had an Ouija board and began asking it questions about the Jones house. As we all gathered around, the Ouija board began spelling out that the Jones house planned to hurt John. Many of the girls were upset and asked John not to go there at night. John Bingham, who had been there on many occasions and heard the noises, agreed not to go there that week.

Later the same week, four boys went to the Jones house to see what would happen. They were there only a few minutes when something began walking up the old stairway. As the footsteps slowly climbed from the basement, they all ran toward the front door. The last boy out was undercut at the knees and fell hard onto the porch. The door was standing wide open and no one knew why he had fallen. No boards or furniture was in the front room. Three other boys had just run out the same door with nothing in their way. The fellow who fell was cut up on his face and hands from the fall. On his lower legs were marks as if a two-by-four board had hit him. This wasn’t John Bingham that was injured as the Ouija board had said; it was another John—John Snow.

Two months later, John Bingham and Eric Defew were at the Jones house when they heard the footsteps. They wanted so bad to see it; they wanted to know if it could be seen. They waited as long as possible, but the slow, deliberate footsteps were so loud, so real, fear took control and they ran. Just before they reached the car, John remembered that he had to lock the door. He grabbed the key from the rusty nail on the porch and pulled the door closed. Just before inserting the key, the door pulled from inside the house! John pulled back to close the door again, and this time the door was jerked from his hand and slammed open! He clutched the key in his hand and ran for the car. They drove away as fast as they could go. The next morning, John knew he had placed the key in the car seat but could not find it. He went back to the Jones house to search for the key. But when he arrived, cold chills shot down his spine. He could not believe his eyes. The door was shut. It was locked, and the key was hanging on the old rusty nail.

A couple of months later, some friends and I gathered at the Jones house. Just as was done forty years ago, we sat at the kitchen table with lit candles listening for sounds. We waited an hour, and without warning we heard the eerie sound of footsteps walking up the stairway. As the footsteps climbed toward the closed basement door, we all excitedly gathered around the door. We knew only the basement door was separating us from what had haunted us for months. John Bingham grabbed the knob and pushed the door open. We all jumped back while shining our flashlights down into the dark basement but saw nothing—nothing but the wooden stairway reaching out from another dimension. From that stairway entered something which had vanished without a trace or sound.

A week later, John Bingham was at his home when he heard sounds coming from his bedroom closet. It sounded like someone searching through the closet looking for something. He was obviously nervous as he was the only one home. Then the noise stopped and John heard footsteps from the bedroom enter into the hallway. He quickly ran from his room into the hall but no one was there. He went from room to room searching, but no one was to be found. He knew these were the same sounds he had heard at the Jones house.

One month later at John’s house, Clarice the cleaning lady heard someone walk down the hallway right to the door where she stood in horror. She knew no one was home or expected to be home. Just around the corner stood someone or something. She slowly looked carefully, but saw no one this time. When the Binghams arrived home later that day, they noticed most of the cleaning had not been done. It appeared Clarice had left in a hurry. She returned later to explain what had happened. Upon hearing the story, the Binghams told Clarice about John’s similar experience and about the Jones house. Clarice, an older religious woman, looked into John’s eyes with fear and said, “John, you have brought something home with you from that house. Please never go back to the Jones house, never, never go back.”

The whole story of the Jones house remains undiscovered. Does the stairway into the cool, damp basement serve as a portal for a victim of a terrible crime? Is this soul manifesting himself in hopes to let the world know of its tragic death at the hands of the unpunished? Is it a path for a soul reaching out to the world of which it is no longer a part? Although many tried, we could never discount what took place there as anything other than a haunting. To this day, down in the dark basement of the Jones house, it waits.

24. “Ghosts in Ditto House”

Hardin County

Back in 1985, Carol Goldsmith and her husband, Cookie, purchased the Ditto house. It’s an old Federal-style home, and they had it restored within four years. They had been told stories of the house being haunted, but didn’t pay much attention to what they heard. However, shortly after they started living in the front bedroom upstairs, they began hearing noises in the attic. Sounded like trunks or big boxes being moved around. They thought it might be squirrels or rats, but the noises kept getting louder and louder. The noises would occur in the middle of the night, around 2:00 A.M., and would often be replaced by noises that seemed to be coming from a wall down the hallway. This went on for a month or so.

One night, they heard voices down the hallway. Said it sounded like two women arguing with high-pitched voices. Carol and Cookie couldn’t make out what was being said, but they did hear what sounded like their names being spoken. They heard this arguing at the same time every night for about a month. One night, they heard the voices coming in their direction, then entering their bedroom. The voices continued arguing as they were heard circling the bed.

The Goldsmiths thought about selling the house, but didn’t because they loved the house and its history so much.

About a year later, actually the day after Christmas, Carol was lying in bed in one of the middle bedrooms. About midmorning, while still lying there, Carol felt the presence of someone looking at her. She turned her head to the left and saw a large red-headed woman looking around the door frame at her. Carol said the woman had deep-set eyes, a disturbed look, and was in clothing from perhaps around 1900.

The ghostly woman said nothing, and Carol was startled because she knew that she and her husband were alone in the house. Realizing that she wasn’t asleep, Carol yelled for Cookie and the woman disappeared in an instant.

Just about a month after that, Carol was again in the same bed one early morning. Her husband was at work at the police station. Carol said she opened her eyes and saw the same red-haired woman, this time standing at the foot of the bed, hands on her hips, staring down at her. Petrified, Carol bolted from the room, ran down the stairs and called her husband. He came home immediately, but the woman was already gone.

Carol said that during that same period, they often came home at night to find the lights turned on, all the dishes turned upside down in the cupboards, and mirrors turned backward toward the wall.

Up until that time, the Ditto house wasn’t a B and B, but they opened the house to overnight guests in 1993. One morning after the guests had departed, Carol and Cookie were downstairs in the back kitchen, while their young, part-time housekeeper was upstairs making the beds and straightening the rooms. As the housekeeper came down the stairs and turned to walk back to the kitchen, she passed by the main dining room. Glancing into the room, she was stunned to see an old gray-haired man with a long white beard sitting on the couch. She said he had on a gray Civil War uniform with its long gray coat, rows of buttons and high collar. When she saw him, the young girl ran out the back door, and never came back to work anymore.

The house was sold to Sherry and Milton “Mickey” Dale in September 1998. Mickey was upstairs watching TV in the back bedroom one night a few weeks later, and Sherry had fallen asleep on the daybed there in the room. About 1:30 A.M., just after Mickey had fallen asleep, he suddenly became startled when he heard what seemed to be a heavy boot hitting the bottom step of the wooden stair steps. As the footsteps continued slowly, methodically, toward their room, Mickey became frightened. The hair on his head stood straight out! As the footsteps grew closer, he grabbed a flashlight and shined it toward the spot where someone should be standing about eight feet away. But there was no one to be seen. In his mind, he thought it was the Civil War soldier he had heard about coming up the stairway in heavy boots.

Sherry rented two adjoining upstairs rooms to a young woman, her husband, and their two girls, ages five and three, for two months, beginning on September 27, 2000. But Sherry didn’t tell them of the previous hauntings in the Ditto house B and B, and doesn’t believe anyone else did either. Anyhow, one midmorning around October 8, this lady, whose name is Adrienne, said she had been outside with her children for a while.

As she came back into the Ditto house, she said she immediately smelled the scent of strong, heavy, pipe smoke. She knew of none of the other guests, all men, who smoked a pipe. Besides, all these men worked all day each day from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 p.m. at Cosmosdale Cement Plant involving construction of new facilities.

As Adrienne made her way up the steps, she wondered where this strong smelling smoke was coming from. She reached the top of the stairs, children in tow, and looked toward the children’s room twenty feet away. She said that the door was open, but she had closed it earlier when she left the room to go outside. Looking into the bedroom from the hallway she was terrified to see someone lying on the children’s bed smoking a pipe! This person was lying there with his legs crossed at the ankles, head propped up against the headboard, wearing dark, rough-looking clothes that looked as though they were from an earlier time period. She said that man looked that way, too! Adrienne said she stared in amazement, stunned, wondering who he was and why he was lying on the children’s bed.

The pipe smoke circled upward and was clearly visible seen against the window and against the wall of the room. This person, or ghost, whatever it was, perhaps sensing someone staring at him, turned and looked straight into Adrienne’s eyes. For an instant, they stared at each other; then he just suddenly disappeared. He was gone from the room.

Later, Adrienne started to tell her husband about the incident. He butted in, asking, “What have you been drinking?” But neither of them drink, and they don’t smoke.

Adrienne told Sherry and me this story a few days after it happened. It was brought up during casual conversation. Adrienne’s family continued to rent both rooms in the house for a while, but moved out and away before Halloween.

25. “Mrs. Petrie’s Ghost”

Daviess Counry

My mother, Judy, who was thirteen at the time, was living in an old two-story house in Maceo, Kentucky. The old house consisted of four rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs. There was also an outhouse behind the house.

My granddad, Jack McKinney, was working the four-to-twelve midnight shift at the steel mill, so he was always up late at night. One night my granddad was sitting up in his bedroom reading when he heard someone going up the stairs. My mother has twelve brothers and sisters, and so Granddad yelled out asking which one of them was up? After inquiring several times and not receiving an answer, Granddad got worried and got up to check on the children. None of the children were up, but Granddad saw a ghostly female figure walking up the stairs. She turned around and looked at my granddad, smiled and then continued up the stairs where she disappeared into the bathroom.

Granddad never told my mother or any of the other children about this until several years later when they moved from the old house. He also told Mom that the previous owners of the house had been an older couple by the name of Petrie. Mr. Petrie never allowed his wife to use the inside bathroom, but for some reason always made her use the outhouse behind the house.

Granddad just figured that what he saw going up the stairs was Mrs. Petrie’s ghost and that she was going to use the inside bathroom.

26. “Unfriendly Packing”

Nelson County

Our family moved to Bloomfield a year and a half ago. We bought a house that was built by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Spence Minor, in 1813. The house is on the national historic register as the Minor Manor. My brother and I were afraid of the big, old house. I slept in the room that was once occupied by my cousin Nick. He died in the house a bachelor at the age of eighty-five from a heart attack. There have been no children living in the house in over a hundred years. When we bought the house we were told that the orchard never produces much fruit. But during our first summer here, we had more peaches, pears, and apples than we knew what to do with. Everyone said my mom had a green thumb, but she said that she didn’t do anything but provide a little love and care to the grounds. She said that the house just needed a family.

In December of our first year, we had to evacuate due to a boiler system malfunction that smoked the entire house and messed up everything we owned with oil and soot. We spent the next three months with friends while our house was being cleaned. The insurance company paid this fire restoration company to restore the house and property…. This was no small task, given that our home is over 5,000 square feet.

The first day of the job, Sonya the cleaning lady asked if the house was haunted. She said she felt a positive force coming from my bedroom. She said that everything plastic had to be thrown away because it was covered with toxic oil that would be hazardous if a child were to put it in its mouth. Sonya went on to tell me that she had put all the plastic toys in a box in my room and then had gone downstairs for lunch. When she returned to my room all the toys were scattered on the bedroom floor, and her watch that she left on the sink was resting in the bottom of the toilet bowl. No one else had been in the house except for the women who were helping her clean, and they all had lunch together that day. No one could explain what had happened.

One lady told my mother that she would clean any room in the house except my room. She said the spirit in that room was very protective of the children and did not want her in there. It was like somebody didn’t want them to throw away our toys. I think I know who it was. I believe it was cousin Nick. Unfortunately, the cleaning lady who was afraid of my room will never be able to tell her stories again because she died of an aneurysm one night after a hard day’s work at our house.

Several of the ladies told many stories of their experiences in the house, but none touched me like the one Sonya told about the toys. All I know is, I am no longer afraid of the noises I hear at night, and I don’t even jump when my door opens and closes by itself. I just smile and say that my cousin Nick must be checking up on me.

27. “The Disappearing Guide at an Old, Abandoned House”

Green County

One night these friends of mine and I were going out to an old abandoned house in the country. The road we had to take there was covered with trees, and it made the road seem like a tunnel because the trees were so thick. The reason we were going out to this old house was because it was supposed to be haunted. We were getting close to the house when this woman ran out in front of the truck and stopped. She just stood there looking at us. We stopped the truck and the headlights seemed to go right through her, like she didn’t have a shadow. She motioned for us to follow her so we got out of the truck and ran towards her. She ran away real fast, then turned to motion for us to follow again, so we did. She ran right up to the house where we were going and opened the front door and looked back at us. We were about fifty yards behind her. When we got to the door, it was nailed shut from the outside. We pulled the nails out and went in anyway. We looked all through that old house but nobody was there at all.

28. “A Man’s Ghost in an Upstairs Window”

Muhlenberg County

There was a married couple living in an old, two-story house. The woman was left alone during the day while her husband worked. Every day she would hear noises upstairs but when she went up to check, there was never anybody there. She complained to her husband and he also checked it out and found nothing. The wife was getting really scared to live there, and she couldn’t convince anybody that the noises weren’t her imagination. One day she went shopping and took a cab back home after she was done. She was telling the cab driver about the noises and how everybody thought she was crazy since they had not heard anything and couldn’t find anything. As they pulled in the driveway, the cabdriver got a funny expression on his face and said, “Lady, if there is nobody in that house, who’s that man staring out the window upstairs?”

29. “A Woman’s Ghost at Various Life Stages”

Daviess County

There’s an Owensboro man who purchased an antique love seat and two chairs many years ago. He also acquired a ghost—a beautiful female—with the furniture.

The ghost, who has been seen by at least ten members of the man’s family and friends, bears a striking resemblance to the carvings on the arms of the sofa and chair. The carvings are of the head and bust of a woman at different ages in life. One even appears to be a death mask.

The origin of the eighteenth-century-type furniture is not known, but the family feels that there is a love story associated with the carvings. Generally, the story goes like this: A beautiful courtship was broken years ago by the untimely death of the girl. Grief stricken, the suitor sought a remembrance of his former love. He took his problem to a woodworker-sculptor and had a suite of furniture made which portrayed his beloved as a very young girl, as she grew older, as a mature woman, and then as she was when she died.

In her ghostly form, she is described as a willowy young woman in a full-length dress, with long, black hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back.

To some, she appears to be simply wandering about the house, standing by the draperies, or looking out the upstairs window.

Two visitors were recently surprised to see her bending over their bed.

To others, she has not been visible, but has been heard walking through the house, rocking in the rocking chair, or felt as a presence when she sits on the edge of the bed.

One night about an hour and a half after the family had retired, the record player began to play by itself. The particular song that was played had an eerie but definite relationship to the family argument that had taken place earlier.

In an effort to establish the connection between the ghost and the furniture, there have been attempts to communicate with the spirit world, but they never seem to have any luck. However, each person contacted would have a different story but would always reinforce the story that the carving on the furniture was the culmination of a tragic love affair.

30. “Sisters See the Ghost of Suicide Victim”

Taylor County

In Taylor County, a man built a house especially for his wife. The first week they moved in, she fell down the stairway, broke her neck and died.

Later another man and his wife moved in, because the rent was so cheap. A year after they moved in, the man also came home one week and found his wife hanging from a rafter, her neck broken. The man moved away.

The next tenants were a widower and his two daughters. The townsfolk warned them of the notorious happenings at the house, but the man did not have much money, so he decided to overlook the warnings and move in.

The first afternoon he gathered his daughters together to tell them that under no condition whatever were they to open their door to their upstairs bedroom until he had personally examined it.

The darkness came, and they locked themselves in the upstairs room. Later on they heard a small noise at the bottom of the stairs. The girls huddled together on the twin bed. The noise increased and seemed to move up toward them, one step at a time. One girl, screaming in terror, ran to the door, threw it open and ran out. The second girl ran to the door, called her name and when she did not get an answer, closed and relocked the door.

Later that night when the father returned and walked up to the girls’ room, one sister, with hair turned white and bloodshot eyes, was eating the flesh off the back of the neck of her dead sister.

31. “The Face”

Lyon County

Sandra Lockhart, her husband, and their two children lived in a house known as the old McCormick house that was located by the Cumberland River here in Lyon County. Sandra spent many days there alone during the day with her small children. Once, during daylight hours on a bright sunshiny day, Sandra heard some footsteps out on the sidewalks, which were made of concrete and which circled all the way around the house. She assumed it must be her neighbor, thus called out to him, “Come on in, Junior.”

She received no reply, but when she again heard the walking footsteps she went outside and walked all the way around the house several times, but no one was ever seen. She realized that she had witnessed a ghost visitation there in the old McCormick house. On a particular night in 1963 company had arrived and were bedded down in Sandra and her husband’s bed. Sandra, her husband, and their new baby were sleeping on the couch bed. The older baby was sleeping beside Sandra in a bassinet. When the baby started fussing, as all babies do, Sandra got up to fix the baby his bottle.

After returning to bed and adjusting the baby, Sandra glanced out her living room window and saw a transparent red glowing ball. She kept staring at it, trying to figure out what in the world it could possibly be. No sooner had she finished her thoughts when the red ball came in through the window, but the window did not break.

Sandra propped the baby’s bottle up and the red ball started coming closer to her. She tried to get up, but the red ball had her pinned down and she couldn’t move! She tried to scream out, but to no avail. She kept screaming and finally her brother-in-law came in and asked her, “What is wrong?”

But just before he had come in, the red ball had made an appearance of a face. The red ball face just looked at Sandra, then was gone. It disappeared!

Sandra packed some things that she and the kids needed and, after a night of no more rest, Sandra and her children left the old McCormick house, never to return. Her husband packed the furniture, clothing, and all their other belongings and moved them out. Today the old house no longer stands. It was torn down and a mobile home was moved onto the property where the McCormick house once stood—the place where Sandra spent many days and long, dreadful, scary nights.

32. “The Tapping Ghost”

Breckinridge County

Breckinridge County was first settled in 1789 with a fort at its present county seat in Hardinsburg. Soon after the establishment of the fort, the Indian problem vanished and made way for the settlement of the entire county. Much of the county was settled by subsistence farmers, but several of those coming from the East were, while not well educated, fairly well off for the time and the area. One such family coming from an eastern section of Virginia were the Millers.

The Millers settled an area in northern Breckinridge County on top of what was once an Indian campground. Using the sweat of the brow and as little money as possible, this family built a quite nice home and became more and more prosperous. They acquired a few slaves and raised a sizable acreage of tobacco. On one section of the area, Millers slaves built their own shacks, the ruins of which are still there.

Miller was a fair man, but after the Civil War he could not handle the whole farm since his slaves were freed. He broke his land into tracts, selling all but about 110 acres. Even this proved to be too much for the man and his wife, so he sold the final area of the homestead and moved on.

The new owner had made quite a bit of money in raising sheep and already had built his home on an adjoining farm, so he did not move into the old house. It was simply boarded up and all but forgotten by all but those ex-slaves who still lived in the area. Rumors were started by these superstitious ex-slaves. They said that the house had become haunted by either the irate Indians who had been displaced for over a hundred years or more, but more likely by their Negro fathers who yearned for their freedom but were born and died slaves.

The boards began to loosen as weather began to take its toll on the old house.

Several nights, coon hunters went to the old house but left quickly as strange noises were heard from the second story of the split-log structure. It was an eerie sound, which reminded the hunters of slaves who had worked at a nearby rock quarry. A thumping, scratching sound was heard, but no one dared to investigate.

One night in late November, a group of hunters had wandered into a valley more than twenty miles from where they had started. The night started out cold and rainy, but the rain stopped and the men decided to trod on in search of their favorite hunting game. Then almost as suddenly as the rain stopped, it began again, but this time it was a mixture of freezing rain and snow. By this time the hunters had lost their way, and they were becoming very chilled to the bone.

As they popped over a hill, they spied the abandoned, dark house, and they ran for shelter. Once in the house, they took off their wet clothes and used some of the boards which had fallen off to build a fire in the old rock fireplace. As the blaze grew, the warmer the men began to feel. About this time, a knocking and scratching noise began. It seemed to come from everywhere. Several of the superstitious men had heard of the stories of this haunted house. They began to grab their wet clothes. Some of the younger men didn’t believe the stories, and they wanted to investigate.

After deciding the noise was coming from the room directly above them, three men lit their coal-oil lanterns and started toward the steps. With each step they took, they let their imagination run wild. They began hearing chains in their minds depicting the slave days. With the next step, they heard Negro spirituals being sung in that low, mourning monotone. Two of the men decided to go back and get their wet clothes and get as far away as possible.

One of the men decided to keep going to find out what was going on. As he neared the top step of the rounded staircase, one could almost hear his heart beat over the clambering sound. As his head peeked over the floor level, the room tension was unbearable. The other men called up to him, but no one answered.

Finally, the whole group rushed up the steps to save the man. When they reached the top, the man smiled and said, “Come on up, it’s warmer up here.” Sure enough it was, as the heat had risen. As the room had begun to get warmer, the sheep that were in the upstairs began to move around.

The mystery was solved. The sounds coming from the old house was only the sounds of the sheep.

33. “The Missing House”

Livingston County

One day while nine-year-old Kay Todd was playing alone outside her Livingston County home, she decided to be a little adventurous. Just beyond her family’s property was a lightly wooded area which she had never been allowed to explore. So on this particular day she decided to take a chance and grant herself permission.

After walking through the wooded area for about a mile, she came up on an abandoned two-story house. She was fascinated by the old house, but did not go in; just stared at it. She went back to the house for the next four days, but did not decide to actually go inside until the fifth day.

When she finally went in, she observed that the house was in relatively good shape, although it was a little dusty. There was no furniture. Just an empty house. After looking around on the inside for a little bit, she left.

Two days later, Kay decided to go back to the old house again. However, when she reached the site where she had previously seen it, the house was not there. There was no evidence that a house had ever stood there; no sign that it had burned or had been torn down. Kay retraced her steps to make sure that she had come the right way, but the house was not be found.

34. “Hell’s Half Acre”

Hopkins County

This area of pine and cedar, thickly grown together and hanging over the country dirt road and only wide enough for one vehicle to travel on, called Hells Half Acre, is located about twenty miles southwest of Madisonville, about twenty miles south of Providence, and five miles from Highway 109 west of Beulah.

This narrow road goes around a graveyard, which is about one hundred yards from the only building located within three miles, a log-dwelling house that also served as a pack-peddler hotel. I have heard my uncle and his older neighbors tell tales about this place, from ghost graveyard stories to murder tales. It was a common thing sixty years ago for people to ride horseback through this area and hear a horse following them, then look around to see a horse carrying a man with no head. Something like eighty years ago, two men were hanged near this old graveyard. For several years it was told that you could hear these two men screaming when you passed by there late at night.

The best story I remember was about the traveler. He had stopped at a hotel about half way between Providence and Dawson Springs. This hotel was a place of lodging for peddlers of all kind, and they were plentiful in Hopkins County between 1875 and 1900.

The story says that this particular peddler had a large sum of money in his suitcase when he stopped at this house for a night s lodging. Some of the neighbors were there chatting, drinking, and telling old tales until bedtime. After they all went to bed, the peddler was never seen again. No one thought much about it for several months, and the caretaker of the hotel moved away. The neighbors had begun to notice that he had a lot of spending money within recent times.

The next people who moved into this old hotel heard screams and saw peculiar things at night, such as lights and fire rolling across the road. Well, it wasn’t long until they moved out of that old place.

For a long time, nobody lived there, at least not very long, and the building was torn down. When they did this, bloodstains were found under the floor, causing all kinds of tales to be told. One was that this peddler had been killed and buried under the house. His ghost was seen or heard many times.

They said that if you were to go through by that place on a horse at night, you would be afraid that all of these hidden graves would open up and the spirits would rise up and trail you. People said they were afraid that a peddler’s ghost would be waiting for them just around the next curve in the road.

35. “The Haunted Distillery”

Daviess County

A tale that has amused the John Medley family for years is the one about the spirit that haunted the Daviess County Distillery. It was first recorded in a 1906 issue of the Inquirer.

This alleged ghost at this old distillery has given everybody a fright who resides in that area. Back in the spring, 1905, Dan Wood, an employee in the bonded warehouse, fell down the elevator shaft and was killed. Soon thereafter, strange noises began to be heard in the warehouse at night. The night watchman would always investigate, but could never find any cause. The noise often sounded like the knocking of the hoops off a barrel, while at other times it sounded like knocks in the head of a barrel. And at other times there was a bumping and pumping noise on the ceilings.

The ghost is not particular as to the hour that he starts his funny noises. It matters not whether the warehouse is stored full of whiskey, or it is empty; the noises occur just the same.

The night watchman, Will Burdette, and some of his friends organized a posse to go near the warehouse and wait until the noises began. They were to surround the warehouse and to capture the ghost. About nine o’clock the noises commenced. The posse demanded that whatever it was punching the roof to make itself known, come outside and surrender.

The ghost gave the roof a few more punches while they listened to the sounds, then the noise ceased. They never could figure out what it was that was making the noise.

Burdette later decided he had had enough of that ghost-chasing and resigned his job. He said as far as he was concerned “the ghost can do the night watching at the distillery unmolested.”

…. It wasn’t until several weeks later that the mystery was finally resolved. From the December 3,1907, issue of the Messenger came this story:

“On Monday afternoon about 5:30 o’clock, Curtis Gibbs shot and killed the cause of the excitement at the Daviess County Distillery. He killed a large wildcat in the warehouse. … The cat was a monster and it is supposed that its efforts to get out were the cause of the alarming noises…”

36. “An Elderly Woman s Ghost”

Hopkins County

On a typical gloomy afternoon, my friend Josh and his mom and dad were made believers in ghosts. Back about 1990 Josh had decided that he wanted to go with his mom and dad to see his grandmother. His grandmother lived alone, as her husband had died several years ago. Her very old, two-story house had now acquired a grayish tint. It seemed that permanent dust had collected on its tattered wooden sidings. The windows were cracked and layered with spider webs, one layer upon another. There was a front porch that added to the creepiness of the old house. All in all, the house looked as if it had been the scene for one of the old horror movies.

The inside of the house looked good. Josh’s grandmother had done a little remodeling, but only where it was necessary. The kitchen and den had been totally redone, but by no means were they modern.

It is natural for any old house to have had someone, or even quite a number of people, to die in it. Of course, there had been quite a number of deaths that had occurred in this one. So this house had created a perfect setting for ghosts, and for ghost stories that tell of eerie creatures. However, all these tales had been viewed as sheer nonsense by Josh and his parents.

They pulled into a parking space right in front of josh’s grandmother’s house. When they got out, they noticed that her car was not in the driveway, as it usually was. They all decided to wait inside a while for her to return home. They went up to the porch and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Josh’s dad reached for the skeleton key under the timeworn mat and opened the door. All three of them began taking off their coats once they stepped inside, unaware of the figure staring down at them from the top of the stairway.

All at once, they all looked up and saw this transparent lady who was wearing a huge, billowing dress, like the ones in the Old South. The ghostly lady appeared to be elderly. She walked down three steps, which gave them a better view of her. Then, she disappeared into thin air.

By this time, Josh and his mom and dad had blinked their eyes more than a million times and were scared out of their wits. Their first reaction was to get away from there, so they ran. They ran just as hard as they could, finally reaching their car. They jumped inside the vehicle and sat there, spellbound.

It wasn’t long until they began staring at one another in astonishment. They confirmed that they had seen the same thing. Josh’s dad began driving away just as the grandmother pulled into the driveway.

They told her what they had seen, and the four of them then checked the house for a sign of anyone. They found nothing. The only indication of anyone living in the house other than the grandmother was an occasional shadow passing through the upstairs halls, a shadow that resembled the same elderly woman that the three of them had seen.

37. “The Old Ferrell Place”

Metcalfe County

This story is about an old house here in Metcalfe County, the old Ferreli place right up here close to Randolph. It had a basement, ground floor, upstairs, and an attic. It had the most beautiful walnut woodwork that I’ve ever seen. It had built-in cabinets and walnut mantlepieces. Just a neat early American piece of architecture.

Well, back when I was a kid, fifteen or sixteen years old, we were working on that old house. I was there alone one day, when some kind of spook or ghost, or monster got after me downstairs. I thought, “Oh, my God, if I can just get to that attic on the third story, and stick my head out of that window, I’ll yell out for help and the whole country will hear me.”

So I started up these steps, and this thing was right after me. I’d keep feeling it right behind me. I kept thinking, “Oh, if I can just get to that attic window, I know I can make somebody hear me.”

Well, believe it or not, when I got to that attic window and threw it open, I could not make a sound! Not a sound would come out of my mouth. I stood there just gasping for breath, nearly choking to death.

The more I think about what happened, the more I think that I just imagined the whole thing. You know how kids were back then. Just about anything would scare them to death.

38. “An Ancestor’s Ghost Annually Reenacts His Death”

Jefferson County

This house on Carlton Terrace had been in the family for a number of years, and now my own immediate family was moving in. It was a beautiful three-story Victorian house, and I was very excited about the thought of moving in. Grandma and Grandpa had lived there previously, but now they were both dead, so the house was available for my parents and me. Just looking at the house always made me think it was haunted, and because of this I was truly scared of the thought of sleeping in my bedroom.

Well, after we moved in, one night when the autumn mist was rolling in I was awakened by a very loud, obnoxious sound coming from inside my closet. Then, slowly my closet door opened and a white figure appeared, then vanished out of my sight. I ran out of my room and went into my parents’ room and fell asleep with them.

The following night, I was awakened by the same sound, except this time it was coming from the bathroom. I got out of bed slowly and walked toward the bathroom door. When I got to the door, I reached for the doorknob and began turning it. The handle was turning but the door was being held in a closed position by some strong force. Again, I ran to my parents’ room and awoke my mother. She walked down to the bathroom, and the same thing happened to her. She looked at me and said that they would take care of it in the morning.

I had just faded off to sleep when I heard the sound again, followed by a loud crash. This time, Mom heard it, too. The two of us got up and started walking downstairs. Much to our surprise, silverware was flying around in the kitchen, and our two St. Bernard dogs were pacing the floor. We walked to the kitchen and looked in, and suddenly all the silverware fell to the floor. We picked it up and returned to bed.

The next morning we went into the bathroom and found all the stuff in the medicine cabinet lying in the sink and on the floor. Then we walked down to the kitchen and found all the silverware on the kitchen floor. We could not figure out just what was going on. It was a bizarre situation.

Our dogs, Bandit and Brandy, began barking to let us know that they wanted to go outside. I walked to the front door to let them out, but they would not pass the pantry there in the entrance hall. I walked over and began pulling on the dogs, but they still would not budge. I asked my dad what was wrong with them, but he didn’t have an answer.

The next afternoon my mother and I walked to my uncle Steve’s and learned a very disturbing fact about our old house. Back about 1912 a young man shot and killed my great-great-grandpa. That took place right beside the hall pantry. Uncle Steve said the scent of his death might still be there and that the dogs were smelling it. See, they have a sense of smell that human beings don’t have.

A few months went by and nothing else strange happened except that the dogs would never go past the pantry. Then, at midnight on January 21, 1977,1 was awakened by a loud cry for help followed by a gunshot. I ran to the bottom of the stairs and saw both dogs lying side by side in front of the pantry, and in front of the dogs was a pool of blood. I woke up both of my parents, but they could not figure out where the blood came from. That afternoon, Uncle Steve came over and we talked to him about what was happening, and this is what we found out.

Great-great-grandpa was killed on January 21, 1912, and every year he relives his death. He also lives in our house and does anything he wants when he wants to do it. Within a few months, my family sold the house and moved to Crestwood.

On January 21, 1987, at midnight, the house on Carlton Terrace burned to the ground within a matter of minutes.

That happened exactly seventy-five years after Great-great-grandpa was shot and killed. Maybe the person who lived in the house was the killer, and Great-great-grandpa was taking his revenge.

All members of our family who were living in the house at the time it burned were killed by the flames.

39. “The Haunted House on the Hill”

Harlan County

Believing in ghosts is not something that I adhere to. However, there are unexplained accounts that leave room for one’s imagination to pursue a variety of answers.

Several years ago I rented a beautiful house on a hill in Harlan County. My young son and I were delighted to have found such a beautiful place to rent. The house was large and the rooms very spacious. A huge family room with a fireplace, bathroom, laundry room, and furnace room made up the downstairs and opened into the garage. Upstairs were kitchen, dining room, bathroom, three bedrooms, and a living room with a cathedral ceiling and fireplace. The house was surrounded on three sides by a deck, and an in-ground swimming pool was in back of the house.

It didn’t take long for the first peculiar thing to be noticed. There would be the sound of a bouncing basketball on the driveway, even on weekends when my son was visiting his father out of town. I made many trips to the window to look out and see who was out there bouncing a ball. When I looked out, the bouncing would stop until I went away. If I only peeked out the side of the curtain, it would sometimes continue, but no one was ever there, at least not to be seen.

Often, we heard the faint sounds of whispering inside and outside the house, but never clearly enough to understand anything that was being said. Each night, after we were tucked in bed, and the lights turned out, the distinct sound of footsteps could be heard coming down the hall between my son’s bedroom and mine, and then sound as if they went straight down the hallway and into my closet. Once there, the sounds of someone walking overhead were clearly heard. Quite often, there would also be the sound of someone rummaging through the kitchen drawers, and opening and closing cabinet doors, as if searching for something.

The peculiar thing was that I was not afraid of these things. I dared not mention what was happening to anyone else because they might think that I was ridiculous by letting my imagination get the best of me.

On one occasion, my cousin and his wife were visiting from Chicago. I put them in the guest room, and their children slept on the foldout sofa. In the middle of the night, my cousin heard the rambling sounds in the kitchen and decided to get up and join someone in a middle-of-the-night snack. Of course, no one was there. He was truly frightened but did not wake anyone to recount what had happened. The next morning, he told us. He has not been back to visit me since.

A friend from my college years and her teenage daughter came to visit me from the Cincinnati area. I put them in the guest room. She told the next morning of having awakened during the night and that the fan and lights were on. But she had not been afraid. She thought that I had done it for one reason or another. She turned off the light and went to sleep, but the next morning the light was on again.

Still another friend and her infant daughter spent the night in that same guest room. The next morning, she said that it had been very hot during the night, and wished that she dare get up and turn the fan on, but wouldn’t as she was afraid of waking her baby. She woke up a little later with the fan on and the light on dim. She said that she had the feeling that a child was in the room with them, just looking at them for some unknown reason. I had another cousin who spent the night with me on a regular basis. But she refused to stay in the house one second by herself. When I got up to go to work, she hopped in her car and left before I did. If she were waiting for a ride, or waiting for me to get home, she would sit outside rather than be in the house alone.

Only on one occasion was I aware of an “evil” presence. I entered the bottom door, by way of the garage door, with a load of groceries. As soon as I entered the room, the air was so heavy that I could hardly breathe, and the hairs all over my body stood at attention. But instead of being frightened, I became angry. I began to pray with considerable authority to rebuke the presence. I recall saying that we would live peacefully in that house, and anyone or anything that had a notion to the contrary would get out. Immediately, the atmosphere changed, and a feeling of peace returned.

The whispering continued, as did the bouncing ball, the ghostly footsteps in the hallway and overhead, and the prowling noises in the kitchen, but I was never disturbed by fear or any sense of an unfriendly presence ever again after that. When I moved out of the house, everyone who had ever visited me there told me how glad they were that I had moved. They said that there was just something about that house that made them very uncomfortable, and they didn’t like to think of me being there alone.

I’m still not sure as to what was going on, but I feel pretty certain that I was not alone in that old house on the hill.

40. “The Shaking House”

Green County

When I was a preschooler, my parents, my brother, and I lived in the southwest quadrant of Green County, in a community called Thompson School House. The local roads were dirt, there were no automobiles in the area, and telephones were few in number. My dad and mom farmed, as did everyone else in this community.

This community was made up of a one-room school, a grocery store, a tabernacle that had only a dirt floor, and eight or nine residential houses. Our house was a large two-story, T-shaped, white frame structure that stood on a large hill overlooking the rest of the community. The upper level of our house was not used, and had not been for some time. And for some unknown reason, my eight-year-old brother was afraid of the upstairs area.

He was quite mischievous and needed to be punished occasionally. As punishment, Mom would put him on the stairway, button the door, and leave him there by himself for a few minutes.

One day while he was in confinement on the stairwell, the metal roof on the house began to vibrate rather violently. Mom quickly removed my brother and called Dad from the field. The weather was warm, totally clear, with no wind or atmospheric disturbances of any kind. We stood and watched as Dad and Mom discussed what the reason for the vibration might be. There was no movement of the house or its parts except the metal roof. Being in the year 1933, airplanes were the first thing to be ruled out. As I recall, this strange happening lasted about thirty minutes, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Being early in the afternoon, and still having work to do in the field, Dad went back to the field and left the rest of us there at the house.

When evening came and Dad returned from the field, he was so determined to find the cause for the roof shaking that he crawled into the attic space above the second level of the house with a kerosene lantern. He searched that area completely but found nothing to explain the noises. The house was destroyed several years later in order to make room for a new one, but that mystery has never been solved.

41. “The Chair That Rocks by Itself

Clinton County

This is a true story. When Grandma died, that left me, Beatrice, and Jewell to stay by ourselves and take care of stuff, while Mama and Daddy took the rest of the children and went to bury Grandma at Byrdstown.

I was about fifteen years old, and Beatrice was about seventeen, and she done the cooking and stuff. Jewell was smaller than me and Beatrice, and she was as scary as you could be.

We stayed up yonder at that old house on the Roy place. That night, Beatrice and Jewell got supper ready. We had fried chicken for supper. Well, along in the night, we heard a racket upstairs. Of course, we had rats back then, but we didn’t have rats much of the time.

Beatrice wasn’t scared, but me and Jewell was scared to death. Anyway, we all slept in the same room. I slept in one bed, and they in another. Beatrice went up to the top of the steps on the way to the bedroom, just climbed up the wall. See, we had steps that just went up the wall and then on up into the loft.

There was an old woman who died there in that house, and its always been kind of a haunted house ever since she died. Angels have been seen there, along with all kinds of other stuff. Well, her old rocking chair was setting upstairs on this long platform, but the chair didn’t have no back on it. Just had the rockers and seat, but no back.

I went up there on different nights, and that old rocking chair would just be setting there, rocking back and forwards. And they was some old catalogs laying there by that old chair, and the leaves in them old catalogs would just be turning as if you’d take your hands and turn them. Sometimes, the leaves would turn real slow-like, just like someone was setting there reading a page at a time, then turn to the next page.

That rocking chair would set there and just rock by itself, while them leaves was a-turning.

42. “The Ghost That Killed Two Dogs”

Russell County

There were these brothers and sisters who decided to get rid of their old uncle. Well, they plotted and plotted and plotted. Finally, they killed him by making him fall down the stairs and break his neck. Everyone was suspicious of them, but couldn’t prove that they did it.

There was a couple that later lived in this house, but they both went crazy and had to be placed in the insane asylum. Then other people tried to live in the house, but ever night at midnight, they’d hear something fall down the stairs. It got to the point that nobody would stay in the house.

Finally, someone locked two dogs up in the house. The next morning the two dogs were found lying at the foot of the stairs with their necks broke.

No one ever knew what really went on in that house.

43. “Ghostly Premonition”

Bath County

I was about twelve years old when I saw my first ghost. Actually I don’t know if she could really be called a ghost because she wasn’t dead yet.

My parents rented a house from this older, well-to-do couple in Salt Lick. Sometimes my father did odd jobs for them, and sometimes he just went for a visit. Most of the time, he would take me or my brothers along.

On this particular summer night, I had not gone with my dad to visit them. Sometimes he and the old man liked to sit and talk for a long time, and I would get bored and restless, unless the old lady would talk to me or take me upstairs and show me her “trinkets,” or collections of old medicine bottles and such, which she often did.

Usually, Dad would leave by the backdoor, so I went to the backdoor and knocked and knocked. I saw the old lady walking into a bright yellow room on the left side of the hallway. I kept knocking, and she kept walking. She never did turn around to look at me or seem to hear my knock. Finally, I went to the front door and knocked. The old man came to the door, and when I asked for my father, he said that he had already left.

I ran on home and told my mom and dad that I had gone there looking for him, about knocking on the backdoor, and about the old woman not answering. They looked at each other and then back at me. Daddy said, “Honey, Mrs. Perry is in the hospital. She has been there for several days. She isn’t even home.”

A few days later, Mrs. Perry died. I don’t know what I saw meant, but I will never forget it.

Also, there was not a room where I saw her going into this room, and no rooms in the house were painted bright yellow. As I got older and looked back at what I had seen, it seemed more like a light that she walked into rather than a room painted yellow. I keep wondering, was that a sign she was going to die, or was it really a ghost of some sort?

44. “Mother’s Ghost”

McCracken County

My father and his brothers and sisters all used to live in a big, old house in Paducah. They lived with their grandmother, as their own mother had died in the house. What it was, their grandmother moved in to take care of them when their mom died.

Three months later, they began hearing a strange noise in the house. At first, they didn’t think much about the noise, but later they decided that they needed to move away from the memory of their mother. So they all left the house, going their own ways.

Their grandmother decided to keep the house. Over a period of years, whenever any of the family would go out into the countryside to visit the house they would get an eerie feeling and hear strange noises.

My aunt decided to go to the house to get away from the city. She wanted to do her artistic paintings there. So she set up her easel in the living room and began painting. She then started getting funny feelings being alone inside the house. She decided to move her stuff outside into the front yard. She took off her shoes and laid them next to her, then began to paint.

Then she heard strange screams coming from the house. The longer she listened, the louder they got. She was so frightened that she left everything there, then took off in her car.

During the next week it rained and rained. The streets were flooded. The wind and rain caused people to stay at home all week. The first day that it stopped raining, although puddles and mud were everywhere, she decided to go back to the house and get her easel and shoes. She was still scared of the house, so she took her husband with her.

Once they got there, her easel had been blown down and all of her paints and canvas were ruined. When she reached down to pick up her shoes, she screamed at the top of her lungs. Her husband wanted to know what in the world was wrong. Looking down, he saw that the shoes were perfectly dry and looked as if they had never been wet, although there were puddles of water all around.

My aunt would never wear those shoes again, and she never went near that house. She believed that it was haunted by her own mother.

45. “A Woman’s Ghost at the Old Stagecoach Inn”

Metcalfe County

There was an old stagecoach stop up here at what’s now the Echo community. Back then it was Ninety-Six. The old inn was called the Richard Shirley Inn, and was located on the old Glasgow-Columbia Road. Richard was my great-great-great-grandfather. He and his wife had an old-maid daughter, Aunt Fannie, and her brother, Uncle George. Neither of them ever married. They were the last to live in the old house.

Miss Nicole McMillan told me that she used to hear Aunt Fannie and Uncle George tell about how they used to have these big stacks of half-moon pies—fried pies—and they would sell those to the travelers. I still have the bugle that they would blow when the stage was coming and leaving.

That old mansion was vacant for a long time, and I never even saw the house when it was standing. But they used to tell ghost stories about this old house that was once a stagecoach inn. They’d see these mysterious people go in and out of that old vacant house. And, you know, there’s nothing any scarier than a vacant house with gaping windows.

I think that it was Aunt Fannie that they used to see. She was considered to be a great beauty. My family used to tell stories that people told after they stayed at the Richard Shirley Inn. They would talk about this beautiful woman who, for some reason, never married during her early years. But after she grew older, she was to marry this man, but Uncle George asked her not to get married. And she didn’t marry. The two of them continued to live there in the old inn.

When my grandfather was about fifteen years old, they tore the building down after a big crack came in the wall. He helped cart the brick away. The Shirleys owned many black slaves. The slave graveyard has been plowed over, and the family graveyard has also been plowed over. I’ve heard it told that people used to see white, misty-like figures floating out there over these old graveyards. And people used to tell about seeing a ghost of Aunt Fannie standing in the door of the old house, peering out of an upstairs window, or walking across the area where the old stage-stop inn once stood. I guess she just loved that old historic place.

46. “A Haunted House in Breeding”

Adair County

Back in 1942, a family by the name of Poindexter moved into Breeding, a small community in southern Adair County. The house they moved into was a two-story farmhouse located high on a hill surrounded by large cedar trees on land owned by—I think his name was Steve Gilbert.

Crit Poindexter, the father, was a sharecropper who had entered into an agreement with Gilbert to till his land on a sharecrop basis. The other members of the Poindexter family were Crit’s wife, Maude, and their children Oleta and Howard.

The day that the Poindexters moved in, they arranged their furniture so that they could settle down for the night. By that time, it was late in the afternoon. Crit went to the barn to do the chores, while Maude and Howard were in the kitchen cooking supper. Oleta was in her room sitting on the bed.

Suddenly, Maude and Howard heard Oleta screaming for them to come to her room. When they got there, she was sitting on her bed crying. She told Maude and Howard that the stairway door, which opened up into her bedroom, had opened halfway by itself. When she screamed for her mother and brother, the door stopped abruptly. But after she yelled, the door proceeded to open the rest of the way by itself and bang against the wall. Needless to say, Maude and the two kids were scared to death when Crit arrived back at the house from the barn.

After hearing what had taken place while he was at the barn, Crit tried to assure them that there was no such things as ghosts or anything else that would have opened the door by itself. To reassure them that there was nothing in the house other than the family, he proceeded to walk through the house with the family following close behind. As there was no electricity in the house back then, Crit struck matches as they went from room to room. He was not the type of man to be scared easily. However, when he stepped into the hallway and struck the first match, there in the hall hanging in front of them was a large black raincoat. For some reason, just seeing that coat scared every one of them and sent chills down their spines.

Crit then proceeded to fasten the stairway door so that it couldnt be opened without quite an effort. Crit then told them that he was going to bed to get some sleep.

Maude and the two children couldn’t sleep, so they sat up and talked in whispers until about 4:30 A.M. At that time, Maude went to the kitchen to start preparing breakfast, and Crit got up and went to the barn to do his chores. Howard and Oleta continued to sit on Oleta’s bed and talked about what had happened earlier that night. Suddenly, the stair door opened about half way. Both kids heard it, but when they turned to look at it, the door stopped. Then it gradually opened up all the way, squeaking and bumping against the wall as if something had complete control of it. When Crit got back from the barn, it didn’t take long for the family to tell him about what had just taken place, nor to convince him that they needed to move away from the house.

After breakfast, Crit went to talk with Mr. Gilbert and explained to him what had taken place. He went on to tell him that the family would be moving as soon as they could find another place to live.

Gilbert, being a kind gentleman, told Mr. Poindexter that that was perfectly all right, that he fully understood the way they felt. Gilbert then went on to tell Poindexter that the previous family that lived there in the house was sitting in the living room one stormy night, and they heard a mumbling noise that sounded as if it were coming from outside. They went to the window to look outside, and as they looked, there was a loud clap of thunder and a bright flash of lightning. There in the yard, they saw what appeared to be several small children playing a game such as drop-the-handkerchief or ring-around-the-roses. The children there in the yard suddenly disappeared, and there were no voices to be heard any longer. It was as if they had never been there in the first place. Needless to say, that family moved out the very next morning.

The Poindexters stayed in the house for one week. They never had another chance to speak to Mr. Gilbert to find out if any other sorts of ghostly incidents had taken place in or around the house.

In 1977, thirty-five years later, Howard Poindexter, the youngest of the two children, took his family to visit the old house. It still had a ghostlike appearance, but nothing mysterious happened while they were there. However, they did notice that no one lived in the old house and probably never had for more than a few days at a time. You know, ghosts have their strange methods of scaring people to keep them away.

47. “The Ghost That Left No Tracks in the Snow”

Laurel County

A lady says she once stayed all night at the house of a woman who had lost her husband by death under suspicious circumstances shortly before. While they were all seated around the fire, someone was heard approaching the house and coming on the porch. At this time there was a terrific snow storm raging out of doors. As soon as the visitor came on the porch there was a great noise, as [if] someone [were] stamping snow from his feet. And then, whoever it was opened the front door, went through the hall and clumped loudly up the stairs.

From where the two ladies sat around the fire, they could not see who entered the house. Becoming alarmed when no one came back down the stairs, and not knowing who it was upstairs, [they] mustered up enough courage to take a lamp to go upstairs to see. A thorough search of both upstairs rooms failed to find the intruder, [and] no snow tracks on the stairs were to be seen. Finally, on trying to open the outside door, it was found to be locked, and had been all the while. Unlocking the door, the frightened women examined the snow in the yard for tracks.

None were found, so it must have been a ghost.

48. “Was It Really a Ghostly Coffin?”

Green County

The story I’m about to tell happened in June 1930, about a half-mile outside the Greensburg city limits. One morning during that year, my dad, J.W. Moore, who was sheriff of Green County, got to his office about 7:30 A.M. I was a deputy. When we got there, there was an entire family by the name of Rodgers waiting for him outside the courthouse. This family was in a state of agitation and excitement. Dad said that they literally were scared. Here is the story that they told that morning.

They’d gotten up about the usual time in the morning and were preparing breakfast. They lived in this rather large old frame house. All of a sudden, they heard a noise out in the hallway and presumed that some neighbors were just coming into the house. The Rodgers family sat and waited a few minutes for whoever it was to come to the door and knock.

The noise just continued on and on out in the hall, and then suddenly the kitchen door opened. This happened just a little after daybreak, so it still wasn’t very light outside. Anyway, the kitchen door opened, and coming through the kitchen door from out in the hallway were these four tall men dressed in black. They were carrying a coffin on their shoulders, and on top of the coffin was a white lamb.

The Rodgers family told Dad that they quit eating breakfast when they saw these men and the coffin, and left to come into town. That was actually an understatement on their part, for later evidence indicated that they ran all the way into town after seeing this thing. There was no evidence that they had tried to talk with these men that had the coffin. They simply left the house and ran to Greensburg.

When the family members were questioned, they all told the same story. There was no question but that this family had all seen something and probably saw exactly what they said they saw. What they wanted was for the sheriff and his deputies—Patterson, Adkins, and me—to go out to the house and investigate. Well, we drove out to this house. To get to it, you had to drive up a long lane through the farm with large trees on each side. The old house stood on top of a high hill and was surrounded by very large trees. It was an old house that had been there for many years. It was a two-story frame structure and wasn’t in too good of a condition. The porch, both upstairs and down, had lattice work, and vines had grown up around the house and just completely covered the lattice and had also obscured a lot of the doors and windows. Actually, that old house looked like the kind of house that you would find a ghost in. Of course, I don’t believe in ghosts even though there’s some things that have occurred that cant be explained easily at any rate.

The four of us went into this house and began a search of it, room by room. We were looking for evidence of anything that might have taken place in the old house. We went into the kitchen first and there found plates on the table with a half-eaten meal, a half cup of coffee, a skillet on the stove with some meat and eggs in it that were burned because the skillet had just been left where it was when the family members saw these men carrying the coffin.

Then, we began to look through each room in the house to satisfy our own curiosity and to reassure the people that there wasn’t anything there. I don’t know how many people have ever looked for a ghost, but even though you don’t believe in ghosts, there’s something that’s just a little bit exciting about going into an old house where just a few hours before somebody had seen what they claimed was a ghost.

I expected to find nothing, nor did the others, as we looked. But in one of the stairways that went into the upper part of the house, a closet had been built under the stairway, a closet in which various pieces of clothing had been hung. The closet had a spool on the outside for a door handle, and I used it in an effort to open this closet. The closet door would just move a little bit, but not a great deal. It would move out at the bottom about an inch, and I’d pull on it. When I’d do that, the door would pull back, so to speak.

Finally, I got kind of upset, then jerked on that spool. The door flew open and something white came out of that closet and fell right over the top of my head. Well, when that happened it literally scared me real bad. But as it turned out, the white thing was just a sheet that Mrs. Rodgers had hung in the closet. But boy it sure scared me. It didn’t take me long to get over that, but for a minute I thought the ghost had me sure as the world.

We continued going through the house. By the time we got through and were ready to leave, there was some fifteen or twenty people from Greensburg who had come out to see what was taking place. Greensburg is a small town, and you know how ghost stories or word of a ghost gets around in a hurry and everybody wants to see it before it gets away.

We went back to the sheriff’s office, and it wasn’t long until we got a call from the owner of the house stating that there were just a lot of people driving across his fields and going into the house, and that this was getting to be a nuisance. He asked us to go back out there and check things out again about the possibility of a ghost, and to tell people that there just wasn’t a ghost there.

So we made another trip out there, but the people kept coming out there all through the day and night. I guess that altogether close to a thousand people showed up. We kept getting calls from the owner, asking us to go out there and run the people off. Finally, deputies Patterson, Adkins, and myself got into a car to go back out to the house. But that trip still didn’t stop people from going out there.

This old house still stands on what is known as Marshall Ridge Road. What the Rodgers family saw, I don’t know. However, they were personally convinced that they saw the ghosts of these four men carrying this casket with a white lamb on top of it. This ghost had never been seen there before that, and it has never been seen since then. Whether or not it was an effort on somebody’s part to scare these people so that they would leave the old house, thus making the place available for sale at a much cheaper price, I don’t know. Maybe no one will ever know. But the Rodgers were convinced that they saw what they said they saw. I mean, man were they ever scared. They did move away, and the old house remained vacant for many years afterwards.

49. “This Old House”

Warren County

Let me tell you about our ghost whom we’ve fondly named Otis. It all started happening in the mid-1980s, when my brother and I were still youngsters. My parents had just remodeled and moved into this old house that belonged to my great-grandfather, near Woodburn, here in southern Warren County.

My brother and I each had lovely upstairs bedrooms. However, during my years of living in this house, I often went to bed at night feeling a strong presence in my room, just as if someone were looking at me. Many times I was awakened at night with that same eerie feeling of someone staring at me. But usually I just tossed aside my thoughts of anything scary.

Once my brother and I saw a white ball, maybe it was some sort of light, dash across the upstairs hallway and suddenly vanish. Both of us saw it, and we looked quite a while for an explanation, but nothing ever turned up.

Another strange event took place one morning when the car lights on my father’s automobile, a 1960 Studebaker, came on by themselves, and the car horn suddenly started blowing. He could never figure out what caused this, and he knows about cars.

I also remember some of the doors, both upstairs and down, opening and closing by themselves. And my brother and his best friend experienced some very unusual things, such as his collection of rocks being thrown from one side of the room to another. Also, our two chandeliers and a hanging plant were swaying back and forth for no apparent reason, and the door to our utility room, a door that is always propped open, somehow closed by itself.

Other things I have experienced in this old house include voices, one of which whispered my name on three different occasions—once when I was reading a book, once when I was walking out of my room into the hallway, and a third time when I was simply standing in my room. Things such as keys, blouses, shirts, and whatever, will turn up missing, then reappear two or three months later at the same spot where they were last seen.

Many other occurrences have taken place since we have lived here. We have heard footsteps going up and down the stair steps and walking in the hallway. I have personally seen two bubble-like things that had clear, human-like outlines.

The only physical thing that has taken place happened to my brother. He and his friend were both thumped on the back by what felt like a hand when no one was there.

I did some research into the history of this old house, both in early times and in later years. I was able to piece together the written and oral history of this interesting structure. This man [name withheld] purchased the sixty-five acres that the house is on back in 1922. He cleared the timber from the land and built this ten-room house, with an eight-foot deep front porch all across the front of the house.

When the Great Depression gripped the country in the 1930s, this man fell into deep mental anguish as his financial situation was near bankruptcy. It was at this point that he decided to end it all by taking his own life. He shot himself in an upstairs bedroom, and his blood stained the wooden floor ever after. My parents, after buying the property and moving into the house, remember seeing a large, dark spot on the wooden floor. My grandfather, who had seen it numerous times, told them that this was the mans bloodstain. Mom and Dad tried and tried to remove the stain, but finally resorted to covering it with carpet.

Does the ghost of the former owner of this old house still live here? I don’t know. All I know is, my brother and I, some of our best friends, and our father as well, have experienced numerous ghostlike happenings here. These old walls cannot talk, but stories about these personal episodes that we experienced will continue to be told to our children and others in the years ahead.

50. “The Old Lockkeeper’s House in Rochester”

Butler County

Randall and I live in this old house here in Rochester, and is it ever haunted! We’ve experienced many, many things across the years. This is a two-story house that was constructed back in 1839 as a residence for the lockmaster here on the Green River. They added some rooms to it about 1880, and in one of these rooms is where the ghost lives. The first ghost thing that we ever heard about here took place back in 1907.

Other people who have lived in this house from time to time have also told about “supernatural, unexplainable happenings” that they experienced. And I believe what they told.

Randy is lockmaster here, and we lived here for seventeen years. Then, we moved to Woodbury, where Randy was also lockmaster, stayed there several years, then moved back here to this old house when Randy was transferred back to Rochester.

We moved in here first in June 1956. My birthday was coming up in August. We didn’t have enough money to furnish the house at that point in time.

I got a new dress for my birthday in August, and we were planning to go to Randy’s parents to eat supper that night. I was upstairs trying to adjust my petticoat, but the mirror wasn’t long enough for me to see just how long it was when I got it on. So I used the living room door by opening it back so that I could see a reflection of myself in the glass panels in the door. I also saw the reflection of a wet puddle on the old pine floor.

My daughter Roxanne was just beginning to walk, so I thought nothing about the puddle. I just cleaned it up. When we came back home that night, we walked through the living room. When I walked over to close the door, again I saw this puddle.

Well, again I cleaned it up. The very next time I went into the living room, there was the puddle in the same place. Well, the floors were not original, but these had been put in back in 1937—twenty years ago. And they had been varnished many, many times.

Overhead, the ceiling was plaster, but no leak was coming through it, and no water was soaking up through the thick varnish on the floor. Well, it looked like clear grease. I tasted the stuff, and it was grease. Actually, it tasted like mineral oil. For about three weeks that puddle kept coming back, and I kept cleaning it up. Never could figure out why it was there, or where it was coming from. That was the first strange thing that ever happened to us in this house.

Later on that same year, maybe early fall, a woman who had once lived here wrote us asking if anything unusual had happened to us in this house. Well, in trying to forget what had just taken place, I told her that nothing strange had happened to us. When winter arrived that year, Jim Bob, who is Randy s brother, had just gotten his drivers license. He wrote to tell us that he was coming over to spend the weekend with us. We had only enough furniture for two rooms—our kitchen and bedroom. We did have a couch in the living room, but that room wasn’t furnished. However, the back room upstairs by the bathroom was the warmest room in the house. We didn’t have it furnished, but we put in a cot for Jim Bob to sleep in. Well, when Jim got ready for bed, he went up to that room and went to bed.

In a few minutes, we heard him yelling. I got up and ran to the foot of the stairs to see what was wrong. He told me that someone had pulled the covers off of him. So I said to him, “Jim Just hush and go back to bed.”

So I went on back to my bed and laid down again. Suddenly, Jim yelled out again. I heard him running down the steps. I got up and went into the hallway, and there Jim stood with only his underwear on. “Somebody got my bed covers again,” he said.

So I said, “Well, just bring your cot down here.”

He brought his cot and his blanket, and we set the cot up in the living room there in front of the fireplace. Jim laid down on the cot, and I went back to my room. It wasn’t long until he let out another scream. When I got to his room, he was still lying there on the cot, and the blanket was over in the corner of the room. Something had pulled or thrown it over there.

Well, I did nothing but take him to our room and put him at the foot of the bed and then put the cover on him. That was the only way that Jim could go to sleep.

The next thing to happen took place when Randall and Jims mother called to say that they were coming to spend the weekend with us. She said that they would leave as soon as Jim got home from school. Well, by that time, we had added some furniture to the house. We had a new bed and dresser in the room that Jim had tried to sleep in.

That morning, I had gone up there to clean and dust the room and put clean sheets on the bed. I had bought one of those Martha Washington bedspreads. While I was sitting there later on that day, rocking one of my sick kids, I heard somebody come in the basement door and walk up the steps. The doorknob to the basement door turned and the door opened, but nothing came through. Whoever it was shut that door and walked right through this room and went to the stairwell, and that door opened and shut, then I heard footsteps walking up the stairs. Then I heard the steps go into one of the two upstairs rooms, but I didn’t know which one.

I didn’t get up to follow whoever it was. I just sat there, petrified! If I hadn’t had my kids there in the house, and if it hadn’t been snowing outside, I guess I would have got up and run out of the house. So what I did was, when I got hold of my wits, get up and go to the door and open it. Randall and Daddy were out in the back yard, so I yelled at them, and they came in. I told them that I thought somebody strange was in the house. They went all through the house and looked, but naturally there was nobody there but me. And I really don’t know why, but we began to get used to whoever or whatever it was.

The ghost has one particular room that he seemed to like going to. It is the upper bedroom that was added in 1880. Many times it has been reported that he was heard walking around in there. Some of the families that had lived here had a double bed in that room. They said that it often felt as if someone was getting in bed with them. Said it often felt as if someone was falling into the bed, not just crawling onto it.

We felt this several times ourselves. We would move the bed around from one spot to another, but it didn’t seem to matter where we put the bed; the sensation of feeling someone fall into it was always the same. Sometimes, even, it would feel as if someone touched us. It either just touched us, or the bed seemed to sink down from weight; or maybe the covers were yanked off our bodies. Not only did the family feel these things, our company would, too. It seems like the more company we had, the more this strange creature showed up. We finally solved this particular problem by putting twin beds in that room. Our son Bo sleeps in the room. No one knows whose spirit this is that is still “living” in this old house.

Of course, there have been no records kept on this house, but as far as is known, there was never a violent death or anything like that. On the other hand, people did keep their parents when they were old, and we know of people who did die here in this house. Likely this ghost that we feel or hear is that of a man who was a lockmaster at night, who would come in and go to bed. Or maybe it is the ghost of a man who lived here and who would go down at night to watch the lock on the river, then he came back to the house and went to bed one night, then died.

Whoever it was, he seems to have weighed at least 200 pounds. You can tell that by the noise his feet makes when he walks through the house. Also, we once saw these huge footprints in some fire soot that had fallen out of a chimney and spread out across the floor. These big footprints were there one morning when our son got out of bed.

And it may be that we are dealing with two supernatural beings. See, one Halloween night our son went out to trick or treat. He came back with a bag full of candy. He went upstairs and sat down on his bed, up at the head of it. He began taking his candy from the bag that was located on the bed there in front of him. As he unwrapped each piece of candy to eat, he laid the paper in a pile there in front of him on the bed. He continued doing this as he ate the candy. Suddenly, he screamed out for us downstairs. We went up the steps hurriedly to see what the problem was. He yelled out, “Make him stop! He’s eating my candy!”

So help me, there was another pile of candy wrappers piled up there at the foot of the bed. We could see no one, but there was indeed a stack of candy wrapping paper at the foot of the bed. It was about the same size as the one that our son had made at the head of the bed.

Randy agrees with me that these experiences have not changed our lives, nor those of our children. We also know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we would not have believed that these things could have happened to someone else if and when they had told us what happened to them.

Let me say in conclusion that when we do share some of our experiences, we often speak of this “man” with respect. We want to leave him alone and do not want others harassing him.

51. “Haunted Houses at Leonard Oak and Woodbury”

Butler County

Woodbury is located near the point where the Green and Barren rivers run together. It’s a truly old, historic village that still has some of its pre-Civil War houses. And just across the river from Woodbury is the old Leonard Oak community. Both of these places are in Butler County.

The interesting thing is that one woman [name withheld] owned three houses in the area, and all three of them had ghosts that people heard or saw across the years. One of these ghosts was that of a little girl who, they said, had long hair. She was always dressed the same in a little flower dress, with a white pinafore, an apron-like thing, over it. People who saw her ghost said that this little girl would go up and down the stairs there in this old house in Woodbury. They’d catch a glimpse of her going up and down the stairs.

I was talking to a lady just this morning who used to live there. She told me that she saw the little girl one time. She said that she went to her mammy’s house there in Woodbury. That’s what she called her grandmother. Said, “I was in the kitchen and I just turned my head, and I just saw her as she glided up the stairs.”

The people who saw the little girls ghost never were able to figure out who she was, or who she had been in real life.

Of course, people around here are great believers in ghosts. A lot of people claimed that they saw the ghost of the little girl.

And, then, these same people lived in a house on the Leonard Oak side of Green River. The same family that owned the old house in Woodbury owned this one, and they lived here, too. Well, my husband also lived in this house there in Leonard Oak. His family also saw and heard those things. This one story that I’ve heard so many times is about this baby that cried all the time. They said that they could hear a baby crying, but knew that it was a ghost. They heard it crying so many, many times. It was said that somewhere a long ways back in the family line of this man who lived there, an ancestor and his wife had a baby. Then, later on she had another baby.

They said the father of these babies was the stingiest man in the whole world. He didn’t want to feed that new baby, so he let it starve to death. That was the story that was always told as to what happened, explaining why the ghost of the little baby could be heard crying.

Farther on down close to the river on the Leonard Oak side was another old house, the original home owned by these same people. You could go into that house and hear people talking upstairs, but there wasn’t a soul up there. At other times, ghosts were heard going up and down the stair steps. No one ever knew whose ghosts these were supposed to be. Even after the owners of this house had it redone from top to bottom, people would move in and stay no more than a couple of nights and would then move out. They wouldn’t live there! My nephew lived there for a while, and he said that he heard these ghostly noises. Said he really did. That old house burned. Actually, all three of these old houses that had a ghost in them burned. Two of them burned within one week of each other.

52. “Ghostlike Sounds in an Old Ancestral House”

Monroe County

When I married Frank, we were both just eighteen. Neither of us had ever been away from home very much. Course, we were both scared to death to be out by ourselves, so we stayed there with Franks parents for three months. They lived in this big, old, white house just north of Tompkinsville.

When we went out there, the first thing Frank’s dad said was, “Now, Elizabeth, I want to tell you something. I don’t know if it’s ghosts, or what it is, but this old house just pops and cracks all the time. But now, don’t be afraid of it, for I’ve been here for years and years, and I’ve never seen nothing. But I sure hear these ghostlike sounds.”

Well, I wasn’t there but a week, until there was something that just seemed it was walking everywhere in that house. I’d set down and listen and listen, then directly it would quit. It wasn’t but a few days until I’d hear it again. Frank heard it, too, and we talked about it. But I didn’t react to it, because I didn’t believe in ghosts.

But Frank’s dad, Mr. Hall, said it was a ghost. He didn’t know whose ghost it was, though. Our son Terry claims that when he was growing up spending much of his childhood there with his grandparents, he’d hear noises at night. See, they had pictures hanging up on the wall there at Terry’s great-grandparents’. He always said that the eyes of the people in the photographs would follow him when he walked from one part of the room to another.

53. “Ghosts in the Antique Shop”

Scott County

It was one of those rare spring days in the Kentucky Bluegrass Country, the first of its kind that season that promised that winter had passed. For miles, the crocus and daffodils had sprung up alongside the old stone fence that lined the winding, two-lane country road. With the windows down and the fresh warm breeze fanning through the car, my friend Pam and I were enjoying the mood of the season as we reached the popular Scott County town that is filled with antique shops.

The antique shop we had heard so much about was located in a handsome, two-story, turn-of-the-century stone building. Anxious to discover a one-of-a-kind collectible we just couldn’t live without, we busied ourselves from room to room examining the quaint details of every item.

After we finished looking in all the rooms downstairs, we climbed the narrow, squeaky staircase to discover several other rooms completely full of antiques. Strolling down the hallway, we smiled at portraits of old and young people who had posed for them many years ago. Interestingly, they stared back at us through their cracked gold picture frames.

Pam walked into one of the rooms just as an antique rug caught her eye. I continued down the hallway and suddenly found myself right in front of a large wooden door. I thought it rather unique that I could hear the neighbors next door through the thick stone walls. And at that very moment, the whining of a little boy caught my attention. Sounded like he wanted a cookie or something. I paused for a moment, feeling sorry for the little fellow, then continued my search upstairs.

After Pam and I finished looking through the upstairs rooms, I chose to go back downstairs and take a quick look in one of the rooms that was simply filled with old kitchen utensils. When I got back to the old wooden door, I paused briefly to see if I could still hear the little boy. This time, I didn’t hear him; instead I heard adult voices. Sounded like they were having a party! Their voices were faint, and I couldn’t understand a single word they said, only mumbling.

The stair steps squeaked again as we descended, and I quickly made my way to the back of the antique shop. While examining a charming tea cup and saucer, an unexplainable, cold feeling rushed through my body. Suddenly, goose bumps stood out all over me, and a brush of wind blew through my hair. Whew! Was I ever scared! I didn’t understand what had just happened, but I had to get out of there. I mean, get out in a hurry!

I ran to find Pam, who had paid for her purchase and was chatting with the owner. Pam later described the look on my face as I approached them. “Didn’t you know that this old house is haunted?” she asked me.

I froze in my tracks, and I’m sure that I turned white while listening to the owner tell the story about the voices that I had heard upstairs and how loud they were sometimes, especially at night.

She went on to tell about Charlie, the ghost that roamed around downstairs and removed pictures from one particular wall. She told us that Charlie would not allow anything to hang on “his wall,” as it was referred to. If someone hung something on Charlie’s wall, it was gone the next morning. She went on to tell us how things would be rearranged when she opened the door in the mornings and how she would sometimes tease Charlie after he had been naughty while a customer was in the store. Often she would hang a framed picture on Charlie’s wall and then find that he had moved it to another spot overnight. Once, she even found a picture in an upstairs room.

Charlie was a banker in that same building during the early 1900s. After getting caught swindling money from the bank, he went into a room and put a gun to his head and killed himself. The bullet is still in the wall. We were told that this building was a funeral home before it was a bank, which added to the mystery of that day.

I left the antique shop that day a totally different person. I had actually experienced something that most people only talk about. A ghost! Not just one ghost, but several.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything, and I have even been back there once. Nothing happened during that visit, but I have not taken the owner up on her invitation to visit at night.

54, “The Mysteriously Opening Door”

Monroe County

My sister stayed at a home here in northern Monroe County, in an old house with doors that had only wooden drop latches. I don’t think that you could lock them from the outside, but on the inside all you had to do was lower this wood bar into the wood latch.

The people that lived there told my sister that the door to her bedroom would come open by itself. Well, she didn’t believe them. But I’ll have you know, each night when she went to bed that latch would raise and the door would come open. But there was nobody there. She said that happened many times.

When she’d go to bed, she knew that there was nobody in that room but her. Then, she’d hear that latch moving and that door would swing open.

She said that was true. That latch would raise of a night. She heard it many times, and the door would open, yet there was never anybody there.

She found out later that a man with no head had also been seen there.

55. “The House on Center Street”

Henderson County

A house on Center Street is the house that the people in Henderson identify as the town’s haunted house. All anyone needs to do is drive by to see how so many stories could evolve concerning one old house. It is an old three-story house that sets back slightly off the street. The architecture of the house, with its Gothic arches and ornate stonework, lends to the foreboding presence of the house. Actually, it seems strange why this house is not located off some country road out in the country. In fact, it is located just two or three blocks from the downtown area.

I can remember the first time I ever heard a story related to this house. Because I went to grade school outside of town near the subdivision that my family lived in, I was not familiar with the stories about this house in town. When I went to junior high in the city (fairly close to the house on Center Street I might add) it was then that I heard about this haunted house. A girl in one of my classes told the story of how the house became haunted.

It seems that when the house was relatively new, it was owned and operated by a fairly wealthy family. One of their kids was a girl, age fourteen. She was her parents’ pride and joy, and her father worshiped her with all his heart. Yet as with all stories of this nature, a problem arose to put clouds on the horizon. It so happened that this father s lovely young daughter was in love with some fellow and had her heart set on getting married.

The father became both enraged and heartbroken to learn that his daughter would want to get married and leave him. He insisted that she was much too young to get married, so he forbade her from ever seeing the young man again. They began to argue about this, and the father ended up locking the girl in her room. Her bedroom was on the third floor of the house. She sat by the window and gazed out, waiting for her lover to come and rescue her. At this point in the story various versions begin to appear. The version that I first heard depicted the young girl climbing out the window in order to elope with her boyfriend. She lost her grip and fell face down onto the paved sidewalk below.

Other versions claim that she jumped to her death as an act of suicide. One version even suggests that the father, in a fit of rage, pushed her out the window. Regardless of how and why she fell, the rest of the story is the same.

When she landed face down on the pavement, some supernatural power caused her face to leave a full imprint on the stone pavement. Feeling great remorse, the father lifted the section of the sidewalk and found that the imprint pushed through, leaving a life-size stone mask of the girls face. As a symbol of his guilt, the father mounted her mask on the front of the house.

I can attest to the fact that there is a stone mask of a young girl on the facade of the house. Who can tell whether this is the imprint of the girls face, or just a part of the ornate structure of the house? The house is now divided into several apartments. There are still rumors about the ghost of the young girl. I have heard of people leaving the apartment after living there only a short while. It is still said that on some nights one can actually see the image of the young girl looking out the window awaiting the arrival of her lover.

56. “I Am Still with You”

Jefferson County

In the old Jefferson Building on the downtown Jefferson Community College campus, a ghost is so active that the security chief keeps a file that documents all the happening his officers report. People hear footsteps when nobody is there. The elevator goes up and down on its own, carrying no visible passengers. Lights flicker and dim when storms and power surges can’t be blamed. Doorknobs are turned by unseen hands, and some employees have reported seeing a figure in the halls. Two cleaning ladies were so scared by the spooky presence that they quit their jobs. Mysterious letters, supposedly from the ghost, are left in various places. The last one was left in the chapel near Halloween in 1997. It was initialed “LSB” and announced, “I am still with you.”

The security chief, a self-proclaimed stickler for details, adds each incident to his file. In 1980, he added one of his own.

He was working the shift between midnight and dawn. He’d made his rounds, making sure the doors and windows were secure. With new batteries in his flashlight, he moved through the dark, silent halls following a routine inspection. Then it happened.

“I entered the Records and Admissions Office about 3:00 A.M.,” he says. “Suddenly my flashlight dimmed and I felt a cold draft on the back of my neck. I got this prickling sensation all up and down my spine. I had an overwhelming feeling that there was a presence in the room with me.”

He thinks the ghost could be Lucy Stites Barret, wife of James Rankin Barret, who built the structure. “There’s an inscription [carved in wood] in her memory over the fireplace in the area that used to be the library,” he points out, “and her initials were on the last letter. Whoever she is, I don’t believe she’s here to harm anyone.”

57. “Ghosts That Prefer Libraries”

Jefferson County

Two Louisville ghosts prefer libraries, namely the Shively-Newman branch on Dixie Highway and the old Jeffersontown Library on Watterson Trail. Charles Harris, who has worked at both libraries, had spooky experiences at each.

“I was at Newman from about 1989 to 1992,” he says. “I noticed the presence more in the evening when I was working late alone. I never felt threatened, but I couldn’t concentrate. One winter night in 1990,1 smelled the fragrance of fresh flowers coming from the browsing room, which connects the main library to the older auditorium. I couldn’t imagine who had brought fresh flowers in winter, so I checked. There were no flowers.”

The suspected ghost first attracted the staff’s attention in 1990 in the auditorium, a part of Shively City Hall to which the library was added. A mans voice came through the speakers in the ceiling, sounding as if he were in pain, but no source could be found. Then books and other objects began to disappear and mysteriously turn up elsewhere. Lights went off and on. Once a picture of Father Joseph Newman, for whom the library is named, fell from the wall, apparently without reason, and broke.

Recently, librarian Virginia Messer was summoned by a patron to watch her tap the keys on the electric Panasonic KX-E4000 typewriter kept in the library for public use.

“It was the strangest thing,” Messer says. “It was typing different letters from the keys she was striking. The backspace went forward and the space bar went backward. We turned it off and reset it, but it did it a couple of times.”

Shively mayor Jim Jenkins says he hasn’t heard about the odd happenings, but notes that the building was the center of community happenings when Father Newman was alive.

“They had police court there around 1970,” he says. “Father Newman had clubs and activities for teenagers. There was a lot of energy here.”

The atmosphere at the old Jeffersontown Library, on the other hand, was dreary, says Harris. “I suppose the fact that the library was on the site of the former county poor house could account for the dreary feeling,” he explains.

“Many patrons came into the library describing a woman wearing a frilly white or pink dress looking out the front window. Once a family from St. Louis drove by and stopped to tell us they’d seen the woman and realized she couldn’t be real.

“This ghost seemed unhappy and made me feel like it wanted privacy. I often heard footsteps there, and once I saw a whole row of books fall off the shelf. That many books do not fall off the shelf by themselves. Yet they did, and I was standing right there looking at them when it happened. I know there was no vibration or anything to cause it.”

Harris, now the manager of the Bon Air Library, says that when the Jeffersontown Library moved into a new building next door in 1996, he never felt the presence again.

58. “Urnenled Spirir”

Boone County

A widow used to live with her daughter in a house on Frogtown Road in Union, Kentucky. The daughter lived in the attic of the house. She went to her senior prom, and her mother asked her to be back home no later than 1:00 A.M. because she didn’t want to worry about her safety. Well, the girl got started home late from the prom and was killed in a horrible car accident about 12:45 P.M.

My friend and his family moved into the house after the widow moved out. My friend said that he and his family would always hear footsteps, and the attic door would open every night at about 12:30 or so. This went on for about six months until finally my friend’s mother asked around throughout the community to find out if anything strange had happened in the house. It was then that they learned about the girl getting killed in this car wreck.

The next night when my friend’s mother heard the footsteps and the door open, she spoke out and said, “Okay, honey, I know you are home. Go on to bed. Everything is all right.”

After that incident, the footsteps stopped and have never been heard again in that house.

59. “Ghostly Footsteps”

Caldwell County

One time on a stormy summer night, Mom and Dad went out, and I was left to watch after my little brother. I watched television for a while, and then went to bed downstairs in the basement.

I heard the front door open and then I heard footsteps coming down the stairway. I was so scared that I flipped on the light switch. When I did that, whatever it was ran back up the steps.

I just laid there in bed for a while. My little brother was still sound asleep. Finally, I got so scared just thinking about what I had heard that I got my little brother out of bed and took him upstairs. We slept up there on the couch the rest of the night.

I never did know what it was that I heard.

60. “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary”

Trimble County

This friend of mind told me many years ago that her house had a bloody ghost in it. Said the house was haunted by a weird-looking, bloody creature. It all started one day when Liz and her older sister decided to play Bloody Mary.

To play this horror-like game, they went into the bathroom, turned off the lights, and started chanting, slow, real slow, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.”

After they had gone through this the fifth time, they heard this awful sounding, squealy voice that sounded like a hen cackling in a long, drawn-out voice. Suddenly, the image of an old woman appeared in the mirror there in the bathroom. The old biddy was sitting in a rocking chair, laughing, laughing, laughing. And, ugh, she was covered all over with blood that was just dripping down from her face and head.

Well, Liz and her sister were scared to death, afraid that she would reach out and grab them with her bloody hands. They tried to open the door, but could not get it open. They tugged and they pulled, but the door would not open. While they were still trying to get out the door, they noticed that the bloody woman put her hands against the mirror, then disappeared.

They said that the bloody fingerprints stayed on the mirror. They washed and scrubbed the mirror but the blood stayed on, even though it was more like a bloody image than real blood. Finally, they decided to take down the bloody mirror and replace it with another one. When they did this, the bloody creature was never again seen.

61. “The Disappearing Ghost of Little Girl”

Hopkins County

My mother told me this story about two years ago. And, whew, every time I think of it, it gives me the creeps. To start it off, she told me that Dad was gone away on a business trip and she had been up late working on a paper that she had to turn in at work the next day. She said that it was getting pretty late, and she had started to put up her things when she heard a noise coming from the living room. She said that she ignored it at first because she thought that it must have been the dogs. So she continued to gather up her things to take them to her room. Then she heard the noise again as she started getting ready for bed. She decided to go see what was going on.

When she walked close to the living room door, she saw the figure of a young girl just about my age. In fact, she thought that it was me. So when she started to walk closer, the girl began to cry.

Mom said that it was hard for her to see the girl, so she began walking toward the light switch. As Mom was walking along, she started calling out my name, “Ashlee, Ashlee, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

The girl did not answer. Mom made her way on over to the light switch and turned it on. She turned back around, and the girl had vanished.

She told me this story on Halloween, and I will never forget it, or what happened when she did. Maybe she told it just to scare me, but at least she didn’t look at me and yell, “Boo,” as she finished telling it. If she had, I would probably have fainted on the spot.

62. “A Haunted House in the South Hill Community”

Butler County

One day my father was visiting me a few years ago before he passed away. Our topic of conversation soon landed on ghost stories. Most of them were inexplicable, but people just loved to tell them and to hear them told. Well, my father said that he had a story that happened to him that would raise the hairs on my head.

At the time this story took place, my dad’s sisters were already married, and he lived alone with his mother. His father had died when he was a young boy. They lived in South Hill, a small rural community in western Butler County.

He told me that early one Saturday night in 1923, when he was only eighteen years old, it had just gotten dark outside. His mother had walked up the road just a short distance to visit some family members. He was sitting alone in the kitchen in their small two-story house, listening to an old battery-powered radio, when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs toward the kitchen. He knew that there wasn’t a soul other than himself in the house, so he began to get a little nervous. He got up from his chair and stood quietly as the footsteps proceeded across the kitchen floor and stopped at the rocking chair located there in the middle of the room.

The rocking chair then began slowly rocking back and forth. My dad told me, said, “I was as scared as all get out.”

Dad said that he ran out of the backdoor of the kitchen and halfway across the yard before stopping to look back at the house. He said that chills ran through him as he saw that the house was lit up with bright lights, as if there were electricity. The scary thing was, they didn’t have any electricity in the house back then.

I’ll never forget what my father said to me about the story. He said, “It’s hard to imagine a grown man like me being afraid, but I don’t know

“A Tiny Baby’s Skeleton”

Knox County

About fifty or sixty years ago, Aunt Becky Barton, together with two or three daughters, lived beside a narrow country road in Knox County, near Gray, Kentucky. I never knew them but have heard about them many times from my grandparents, who lived a short distance from them.

The house in which they lived was a gray, weather-beaten structure. One of the front rooms was built of logs with a stone chimney, and in later years a framed room had been added beside it, and a lean-to porch stuck on the rear….

Aunt Becky was considered odd by her neighbors and her reticence concerning her family made her seem even more odd to her inquisitive neighbors. I was told that she claimed to have Indian blood and when illness struck her, she took to the woods to gather herbs from which she brewed foul-tasting remedies, which more often than not proved to be effective.

Rumors circulated that Aunt Becky s daughters were wild, and some said that men were seen going and coming at late hours, but the country folk were too polite to mention these things to Aunt Becky. Other rumors were that Aunt Becky had large sums of money hidden or buried under the house.

Finally, the old lady passed away, and I don t know what became of her daughters. Anyway, the house was empty for several years, and that was when I first remember seeing it. Then, about thirty years ago, I believe, Jim Dizney and his wife, Laura, bought the old Barton place, intending to restore and remodel the old house and raise vegetables on the sixteen acres of land.

Jim was employed in Harlan County and could only manage to move his family and possessions there on weekends. They arrived on a Saturday afternoon … but Jim had to return to his work on Sunday. Laura was left with her four or five children for the entire week. That Sunday night they were all tired and went to bed early. Sometime during the night, Laura was awakened by a peculiar knocking sound on the wall beside her bed. There were three raps, then silence, three more raps, then silence again. She told herself that the wind was blowing and something was hanging on the outside wall causing the noise. But when the same sound disturbed her the following night she called her oldest boy who was about sixteen, and asked him to see if there was anything hanging on the wall outside. He checked and there was not. This happened the next night, and the next, and every night until it really began to upset her. Three raps, then silence for a few minutes, and so on all night long.

When Jim came home on the weekend, she told him about it and asked him to investigate. He scoffed at her story and explained that it could be rats in the wall. After all, the house was old and had been vacant for a long time. He was afraid that they had a long battle with the rats ahead.

That night, Jim didn’t sleep much. A strange rapping sound kept him awake. Every time heel doze off, he’d hear the noise. Next morning he wasted no time. He crawled through a trapdoor in the attic, where he found a floor that had been partially laid, but no walls had covering, just the outside weatherboarding surrounding the framework. Peering about with a flashlight for rats between the framing, he discovered a long willow pole that had been pushed down between the outside and the inside walls while it was green. This was evident because it was bent until somehow hooked under the edge of the floor. But now, it was dried, old, and brittle. It had been there for years but he managed to pull it up into the attic. On the dust covered floor and on the lower end of the stick, he found dark stains that appeared to be blood. Going downstairs, he ripped away two or three pieces of weatherboarding near the floor. Inside between the two walls was the skeleton of a tiny baby. A local doctor said the bones were those of a newborn infant.

The strange rapping was never heard again, and the Dizneys still live there.

64. “The Old Letter”

Simpson County

On this bright summer day, these two sisters, Heather and Jamie Graves, were going to their grandmother’s new house that she had just bought. These sisters were interested in what they might find up in the attic, so they went up to explore. They found an old letter and began to read it. All of a sudden, the lights went out! It was pitch dark up there, even though it was still daytime.

They went back downstairs and told their brother Ricky what had happened. He proceeded to tell them that he’d bet that they wouldn’t spend the night up there. But they did. They went back up there at bedtime, went to bed, and were soon asleep.

Not long after they were asleep, their grandmother went up to check on them. And do you know what they were doing? They were fighting and talking. Yelling, too. Believe it or not, they were still asleep. Their grandmother told what was taking place. When they woke up, they saw the ghost of a dead woman.

Their grandmother told them that before she had moved into this house, a woman had lived there, and that before the woman died she had written a letter. That was the letter that Heather and Jamie had found.

65. Cal Bingham’s Ghost”

Muhlenberg County

On a stormy day or night, there’s one place most people will avoid. That’s the house on Walnut Hill in Muhlenberg County, near Paradise—the eerie cabin where Cal Bingham died.

The story goes that about seventy-five years ago, Cal Bingham, an ornery cuss disliked by most everyone, was out cutting trees along with two hired hands when a storm blew up.

Folks say there hadn’t been one like it before or since. Lightning flew at the ground in jarring bolts while the wind raged viciously, tearing at all things standing.

Witnesses say that old Cal Bingham raised his fist and cursed the sky for causing him delay. Almost immediately, a white-hot bolt appeared from the clouds, and seconds later Cal lay pinned beneath a lightning-felled tree.

The two men drug him from under the tree and over to an abandoned cabin, where he lay on a cold stone hearth for hours. While his blood seeped into the rough plank floor, he cursed and ranted against the heavens until his dying breath.

Some people say the two men didn’t go for help—not many folks cared either way.

But ever since that day, whenever the clouds blacken and the thunder rumbles, any poor souls who have taken shelter there will testify that the old house shakes with an inner fury, and the angry curses of Cal Bingham can be heard over the moans of the wind.

Perhaps the most chilling and perplexing fact of all is how the gray plank floor once again appears to run wet and red.

Haunted door and stairway in the Smith/Richardson House. (Photo by Elbert Cundiff)

66. “Footsteps and a Rattling Door”

Breckinridge County

There was an experience there in that Harry Richardson house, and this happened a lot. As far as I know, it s still going on.

I heard it, Mom and Dad heard it, and Granddad heard it. Everybody that came to visit heard this. What it would be, you’d be sitting in the living room on the couch or whatever, and that door that went upstairs would rattle, just like wind was blowing against it. You’d hear what sounded like somebody wearing farm brogans—shoes—coming down the steps rattling the door and then going back up the steps. This happened a lot.

Well, Harry Richardson had some stuff upstairs, so he kept the upstairs door locked with a padlock. I got curious and even though I knew it was wrong at the time, I pried the padlock off the door and went upstairs. I looked around. There were two windows up there, but both of them were nailed shut. So there was no way for any wind to get up there and rattle the door. I came back downstairs and fixed the hasp on the door the best that I could so that Harry would not know that I had been up there.

But you’d still hear what sounded like feet walking up and down the steps, and you’d hear that door rattle. People who were visiting would ask, “How come that door is rattling like that?”

Dad would just pawn it off by saying it was the wind rattling the door. But I knew better. That must have been the ghost of Emmitt Smith reenacting the day he was murdered when he came down the steps and tried to get out the door to find his heart medicine, but couldn’t find it and went back upstairs and died.

I would say the rattling noise is still heard.

67. “Ghosts in the Kentucky Headhunters’ Rehearsal House”

Metcalfe County

We have a rehearsal house up above my grandparents’ house here in western Metcalfe County. It’s where my dad and the other Kentucky Head-hunters used to practice when I was little, and they still do. They also wrote many of their songs in this house. My grandmother Young let them have that house when Dad, who is Richard, and his brother Fred was just very young. They called it the practice house. This old practice house became a very famous institution when the Headhunters won all their Academy Awards.

Dad used to tell stuff about this woman who burned up in this house. The house didn’t burn. She was Ellen Broady, who just caught on fire at the kitchen stove and burned until she died right there in that house.

He also said that in this same house, a man hanged himself.

They say that you can still see their spirits up there in the house. Dad said that when the Headhunters were kids, they began their initial practice sessions right there in that house. They felt real creepy about the things they saw and heard. They said that they all could see things like black shadows and stuff like that.

I’ve got my own music band now. I’m fourteen years old. It’s a rock’n roll group. We go up there on weekends to practice. If we stay real late, like past midnight, you start seeing stuff. And you get this eerie feeling like you’re being watched. Just like passing a graveyard in the middle of the night. Man, do we have to get out of there!

That house up there, and that yard, man its a trip! Its the greatest house to ever be in, because there’s just so many creepy things happening up there.

68. “The Ghost of a Slain Robbery Victim”

Whitley County

Late in the afternoon, my grandmother told me a story about a haunted house. She said it was about 7:00 p.m. when she went to stay with her sister. When they sat down to eat, they heard a noise in the cellar. My grandmother sat still and asked, “What was that?”

Her sister told her that an old man had been living there a long time and some robbers took him down in the cellar and killed him. It had been said that the house was haunted. After they all went to bed, about midnight my grandmother heard footsteps coming up the stairs. It walked to the end of the hall, then turned around and walked back down.

Grandmother got out of bed and went to see what was there. She found nothing there, so she went back to bed. All was well again until about three o’clock when she heard something knocking against the wall. It knocked about six times and then stopped. Then Grandmother got up and went downstairs to wake up her sister.

Her sister got up to listen, but the knocking was gone. Grandmother’s sister said that she was moving from that house. So the very next day, the family moved from the house up to Mill Creek, Kentucky, where Grandmother died of old age.

69. “The Talking Spirit’s House”

Morgan County

Perlie Ferguson and her husband, William Ferguson, took their children to stay all night with William’s grandparents. During the late afternoon, Mary, the oldest child, went to sleep without any supper and was put to bed.

Along in the night, she woke up very hungry and wanted her mother to go get her something to eat. Mrs. Ferguson awakened her husband and wanted him to go with her, because in order to get to the kitchen an outside porch had to be crossed. Well, he just made fun of her and told her to take the lamp and go on, that nothing was going to hurt her.

She took the lamp in one hand and the little girl in the other and went on across the porch and into the dining room. She looked into the cupboard, but there was nothing there except an uncut apple stack cake. So she went on into the kitchen and looked in the stove and cupboard, but she found nothing to eat in there.

She took a butcher knife out of the drawer and went back to the dining room and took the apple stack cake from the cupboard and cut a piece from it. She then poured Mary a glass of milk and set the cake with it on the table for her.

While the child was eating her food, Mrs. Ferguson heard someone speak and say, “You will have grief.”

She looked around to see if someone was standing behind her, but there was no one there. At first she thought it was her husband there trying to scare her, but when she saw no one, she became very frightened. She hurriedly picked up the lamp, and also Mary, and went back to her bedroom. There was her husband, sound asleep. She asked him if he had been trying to scare her, but he vowed that he had been asleep ever since she had gone. Needless to say, Mrs. Ferguson did not sleep much the rest of the night.

About a month later, her second child, Clyde, took pneumonia fever and was very, very sick for a long time. The doctor thought he was going to die. Mrs. Ferguson believed, and still does, that the voice in the dining room earlier that month had tried to warn her of Clyde’s serious illness.

She told her husband’s grandmother all about this some time later. Grandmother Ison told her that that was no strange occurrence in that house, but was a very common one. She even told her that in the bedroom where Mrs. Ferguson had spent the night, many times the quilts could not be held on the bed. Something would keep tugging at them all night long.

70. “A Haunted House on Coon Branch”

Knox County

My granny, as I used to call my grandmother, used to live in a house up on Coon Branch that people said was haunted. You could hear things all through the night if you were awake. You could hear things sit by the fire in the front room with no light in the kitchen, and hear noises in the kitchen like someone cooking a meal. It sounded like the stove door opening and closing, dishes rattling, pots and pans falling, and a sound like a 150-pound person walking around. I never did like to stay there all night. It made me afraid.

The house had a square hole in those days. They put things up there in the loft. There was a ladder on the wall that you could go up and down on. When the light was blown out at bedtime, that walking began up in the loft. I would lay there in bed, afraid to move. You didn’t hear weird things in the daytime.

Once someone there was sick, and my mother and sister-in-law went over to sit up and help. Mother and the woman washed the dishes and took the light into the other room. They hadn’t been in there any time when they heard the dishpan fall and hit the floor; it rolled and made a terrible noise. They took the light and went to see. The dishpan was right where they left it. When they went back into the other room, the noises started again—walking, dishes rattling, punching the fire, and the stove doors shutting and opening.

Granny said that if she could see it, she would ask it, “What in the name of the Lord are you here for?”

She said that she had got up in the dark but couldn’t see a thing. She said what it was or what it meant, she never knew. Granny said that at first she was afraid, but she got used to it. She thought it was a witch or a “hant,” but she didn’t know which. She lived there for some time, and it went on as usual.

I still feel afraid when I pass the place where the house used to stand. We called it the haunted house.

71. “The Haunted House in the Woods”

Greenup County

Late one evening in November in the year 1850, a party of five men, driving ox teams, paused to rest on a mountain side. The teams had started before daylight that morning, and the day had been a hard one. The ox wagons were loaded with green staves that were used in making barrel kegs. The rough mountain trail was slick with frozen mud. It was cut into deep ruts which made it difficult for the oxen to draw the wagons. The men, being cold and hungry and realizing that they could not reach their destination, began to look for a place to spend the night. They finally saw a small house standing among the white oak trees back from the road on this little trail.

Deciding that they would try to find shelter in the house, they approached it and found that it was deserted. They unhitched their oxen from the wagons and tied them up. They went inside the house only to find it crudely furnished.

The men felt a little more cheerful when they had the fire burning and had eaten some food. They soon became drowsy and stretched out on the floor around the fire. After a while, they were awakened by a loud noise. Thinking that someone was at the door, they got up to investigate. They also went to see about their oxen. Finding everything all right, they went back to sleep.

They were later awakened by the cold wind blowing into the room. The fire had died down, and the door was standing wide open. This seemed strange indeed, because they remembered that they had barred the door.

After replenishing the fire and barring the door, they tried again to get some sleep. However, they soon heard a noise overhead that sounded like chains rattling. They got up and looked in the attic but found nothing that could have caused the noise. Most of them decided to spend the rest of the night sitting up and talking.

In the early morning, they prepared to leave the house, and as they were hitching their oxen to the wagon, a man on horseback approached. He told them that he had seen the lights and was passing there on his way to get a doctor for his wife. The men told him about the strange happenings; then the stranger told them the gruesome story of the family who had lived in the house a few years ago. They had been found murdered in their beds.

Do you suppose it was their ghosts that disturbed these men?

72. “Ghostly Noises in an Old House”

Pike County

At one time when I was a little girl, we lived in a big house in Big Shole. At the children slept in a big room downstairs. Papa slept in a bedroom upstairs.

One night Papa was going to be gone, so he asked Minnie to stay with us. Minnie was my half brothers wife. She had three little girls. We were told to sleep in Papa’s room instead of the big room downstairs. We went to bed, and there was a noise like a chair rocking. Minnie yelled and told us to get in the bed and quit rocking that chair so she could go to sleep. The children all told her that they were already in bed.

The noise kept up, and the children all got scared. We asked if we could come downstairs and sleep in our regular bedroom. Minnie said, “No, I’ll come up there.”

She came upstairs and brought a flashlight. She got in bed with all of us. When the noise started up again, she shined the flashlight on the chair. The chair was still, not moving at all. When she turned the flashlight off, the noise started up again.

The children were never able to sleep in that room. The chair rocked so hard it could be heard all over the house.

Papa was brave. He slept there all the time.

“The Knocking Spirit”

Clay County

Once there was this man who was going to see his girlfriend. The girl told him that there was a knocking spirit at her house. The man told her that he was not afraid of ghosts.

They were sitting around the fire, when they suddenly heard a noise far away from where they were. The man said, “Come a little closer.”

It continued to knock until it knocked at the door. Then he told it to come a little closer. He was scared to death, but he said, “Come a little closer.”

Then it knocked closer, this time on his hat brim. He said that after that he never told it to come any closer, because he took off and ran away from there.

He never went back to her house again, but she came to his. Later, they got married, but he would never go back to her house anymore.

“The Hainted Room”

Perry County

Henry Smith went to visit his aunt, Linda Legg, who lived over in Perry County. Now, Mr. Smith wasn’t grown when this happened. He went in at her house right after dark, and Aunt Linda was sitting in front of the fire, smoking. She told Henry to go to the table and get him something to eat, that the food was all kivvered up at the table. He went to the table and eat, then she told him to go upstairs and go to bed.

This house was a real old-timey house with one real large room downstairs. The old-timey stair steps come down into this big living room. There was this hainted room that sot right at the head of the steps. She told Henry that there was a table setting right by the door as he goes in, and that he would find a coal-oil lamp setting on the table with some matches laying there beside it.

He undressed and blowed the light out and went to bed. Just about the time he hit the bed, something slammed into the side of the wall and sounded just like a baby kicking the wall. Henry felt over on the back side of the bed and caught the baby by the legs. It kept kicking him, and Henry kept on inching toward the front of the bed. The closer Henry got to the edge of the bed, the closer the baby got to him and kept right on kicking.

When he reached the edge of the bed, he rolled right out in the floor and grabbed his britches as he took off running. Right down them steps he went, and into the big living room he went.

When Aunt Linda seen him coming, she asked, “Honey, did you get scared?”

Henry said, “Yes, Aunt Linda, I just couldn’t sleep up there for that little baby.”

She said, “Henry, I plumb forgot about that room being like that, or I wouldn’t have sent you up there.”

After they talked, he went to some other room and slept there that night.

One other time, he said that he slept in that house, in the room next to this hainted room, with some other men. He said they heard something that seemed to him to be something dragging a trunk across the floor. One of the men hollered in there and told the haint to quit that dragging whatever it was dragging. He talked real ugly to the haint, telling it that it was impossible for a man to sleep in that room.

75. “A Haunted House in Breathitt County”

Breathitt County

On Lick Branch in Breathitt County there lived a preacher by the name of Bob Herald, who lived in a house that was said to be haunted. At this house there were many strange things happening. People all around had heard of this and would come from miles around to try to see these strange things.

Greenberry and Charlie Turner went one night. It was said that the swing was supposed to start swinging and the chair was supposed to start rocking and the door was to come open of its own accord. Greenberry Turner sat in the rocking chair, and it didn’t rock, and Charlie sat in the swing, but it didn’t swing.

The next night two or more of the same family went to see what they could find out. They had to ride horseback to this man’s house. Along in the night, the doors flew open, the chair began to rock, and the swing began to swing. These two men that had gone there got scared and ran off and left their mules hitched to the fence, all night long. They went back the next morning and got them.

The very next day, Bob Herald moved away, and the house burned that night. Old people of this community said that one of his boys shot at the sun ball and cursed the Lord, then the devil gave him power to do these strange acts.

This is a true account, told by Greenberry Turner, who visited this house.

76. “Ghostly Noises in a Haunted House”

Lewis County

About ten years ago there was a big, old house near Maysville that was supposed to be haunted. The people who were living there had to stay there for a year. An old man lived there with them. This old man was crippled, so he leaned against the house when he walked, and you could hear him walking. He would go upstairs and get up all but one step, and then fall back down. He walked up the steps one time and got up all of them but the last one. When he got to this one, he fell and died. From then on, those people could hear him lean against the house and walk up the steps.

The woman kept her forks and knives on the table. One night, they heard them fall and scatter all across the floor. Their child said, “Mommy, there is a rat on the table.”

The mother thought it was a rat, so she went back to bed. Next morning, she thought, “Well, I’ll go down and clean up the mess.”

Believe it or not, when she got down there the forks and knives were in the vase on the table. There wasn’t a one of them on the floor.

77. “A Haunted House on Lacy Creek”

Morgan County

This story occurred over one hundred years ago. It was told to me by my cousin, and has been handed down from my great-grandmother. This all happened here in Morgan County around the mouth of Lacy Creek.

A friend in the neighborhood had died. Three of his men friends came to sit up with the corpse. They sat and talked until around midnight, telling ghost tales. There was a haunted house close by. No one lived in it on the account of it being haunted. So these three men decided that they would go over to this house and investigate to see if it really was haunted.

When they arrived, they barred the door and seated themselves on the floor to wait. And it was no more than five minutes when the door flew open and in came a casket. It rolled over against the wall, and the lid flew open.

It was not very light, only the light of the moon coming through the window. The men jumped to their feet, and in rolled another casket and placed itself beside the other large casket, then raised its lid. The men became excited and began to leave. They found the door was still barred as it was when they came in. While trying to get out, in came a little casket and placed itself beside the other two caskets. The men tore the door down and left in a big hurry. They never returned to see what was in the three caskets.

78. “The Falling Windows of a Haunted House”

Marion County

In Marion County, there stands an old house which is supposedly haunted. The house is in the middle of a briar patch with not another house in sight. The story about the ghosts of this place supposedly took place about fifty years ago.

It seems that a group of young people had accepted a dare to stay in the house overnight. Everything went perfect until sometime around midnight when a headless figure appeared riding a beautiful white horse. A large sword in its right hand flashed, and one of the horses fell over. No one could muster the courage to venture forth to see what had happened, so they tried to convince themselves that they had imagined it. All was well until they went out at daylight. The horse was on the ground with its head completely separated from its body.

This old house is supposed to still be haunted. It is impossible to keep windows in one piece. Every time new windows are placed in the house, they somehow get knocked out. The owner, being dumbfounded, hired a man to stay in the house at night. The first night, nothing happened. The second night, the man was asleep on the floor when he felt something pulling at his cover. His lamp was on, but he couldn’t see a thing. The pulling was getting harder, so he started pulling the blanket back. Then, suddenly, the blanket ripped into two pieces. Immediately, there was a crash and every window in the house fell out.

People still talk about that old house, wondering what this was all about.

79. “Ghostly Musical Instruments and Other Noises”

Martin County

Once upon a time a family of renters were coming along and saw this empty house, and wanted to rent it. The owner of the house told them that it was haunted and no one would live there more than one night. The father told the owner that he and his family wasn’t afraid of anything, and that they still wanted to live in the house. The owner told them to go ahead and live there and he wouldn’t charge them anything for it.

The father and his girls moved part of their furniture into the house. And while the father went back to his other home to get another load of furniture, he got a boy to stay with his girls to keep them from getting scared.

The girls and the boy went to bed after dark and hadn’t laid down but a few minutes when they heard a noise in the loft. It sounded like a big barrel full of cans rolling back and forth, and finally it came down the stairs and scared them. Then the boy jumped in bed with the girls, and then they heard this awful moaning, groaning sound coming from the loft. Then they heard it come down the stairs with its heavy feet dragging. It came down and lay before the fire the rest of the night. While it was resting, it groaned the whole night through.

The next morning, when the father returned with another load of furniture for the house, the girls told him that there wasn’t any use of unloading it because they weren’t going to stay in that house. They told him about the barrel rolling back and forth and down the stairs and about the groaning haint that stayed there all night.

The father began to make fun at them, but all at once he began to hear banjos, fiddles, and guitars making music around his head, and he got so scared that he and his whole family ran away, never to return to that haunted house again.

80. “The Ghost of burning Fork”

Johnson County

“The Ghost of Burning Fork” is a story that was told to me by C.H. Stambough. Mr. Stambough’s brother was to show a peddler through the community of Burning Fork. The first place they were to stop was a house which sat on a high cliff. This cliff had a crack in it and gas from deep in the earth came out, and it was always burning. This is why the name of Burning Fork became known.

John, who was Mr. Stambough’s brother, had told the peddler about the neighbors and how this girl that lived at the first house could have the knocking spirit to do what she commanded. The peddler wanted to see this and so spent the complete morning at this house with John.

When they arrived, John said that he showed him the burning gas, and the peddler wanted to go back. The peddler said that the devil was already there, as he could feel it in his bones.

They had dinner with this family, and the girl begin having the dishes float in the air. John said, “I grabbed my glass and set it down, but the peddler was so shocked that he couldn’t even eat.”

This was only the beginning of their ghost. As the peddler and I went from house to house that day, I told him that we would have to stay for the night at one of the houses. Well, we happened to stay at the house where the girl lived that was endowed with the spirit. If anyone ever possessed the supernatural power, it was she. She was so ugly that no boy in the community would come to that house.

That night I was put in the room with her brother, and the peddler was given the room in blue, the guest room. He had to go down a long hall and out on the porch before he reached the room. He had said that if she was what I had told him about her, he wanted to see just what she could do.

After everyone was in bed, a noise was heard in the peddler ‘s room. I went to see what it was, and he was so afraid that he could not move. He said that while he was getting ready for bed, the ghost walked into his room and would not leave. He told me that he was getting out of there while he was still in one piece.

81. “Strange Events at a Haunted House”

Bell County

About thirty-six years ago, I lived on Breast Works Hill. A lot of soldiers got killed in the Civil War on that hill, and they was buried there under where houses are now.

Well, Ben was laying in bed sick with leak of the heart, and he had just give himself up to die. He was so weak, and when I was in the kitchen he’d just peck on the wall right light for me to come there and wait on him.

Jim Henry, who was Bens brother, come over to set up with him. Now, Jim Henry would just set and doze, but the minute you called his name he would be ready to do anything to help you out. “Now, Francis,” says Jim Henry, “I’m aiming to kill your haint tonight.”

Well, I told him that I’d shore be glad if he would. So about midnight, he was setting there a-dozing, and a big noise that went like somebody hitting the side of the house with a board woke him up. Boy, he jumped up out of that chair like he was shot, and the young’uns come running out of that room where they was sleeping.

Then it sounded like somebody dragging chairs over the floor. Jim Henry said, “Well, I never believed in hants before, but I know this is the truth.”

And that middle door wouldn’t stay shut, I don’t care how many times that you locked it.

My mother come to see me one day and she said, “Give me that key; I aim to lock that door.”

I said, “Mother, I’ll catch you a bird if you will.”

I give her the key and she locked the door and put the key in her apron pocket, and that door just flew open. Mother said, “As old as I am, I’ve never seen the likes of that before.”

But that sure is the truth, honey.

82. “Was It a Ghost?”

McLean County

Some years ago when Livermore was smaller than it is now, a family consisting of husband, wife, and baby lived in what is now Harold Hughart’s house. The man was employed at a job that sometimes took him away from home at night. The family lived happily and without incident for several weeks. Then, the husband’s work caused him to be away from home for two or three days. While he was gone, his wife heard bells ringing. Sounded like they were in the room farthest away from her bedroom.

When her husband returned, she told him what she had heard. Nothing more of the bells was heard for some days, but strange footsteps were heard walking up and down the stairway. These things were heard for some time, and lights were sometimes seen in or near the house. The young wife and mother grew to be very uneasy when it was necessary for her husband to be away from home.

People began to discuss the haunted house and to advise the family to move out. Some people were afraid; others thought that they were hearing only natural sounds that could be explained.

One night while the husband was away, his wife heard a sound coming from her baby’s bed. Jumping up from her own bed, the mother rushed to the baby’s bed. When she got there, she saw this ghostly figure bending down over the baby.

She cried out and rushed to the baby. When she got hold of herself, the mother searched the house but found nothing. She took the baby and spent the rest of the night across the street with her own mother. When the husband returned, they decided to move out of that house.

Of course, that haunted house was a nine-day wonder to the people there in Livermore. There was one person, however, who took no stock in the haunting. He said, “One man is causing all that ghost stuff. He wants to buy that house for a little of nothing.”

People continued to talk, but when the man who was suspected of causing the lights and sounds died, the haunting stopped.

83. “The Old Civil War House”

Trigg County

Shortly after the turn of the century, peculiar occurrences began to be noticed in this old house in Trigg County. It had been built before the Civil War and was the main house on a good farm. But the place could not be rented because of strange noises that always terrified the residents.

After retiring for the night, the occupants of the house would be awakened by peculiar noises from the living room. In this large room there was a big fireplace which required logs of considerable size. There would come a sound from this large room after they had retired for the night, like a log of wood rolling from the fireplace out into the room. When they rushed to the room, nothing could be found.

This continued constantly during the winter. No one could stay in that house. They were too scared. The last tenants were a man and his wife. Both died of nervous diseases, one of them in the insane asylum.

The mystery was never solved, and after these people died the house was torn down.

84. “Ghosts, Ghosts, and More Ghosts!”

McLean County

Somewhere around 1780, a new family moved to the Beech Grove neighborhood, not far from what is now Calhoun. There were five members of this family, a husband, wife, two infant children, and his brother, who was mentally retarded and subject to wild fits.

This feeble-minded brother was kept chained loosely in the attic to keep him from running away. He did not have enough intelligence to free himself, but was able to watch the children to see that they did not wander off while their mother and father worked in a nearby field.

One afternoon, the mother came home from the field early in order to have her husbands meal ready for him when he came in. Upon arriving at the house, she found that her mindless brother-in-law, in a mad fit, had beaten the children to death with his chains. Going completely berserk, she attacked him with an ax and killed him. Then, grieving over her children and what she had done and being afraid of her husband, she hung herself in a huge oak tree in the front yard.

Upon returning home and finding his entire family slaughtered, her husband cast himself into a water well and drowned.

Their frontier house stood unoccupied for many years. During this time, the old oak tree became a favorite hanging place for horse thieves.

Before long, people were afraid to come near the place, as it seemed that something bad happened every time they did. A hunter was killed by a panther, and a child fell into quicksand nearby and was suffocated.

Back during prohibition times, six moonshiners decided that it would be a safe place to hide a still, because no one ever came near. They put the moonshine still in the barn behind the house. One night as they celebrated a big sale, they made fun of the ghosts who had been hiding there. As they joked, a fire mysteriously started at both ends of the barn and trapped them inside. One of the men, although badly burned, escaped the fire and lived long enough to tell what had happened.

Nowadays, their ghosts, the ghosts of the family, the hunter, and the ghosts of the horse thieves who were hanged here, still haunt the old house.

Not many years ago, an elderly lady moved into the yet sturdy old house and spent the night. The next day, her daughter came to visit her, and found the old lady out of her head talking about ghosts. She is in the insane asylum now.

A little later, a family of five moved into the house, but at midnight they moved their furniture out of the old house and walked eight miles to spend the night with their former neighbor. They have not been back to the old house since that night.

Today, the old house still stands alone in a huge forest. At night, the pioneer wife can be seen walking through the house carrying a candle that gives off a green light. As she walks, she calls out for her children, the mad brother-in-law still rattles his chains in the attic, and the children are crying.

This is believed by the people of this region and is told as the gospel truth.

85. “The House with a Lantern”

Lyon County

There was a log house located between the two rivers in Lyon County, a house that was torn down during the building of the Kentucky Dam. Although this old house had been deserted for years, at midnight one could see a lantern.

It is said that an old man who lived there had nine daughters, whom he supervised with a great deal of care. He required them to be in home by nine o’clock every night. Each night at midnight, he would go and check the girls’ rooms, carrying his lantern in his hand. This went on for years and years.

The girls never married, and the old man outlived each of them. When he died, he was found by some neighbors with his lantern at his side.

For years and years after that, passersby at midnight could hear the footsteps of the dead old man, and see his lantern as he went about his nightly duty.

86. “The Ghost in a White Nightgown”

McCreary County

One evening about six o’clock, when I was about ten or eleven years old, Mom was cooking supper. She always cooked big meals.

Altogether, there were about ten of us kids and grandkids, and she sent all of us up the hill to get a gallon of cow’s milk from my great aunt. We didn’t know that no one was at home. We called out my aunt’s name, because she had a dog that would bite. We called her name three or four times. Suddenly, we saw someone who looked like a woman in a white nightgown walking slowly back and forth across the porch. We never knew who it was or what it meant.

On certain nights now, I can see a woman holding a baby in her arms, looking out the window of that old house. That house is right above where my house is now.

87. “The Haunted Abbot House”

Elliott County

Kentucky Highway 32 crosses into Elliott County out of Rowan, and runs on into Lawrence County. Along this highway here in Elliott County, near Newfoundland, is Brown Ridge, named for the prominent Brown family that settled there in the mid-1800s.

Immediately east of the Wallace Brown place there is a deep valley that extends eastward to the stream known as Big Caney Creek. Today, the valley is completely overgrown with every form of vegetation from matted vines to huge oak and poplar trees. Today, no evidence can be found to indicate that a log structure, then known by older residents of the county as the Abbot house, once occupied a small plot of flatland near the head of the valley.

The date when the Abbot family established residence in the valley seems to be unknown, and, in fact, there is no proof that Mr. Abbot was the one who erected the log structure. It is assumed that he did.

Apparently, the Abbots lived there for only a short time before they moved from this old house, which would later become the home of various families, one of them being the Henry Jenkins family.

During that particular period in the history of eastern Kentucky, there were very limited means of entertainment. But one that was popular was the Saturday dance, day or night. This form of entertainment usually took place in one of the local homes and always called for the community fiddler. In most cases, the local purveyor of “white lightning” made his appearance. This was the situation, then, at the Jenkins home in the late 1870s, or early in 1880.

During the evening’s activities, Jenkins was said to have poked fun at Patrick Conn, a local man of limited mental capacity. Conn became angry at Jenkins’ jest and struck him on the head with a heavy object, which, according to old-timers, was a large rock. The blow killed Henry Jenkins. When the census was taken the following summer, Jenkins’ wife was listed as a widow with two small daughters, all three living in the home of her parents.

Lying east of Big Caney Creek were the communities of Stark and Mauk Ridge. Anyone traveling from those communities along the crude road that crossed Brown Ridge often related strange, even frightening, events at the old abandoned house.

Henry Porter, who grew up in the Stark area, married a young lady west of Brown Ridge. They made their home near there. When going to or returning from visits with kinfolk in the Stark community, he had to pass the Abbot house. In later years, he often related to a daughter-in-law some of the strange and unexplainable events he had witnessed at the “hainted house.”

Perhaps Porter’s first encounter with the unexplainable occurred very late one evening when he was returning home from a day’s visit with relatives in Stark. He stated that as he neared the abandoned house, he heard the sounds of music, laughter, and the slapping of dancing feet coming from the old house.

Thinking that a family had moved in, Porter tethered his horse to the paling fence that enclosed the yard and proceeded up to the front door. When he pushed the door open, to his amazement the music stopped instantly, and he was staring into an empty and silent room.

Porter was said to be a man not easily frightened, but according to his own words, he made a hasty retreat to his horse and resumed his journey on home. But again, he was totally dismayed to hear the music and other jovial sounds commence as he rode away.

Porter also related that on another occasion he was approaching the old house when he saw a small “snow white dog” come trotting down the road toward the house. Again, he assumed that another family had moved in but thought nothing of it until the small dog got to the gate in the paling fence. Porter swore that the animal just faded away like a vapor at the time it made contact with the gate. It did not reappear.

Neighbors always said that Henry Jenkins went to the kitchen window at the same time each summer day and called his cows down to the stable where he milked them. As might be expected, various travelers who later passed by at that specific time reported that they could hear Jenkins calling his cows.

Years went by, and a family with nowhere else to live moved into the Abbot house. In a short time, they told of frightening experiences they were suffering through. They swore to a local medical doctor that the old house was “hainted.”

The doctor tried to convince them that there was no such thing as a “haint,” and that whatever they had witnessed could be explained. To prove it, the doctor told the family that he would come by some evening and demonstrate to them that the strange happenings were nothing more than some natural occurrence.

Even though it was a bitterly cold, snowy night, the doctor tethered his horse to the hitching rail and joined the family in front of the large fireplace in the living room.

As they talked, the latch to the front door lifted of its own accord and the door swung open. But no one was at the door. The doctor, convinced that someone was outside pulling the drawstring, reclosed the door and pulled the drawstring to the inside. Again, the latch lifted and the door swung open. This time, a prop was placed against the door, and even a huge chair was also placed against it. But nothing, absolutely nothing, would keep the door closed. The prop flew from its position and the chair was sent flying across the room by some mysterious force. It seemed like an evil force was present and was taunting the doctor.

By that time, the doctor was thoroughly frightened by the occurrences and had to admit that he could not explain them. In fact, he was so frightened that he feared to return home that night. Despite the bitterly cold weather, he even refused to venture outside long enough to take his shivering horse to the stable.

When Jenkins was dying, his blood flowed across the floor and dripped to the ground underneath. For many years thereafter, local people claimed that a red moss grew on the blood-soaked ground. An elderly lady that had lived in the house when she was a child told me that she had seen the red substance on the ground beneath the house, but she could not explain what it was.

Many years went by. From time to time, families with nowhere else to live occupied the old house, and the ghost stories continued. One local man told me that when he was a young man, he was “talkin” with a young lady, a daughter of this man that lived in the old house. After leaving the house one dark night, a huge ball of fire seemed to rise from right under his feet and floated softly along until it faded from view.

Sometime during the 1930s or early 1940s, a local moonshiner decided that this haunted house would be an ideal place to set up his illegal operation. Everything went well until a jar of his “white lightning” shattered when it fell to the floor. The whiskey splashed onto the fire and instantly the entire place was engulfed in flames. The distiller escaped, but his distilling equipment was destroyed, and the “hainted house” was reduced to ashes.

The ghosts were never heard from again after that.

88. “A Haunted Cellar”

Allen County

Before the outbreak of the Civil War, there were a few families in Allen County that owned slaves. One of these families owned thirteen to fifteen slaves, and they were kept in small slave houses behind the main house. Although all the slaves lived in these quarters, there was a cellar in which the few slaves that were thought to need discipline were kept. There were shackles on the wall, and slaves might be kept chained up in the cellar for as long as three or four days in order to restore their usefulness to their owner.

Since the man who owned these slaves was possessed of a very violent nature, no one said anything to him about the cruel way in which he treated these black people. About the time that Lincoln’s war began and the news spread around the country, the slaves began to make plans to run away since they knew they would never be released voluntarily. One night they ran away and escaped, except the two that were in the cellar at the time. The others fled north and were eventually helped to complete safety by people with antislavery sentiments.

Their owner here in Allen County searched for them for about two days with no success, and he finally returned home. He was determined to carry out his vengeance against the two slaves that had remained chained to the cellar wall. His wife pleaded with him to let these slaves go, but he refused, and shot them both.

After his fit of anger had passed, he became frightened because of what he had done. He buried the two bodies of the slaves in the cellar. He then locked the door to the cellar, and even boarded up the door. Shortly afterward, he joined the Confederate Army, and in the course of war was killed.

His widow never reopened the cellar, and the few people who came to visit her reported that she went out of her way to avoid going near this particular door, although it was located in a very centralized position in the house.

After a while, she became sick and died after a lengthy illness. The house was sold by the nearest of kin to a family from neighboring Barren County, and it seems that this family was not well acquainted with the house s history. They cleaned up everything, brought in all their own furniture, and reopened the cellar door.

The cellar had a strange musty smell, which no amount of ventilation could get rid of. After a short time, the two children of the family told their parents that they heard strange noises at night which came from the vicinity of the cellar. The parents, of course, considered this only as a product of the children’s imagination.

One night that summer, their mother woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. She could not account for this weird feeling, and suddenly she noticed that her husband was also awake. Both of them agreed that they had heard a strange noise from the general direction of the cellar. The husband got up and headed toward the cellar to investigate, while the wife stayed behind in bed.

No one was ever certain exactly what happened, but the wife heard a cry, then a noise. She got up out of bed and went down to the cellar and there found her husband dead. He apparently had tripped on the top stair, fell into the cellar and broke his neck in the process.

After he was buried, his wife and children moved back to live with her own family in Barren County. She sold the house after quite a while, at a great loss, to a family that had moved up from Tennessee. And after a while, they, too, insisted that they kept hearing strange sounds in the house. Although nothing drastic happened to this family, they soon moved out.

Even though the house and farm were up for sale for a long time, they were never sold again. Nobody would buy that place. Now, only the foundation stones and a part of the cellar are all that are left of this old house. Until this day, people who are brave enough to venture out at night to this spot insist that they hear strange noises and smell an unusual musty smell in the area of the old cellar.

I guess that those poor slaves are still getting even.

89. “The Ghost of a Previous Owner”

Boyd County

We lived in this house on Bellefonte Road in Ashland. We had been living there a few months when I was awakened from a deep sleep dreaming that someone was looking at me. I quickly awakened, and to my surprise I saw a ghostly figure slowly rotating on the floor furnace in the middle of our hallway. As the ghost slowly rotated, our eyes finally met, and whatever it was disappeared at that very instant.

This same sequence of events occurred many times. After seeing the male ghostly figure so many times, I began to sleep with my bedroom door shut. Sleeping with the door shut was not because I was scared or upset about repeatedly seeing this male ghostly figure, but rather because I liked to sleep in privacy, not being watched by a ghost.

I remained very quiet about this ghostly being, not because I didn’t believe what I was seeing, but because I didn’t want to alarm or cause my children to lose any sleep over these occurrences. However, I did begin to ask questions to other adults in the neighborhood, when the children were not around, to see if I could figure out who this ghostly figure was when he was alive.

After many conversations with these adults, I concluded that the ghostly figure was that of the man who had owned the house. See, we were only renting the house. The woman who rented the house to me didnt say anything about her deceased husband dying there in the house. I guess I just thought that he died in a hospital, as he died from a bout with cancer, if my sources are correct.

Well, one evening we had some friends over, and we were all talking about ghosts and telling ghost stories, when my son began to describe the same male ghostly figure he had observed in our hallway. I was astounded to hear him say that he had seen this ghostly figure of a man on several occasions.

This man’s ghost continued to appear to us on occasion until we moved from that house in early December 1991, after I married my present husband.

We were never really scared or alarmed to see the ghost. He never caused us any problems or seemed to be seen anywhere else except on the floor furnace. I was told that he used to warm himself on the floor furnace when he was sick and very much alive. We just seemed to accept him being there, and he seemed to accept the fact that we were there in his house. We seemed to live in harmony together as long as we lived there in his house. We truly thank him for not harming anyone in our family.

90. “The Ghost of Representative Donald Farley”

Boyd County

A ghost story is attached to the house in Ashland in which State Representative Donald B. Farley died on March 23,1993. He bought the house in the spring of 1973 as part of an estate. We saw the house as we were looking at houses with a realtor. After our appointment with the realtor was finished, we drove back over to this house to take a closer look at this recently abandoned house.

We lined up in order of height to peer through the window there in the front door. Of course, I was the first in line, being that I have always been the least in height. We began to peer through the front door, when suddenly it popped open and I was standing in the front room. As a group, we began to go through the house looking from room to room. Very cautiously, we began opening doors to the rooms and closets. Spider webs hung in glorious array, and we expected to see a huge spider descend upon us at any moment.

We kept looking around and really liked what we saw. It took several months to track down the heirs and get them to agree to sell the house. After we purchased the place, the remodeling proceeded as quickly as possible. We added a second bath, hung drywall, painted, and scraped several layers of wallpaper off a hallway downstairs. We then installed new kitchen cabinets, had the ceilings repaired; then came the new linoleum and carpet.

We moved into our renovated house on Fathers Day in 1973. Mr. Farley lived there from June 1973 until his death in 1993. He had collected different types of what I will choose to call junk. He thought if he didnt pay much for something, it was indeed a bargain, no matter what the item was. Therefore his house was filled with many items from many yard sales, estate sales, auctions, and the like. Nothing he bought seemed to go with anything else in the house.

There was a several-year period that I found it very uncomfortable, if not impossible, to sleep in that house. I had a feeling that something was in the house that didn’t feel comfortable being there. What was it? Was it something from an auction or a yard sale? Perhaps we will never find out what I was feeling at that time.

When I finally received the keys to this house, almost everything had been removed. There seemed to be a real peaceful, calm feeling in the house—something that had not been there for a number of years. I began to feel much better knowing that what had caused my uneasiness had now been removed from the house, and hopefully destroyed.

We moved our furniture into the house that very evening. Then, we spent many long weekends there, either working or checking on the progress of the contractors. On many occasions, we would be sitting in the very room in which Mr. Farley died, watching television or a video, when we would hear what sounded like footsteps. We would just look at each other and say something about the noise, then continue to watch our show. We also continued to hear other sounds, such as doors opening and closing, or perhaps a creaking board, as though someone was tiptoeing around the house.

We, as a family unit, have never seen the actual ghost. However, many weird things have taken place that all of us have witnessed. For example, we had a security system installed. It would be on when we left the house, but it was turned off when we got home. Or once I purchased a singing Christmas tree for entertainment purposes. We would turn it on when someone came into the house so that they could see it, and we could see their reactions when it began to sing. However, on more than one occasion, when everyone was in the dining room enjoying a home-cooked meal, the Christmas tree began singing of its own accord. Who was there in the living room by the Christmas tree? No one! Absolutely no one. Too, the tree was sitting in a position approximately at a 90-degree angle from the dining room, making it impossible for any motion in the dining room to be affecting the tree.

To add to all this, a family moved in across the street from our house. We quickly became friends with them, and our children became real pals. They took turns spending nights with each other, as youngsters tend to do. Yet the little girl from across the street would wake up in our house extremely terrified.

On at least one occasion, she called her parents and left our house in the middle of the night, setting off our security system. This caused other neighbors and the police to come to our house. We couldn’t figure out what was scaring her, but she kept saying that it was a ghost scaring her. She says that he comes toward her with his mouth open, as if he is screaming real loud for someone to come and help him.

What makes this scene so very interesting is that she had no knowledge of what Mr. Farley looked like. But on a particular weekend, I asked her if she would look at a picture, which had several men in it, and tell me whether or not the ghost that she had seen was in that picture.

She looked at the photograph, turned totally white, and her eyes bugged out of her head. All of a sudden, she began screaming, “It’s him, it’s him. There is the ghost.”

She had indeed pointed Mr. Farley out in the picture. I quickly took the picture away from her sight, as it was causing her to be in distress. I tried to tell her that, to my knowledge, he wouldn’t hurt her. But that did little to calm her down.

As I said before, we have heard many disturbing noises that indicate that there is something in the house. And this young girl has not only seen the ghostly image, she has shown us who he is in a picture. We have no reason to dispute her or to think what she has seen is none other than the ghostly figure of the late Don Farley.

91. “Mell Ridge Ghosts”

Green County

When I was a kid, there was a hainted house on Mell Ridge close to where I lived. Lots of people saw this white thing there, but I never did. They said my daddy shot it at close range with his 12-gauge shotgun, but it just ran off unhurt.

One afternoon, I was walking behind some kids just as we got near the house, and we heard something screaming, “Woo-oooo-oooo.” My cousin in front of me began screaming, “It’s the white thang!”

I was seventeen years old at the time. I got my rifle and went back there. All I found was a jagged piece of white paper hanging in the house. That was all I saw, but it didn’t explain the weird noise that we heard.

On another occasion, my grandma who lived there on Mell Ridge in Green County told me about the time when she and her brother, Sammy, was at home by themselves when they were young. There was this pecking sound there on the floor. Sammy picked up a stick and pecked back. The sound got louder and louder, and Sammy kept pecking louder and louder.

All of a sudden a plank on the floor came loose and the head of an old gray-haired man came up out of the floor. The kids got scared and ran off. When the mama and daddy came back to the house, they checked the floor but didn’t find a loose plank. Well, that still scared the kids to death, and it scared me too when she told me about it when I was a little boy.

92. “A Haunted House near Princeton”

Caldwell County

There is a haunted house a few miles from Princeton, which has all the accessories pertaining to the most approved ghost story. There are only the stately ruins of a palatial home, the stone walls crumbling, the garden overrun with weeds, the vines growing in tangled masses.

There are the corpses of two children lying upstairs. There is a strange disappearance of the owners, who took with them a corpse and never returned. And as a fitting climax, there are those who solemnly aver that there is a ghostly form flitting through these untenanted rooms.

The house was built by one John Harpending, but where he or any of his kin is, is a mystery. He went away twenty years ago, he and his wife, leaving the house as though expecting to return in an hour.

Mr. Harpending went to California. He invested in diamonds and sold them to miners for big prices. The miners wanted to cut a dash with their sudden wealth. His was a surer way to wealth than prospecting for gold. He made a big pile, and when he had enough he went back East, disposed of his gems, and decided to settle in Kentucky.

He bought the magnificent farm which still bears his name and on it he built a house which cost him $100,000.

Well, John Harpending and his wife lived happily and dispensed hospitality in the Old Kentucky way. Children came to them, three in all. Two of them sickened and died.

The Harpendings had peculiar beliefs. Neighborhood gossip was aroused when they refused to let the bodies be buried in the usual way. The little corpses were embalmed and laid to rest in two heavy plateglass cases, expensively decorated. These were placed on oak supports and left in an upstairs room. The bodies were clothed in white—there to await the resurrection morning.

After this episode, the house was avoided by neighbors. There was something uncanny about it, and the Harpending hospitality went begging.

For years the family lived alone.

The remaining child, a daughter, grew to womanhood. She, too, sickened and died. After her death, her father and mother went away in a carriage. They took the body of the dead girl with them. Why they did this, when they went, whether alive or dead, is among the mysteries of the past.

After a time, when none of the family returned, a few of the venturesome neighbors investigated. They found the house just as it had been tenanted. All the rich furniture, the carpets, the costly lace curtains, were untouched. It was as though the occupants might have left it for an hour s absence.

In the sick girls room was the couch she had died on. The print of her head remained on the pillow. The sheet which had shrouded her body after death lay just as it had been laid aside when the body was removed.

In the next room lay the bodies of the two children just as they had lain since death.

It is now a score of years since the Harpendings went away.

In time the old house began to decay. Each year the havoc grew. Wildflowers mingled with the choice plants of the Harpending’s beautiful garden…

It was spoken of in whispers, and after nightfall the superstitious would rather cross a graveyard than pass near [the place].

Then came stories that the house was haunted. Men who passed there at night told of seeing the ghostly form of a young woman at the window of the room where the eldest daughter died.

There were unbelievers. Men of nerve who laughed at the old wives’ tales made up a party and stood watch. The form was seen at the window when the curtains were partially drawn.

It may have been a human figure, but the watchers decided it was the vague, shadowy form of a woman which did not look to be flesh and blood. Its face was ghastly pale. Some said a queer light flickered about it. None was brave enough to enter.

And so the people thereabouts firmly believe that the spirit of some member of the Harpending family comes from the spirit land to revisit the old homestead.

The last time I saw the Harpending place, it was a grove of trees and a few meaningless ruins.

The pattern of the vast place was obvious, though, in the ruins of a water system, carriage house and the mansion itself, which had fallen into its own basement.

I was there on a bright summer day; the sky was cloudless. Then in a moment the skies grew dark and the wind came up. The big trees around the hole where the mansion stood bent and trembled in the wind.

Thunder rumbled over the swaying treetops.

93. “Weird Door Openings”

Rockcastle County

The old Nunnely house, located in the Wabd community here in Rockcastle County, had a kitchen that was built onto the back of the house. My great-uncle Fred was a young boy at the time, but he remembers that the kitchen door leading to the outside of the house would not stay closed while the family was eating. It would just unexplainably burst open.

At other times, when no one had been in the kitchen recently, they would go in and find the door open. Even when great uncle Freds grandpa nailed the door shut with what he called “buttons”—wooden pieces nailed to the wall that slid over the edge of the door—the door would still fly open.

None of the family members ever claimed to have seen or heard a ghost in this house, but they always wondered just what it might be that was causing the door to open.