Family Ghosts

1. “A Dead Mother’s Return”

Jefferson County

My aunt Ann worked at St. Mary’s Hospital for some thirty-three years. During her last year there, my great-uncle Burl had to be hospitalized, and he nearly died before the doctors were able to determine what was ailing him.

One night after Ann s shift was finished, she popped by his room to say good night, and at the end of his bed stood a frail little, Indian woman dressed in a black dress. She had the snowiest white head of hair that you ever saw. My aunt said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I believe visiting hours are over.”

The little woman just looked up at my aunt and smiled warmly. She then walked around behind the draw curtain that hung around the bed and vanished. My aunt was totally convinced that she had personally been working for too many hours and needed a rest.

The next day before her shift began, she went back to the room to say good morning. My uncle was feeling so much better that the doctor had said that he could go home in probably a day or so. They still had not discovered the reason for his sickness at that point, nor his rapid recovery from a terribly high fever. He told my aunt, said, “I had the nicest dream last night. Mama came by to see me and told me that I would get well now, and she told me that she loved me.”

Aunt Ann just stood there for a second, then asked, “What did Grandma Long look like? She died while I was very young. I don’t remember her all that well.”

He responded to her, “She was a tiny little woman, part Indian, with the whitest head of hair that you ever saw.”

Uncle Burl quickly recovered from his sickness and was allowed to go home.

2. “The Spirit of a Deceased Aunt”

Simpson County

My aunt Lisa Weissinger died a year ago. Things got weird when that happened. One night about three weeks after her death, when I was going to bed I began to cry. Oh, I missed her so very much. I then began praying that I would see her again. Almost immediately, I sensed a cool wind with a sweet fragrance. I went on to bed about ten o’clock, sensing a presence there in the room with me. I opened my eyes as a white figure was approaching me. I then saw the kind and gentle face of my aunt smiling at me.

Then, the next thing I knew, my aunt was standing there looking down at me. She bent down over me, and I began to shiver with fear, but I didnt chicken out. I just closed my eyes. The next thing I remember is a gentle kiss on my right cheek. I opened my eyes in time to see her walking out of my room on her way to my brother Travis’ room. I went back to sleep hearing a sweet humming sound downstairs in the living room, as the rocking chair rocked.

I was no longer afraid, for I knew that it was the spirit of my aunt. She loved us as much as we loved her.

3. “Mom”

Caldwell County

Three years ago I experienced the most terrifying dream that I will hopefully ever have. I woke up with a taste of salty tears in my mouth, and with sweat running down my face and neck. I was walking through a field of flowers, flowers of all varieties. I bent down to pick a yellow rose, which was my mom’s favorite flower. As I did so, I heard this creaking sound. I turned to look, and would you believe it, I saw this casket over in the middle of the field of flowers. I walked over and opened the top, and there lay Mom inside of it. She looked as if she were in a very peaceful sleep.

I picked a yellow rose and tried to awaken her. When I touched Mom, she was as cold as ice. I began screaming for her to wake up, but she would not open her eyes. Then, the casket lid started closing of its own accord. I was terrified at the thought that I would never see Mom again. Upon awakening, I went to check on Mom and found her in a deep, peaceful sleep.

I never told anyone about my dream. I was afraid that I was somehow the cause of my mom’s death. This dream occurred only once, but two years later we found out that Mom was terminally ill from a brain tumor. One year ago, Mom died.

I have seen Mom several times during the past year. I cant decide whether I have been seeing her due to being upset emotionally or whether I have truly been seeing her. The first time I saw her like this, I was walking along outside the house and saw her image standing under her favorite tree. She had on a white, flowing dress that moved with the leaves on the dogwood tree. Her hair was pulled back at the top, but it was loose and flowing around her face. She made no attempt to approach me, but did hold out her hand to me. I was frightened, thus made no move toward her. She then spoke to me, “Liz, I love you.” Upon hearing those words, all my fears vanished. I started toward her, but she vanished right there before my eyes.

At another time, one night I was alone in my house when I heard a noise behind me. I turned in the direction where the noise came from, and there stood Mom. She looked beautiful, just the way she always did. This time, I was not frightened. She was just standing there near the corner of the room, beside the fireplace. She was moving, almost gliding, very gracefully, but her feet were on the floor. She held out her hand toward me and said, “Liz, I love you; everything is all right.”

I jumped to my feet to go to her, but again she was gone.

Another time, I was alone when I heard Mom laugh. I felt a very strong presence there in the room with me. The hair on the back of my neck and the hair on my arms stood straight up or out. I felt very warm and secure. I was not in the least afraid, but rather delighted to feel this close to Mom again. A cool breeze blew through the room, but no door or window was open. I knew that Mom had been there, but I also knew that now she was gone.

I feel as if Mom is still very much with me. A lot of times when I feel especially warm and loved, I know that Mom is there with me.

4. “Grandfather’s Ghost”

Simpson County

It was December 11, 1990, when my grandfather died. We Spent the night there at his house the night he died. Later on, my sister and I spent the night there with Grandmother. My sister was asleep in my aunts room, and I was sleeping in the room where my grandfather had died. I went to bed about 8:30 P.M.

I was fast asleep when I heard my name being called out, “Amy-y-y, Am-m-y-y, Aa-mm-yy.” Then the voice said, “Wake up, Amy; wake up.”

I woke up and I saw him. It was my grandfather, dressed in the suit that he died in. I began crying and thinking, “It cant be me; this cant be happening to me.”

I sat up in bed, and he came over to me. I was so very afraid and frightened. I tried to scream but could not talk at all. He said to me, “I love you.” Then he gave me a hug and a kiss and told me to tell the family that he loved them very much, then left the room.

After he left, I could talk again. The next morning I told my family what had happened, and they did not believe me at all, all but my grandmother, that is. She said to me, “I believe you. He came to my room last night before he came to yours.”

5. “Poor Susan”

Hopkins County

When my mother was a child, she lived on a farm in White Plains. When she was about five or six years old, her aunt Susan was about forty. Susan knew that she didn’t have long to live because she had a brain tumor. She told the family that she wanted to die at home, so they let her stay at home; hired a private nurse to come take care of her. My mothers two other aunts, Betty and Joyce, also took turns staying up and taking care of Susan.

One night when it was the nurse’s turn to watch Susan, Betty and Joyce were awakened by loud noises. They both walked to Susan’s room and found the nurse and Susan’s husband, Ken, giving her a shot to help her sleep. The next morning, Susan was dead. The family was almost certain that Ken and the nurse had purposely killed Susan, because they got married a few weeks later.

My mother would overhear the family talking about the situation, and she said that she hated Ken and she hoped that Aunt Susan would come back to haunt him.

At that time, my Mom was only six, and Susan was the first person she had known that died. But Susan had always said that she wanted Ken to remarry, and she didn’t want anyone to talk bad about him for doing so.

Like I said earlier, Mom lived in a farmhouse. Her and her sister’s room was next to the dining room, which allowed a lot of cold air to come through the windows. In order to keep the kids’ room warm, there was a doorway between my mom’s room and the dining room.

The night after Susan’s death, my mom awoke, and an inner voice told her to look toward the door. When she did, the door was opening, and there stood Susan wearing the dress that she was buried in. She walked toward my mom, holding a knife in the air. As she walked, she said to my mom, “I told you not to say bad things about dear Ken.”

Mom cried out to the world with all her might, then pulled the covers over her head and cried herself to sleep. No one in the house heard her scream, including her two sisters there in the room with her.

When Mom awoke the next morning, Grandma asked the girls which one of them had left the door open. They all said that none of them had gotten up during the night to open the door.

To this day, Mom swears this is a true story.

6. “Grandmother’s Return”

Location unknown

This really happened to me some thirty-four years ago, and it remains in my memory almost as fresh as the night it appeared.

I was very close to my grandmother. She raised me from infancy, and I remained with her until I married and moved out. She was a truly saintly person, never a mean word or negative thought.

After my husband and I bought our first house, my grandmother stayed with us a great deal of the time, moving between our home and hers. Early in 1963, after spending some time with us, Grandma went back home to spend a few days. She was eighty-three years of age at the time, and as far as anyone knew she was feeling well and had no health problems. That very night, she passed away in her sleep. I was just devastated and missed her something awful.

For several weeks after her passing, every night I had recurring dreams during which my grandma was always in trouble and I was struggling to help her but never could. I did not wake up during those dreams, but in the mornings I would be exhausted, and the dreams always remained with me throughout the day. Truthfully, I was near the end of my rope with sorrow and could barely go to bed at night because I knew what was coming.

One night, something woke me out of a deep sleep. I don’t know what it was, but it couldn’t have been Jim because he did not rouse up during the night. I had been lying on my side, and as I turned to raise up, I saw my grandmother standing in the doorway looking at me. It was as if she were standing in front of a bright light that made a halo around her. She did not appear to have legs or feet, and she did not speak a word to me.

She was wearing nightclothes, flannel pajamas with a small pink flower design, and her blue hair net which she usually wore to bed. I could not see that she had glasses on. I was simply awestruck. I trembled; my heart was pounding. I intended to get up out of bed, so I turned away to put my feet on the floor. When I turned back, Grandma was no longer there.

After that night, I never saw her again. But I simply know that she came back to take care of me, as she always had across the years.

7. “Bloodstains on a Burial Dress”

Barren County

There was this couple that lived together in Barren County for approximately seven years, beginning in 1946. The wife/mother died, but the man remarried a few years later.

This man and his first wife had a daughter whom the mother loved very much and treated her very nice. Never did do anything that would hurt the little girl. But the man’s second wife treated the little girl something awful; would do everything mean and bad to the girl. One day the stepmother was cooking supper, when the child came in and asked the stepmother if she could have a slice of potato to eat.

The woman slapped the little girl across the mouth with the back of her hand. Blood drooled out of her mouth as the child began crying. The stepmother then went into the living room to finish her housecleaning chores. The child was still crying, but suddenly she was no longer crying.

The stepmother wondered why she wasn’t crying, so she looked into the kitchen, and there the little girl was sitting in the lap of another woman. This woman was hugging the little girl, consoling and comforting her. The woman, who was also wiping the blood from the little girl’s bloody mouth, had on a white dress. When the woman in white noticed that the stepmother was there, she disappeared.

The second wife told her husband what had happened, and the husband then told her that his first wife had told him that if anything bad ever happened to their little daughter, she would come back from the grave.

Well, the husband and his second wife went to the graveyard where the first wife was buried. They opened up the coffin of the little girl’s mother and found fresh blood on the white dress that she had been buried in. It was the blood that was wiped from the little girl’s mouth.

After that, the stepmother never again did anything wrong to the child again.

8. “Return of Great-Grandmother”

Jefferson County

Once when I was sleeping in my room, it suddenly became very cold, like a blanket of snow had fallen on the room. Then I felt as if something were coming down the hallway, and I saw a misty form standing in the doorway. I knew, for some unexplainable reason, that it was my great-grandmother. She seemed to communicate without talking, but I couldn’t quite understand why she was there.

Suddenly, the form started toward the middle of the room, then stopped and backed up. Then it disappeared through the open door.

Right after this all happened, my sister woke up and asked me why it was so cold in the room.

A few years later, I told my grandmother about what had happened, and she told me that her mother, the misty figure that I had seen, had said on her deathbed that she would come back to visit with family members if there were any way possible. I’m sure that what I had seen was the spirit of my great-grandmother, but I never knew why she had come back, especially as a cold-bearing entity.

9. “The Living Mother and Son Who Saw Each Other’s Ghost”

Johnson County

This happened to my son just before he went into the military service. He had a 1950 Ford, and it didn’t run too well. I was always worried about him when he was out in his car.

One night he had gone to see his future wife there in East Point. Well, since I’d always tell him what hour he was to be home, before he left to go see her, he said, “Now, Mom, tonight can I stay out a little later?”

I told him, “Yes.

I’d always stay up and wait for him, but I’d have the lights in my room turned out. He never knew that I was up waiting for him. When I’d hear that old Ford pull into the driveway, I’d sneak up to bed and he wouldn’t know that I was waiting for him.

So this night I lay down. It was in October and kind of cold. We had gas heaters at that time, so I lit one up. And like all gas heaters, it reflected light out into the room.

I laid down on the couch but soon fell asleep. He waked me up as he passed by, then went on upstairs. Well, the rocking chair was rocking by itself, just moving to and fro. Someone had just gotten up out of it. I just thought that my son had sat down and looked at me in the glow of this gas flame, and knowing that I’d been waiting up for him, I thought that he’d bawl me out in the morning. He wouldn’t like for his mama to be herding him so.

Well, I thought to myself, I’ll just go up and take my medicine. So I went up and looked in his room, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. I went back downstairs and sat there and thought and thought. I walked over to the window, standing there looking up the road, but I was still trying to figure out what I had just seen that made me think that it was my son.

I saw the car coming, then hurriedly got in bed, not intending to let him know that I had been up waiting for him. I heard him come inside the house, then try to walk up the stairway real quiet. He went to bed.

I couldn’t go to sleep because I had this other thing on my mind of what I had seen earlier that night. I just sat there thinking about everything. In about thirty minutes he let out the awfullest yell you ever heard. He yelled, “Mother, what are you doing in my room?”

I went to his room then and said, “What’s the matter son?”

He said, “Mother, you were standing right here over me, just moaning so pitiful like. You scared me to death.”

I said to him, “Well, honey, I wasn’t even in here.”

He said, “Yes, you were, Mother.”

So the same thing happened to us both. I came to him and he came to me. That’s strange. I don’t understand it.

10. “Ghosts of Mother and Father”

Wayne County

The first school I ever taught was the Tuttle School, located in Morgan Hollow. I boarded in a house not too far from the school. I had to pass by the Carrender Cemetery going to and from school. Miss Neethy Tuttle, who lived near this old graveyard, claimed that it was haunted, as was this big, nearby cave where she and her friends all got their water for the house. Her friends also claimed that there were ghosts around there.

Well, I always stayed a little later in the afternoon to clean the school building before I went to my boarding house. Miss Tuttle always told me that something would happen to me because I would get back to the house a little late. She told me many times that, at twilight, she could go out to the graveyard and see her mother and father’s ghosts sitting there on their tombstones, combing their hair. I never did see them, but other people told me the same thing. Just as soon as I started teaching there, they told me all those old stories about ghosts. I reckon they wanted me to believe.

The cemetery was right at the back of the old Bohon Store, an old store that was now deserted. One afternoon when I started home from school, I never heard such wailing and mourning sounds in all my life. The sounds were coming from the old store building. I went in and I heard something upstairs. I went on up the steps, and it was two teenage boys. One of them was a small half-Indian boy, and the other was one of the neighborhood’s rough-tough boys. When I got to the top of the steps, it scared them to death that I hadn’t run, and they wondered why I hadn’t run.

I was laughing when I saw them. I never did hear of the Bohon store being haunted anymore.

At another time, I had to come around by the cave. After I left the cemetery, I came around by the cave before I got to the branch road that went up the hollow. The cave entrance is about half way up the cliff; it’s a big thing. At the foot of this cave is a big spring. This is the head of Little Sinking Creek. Well, Miss Tuttle said that many an afternoon she saw a man and a woman in white robes and long gray hair there at the cave. She’d seen them come out of the cave and go down to the spring to get some water in pitchers. They would then carry the water on their shoulders and go back inside that cave. But, now, I never did see them.

She always thought that they were her mother and father. Their house was located there near the cave. Many men, men who came into that area before the turn of the century to work as loggers, boarded there in that old house. But sooner or later, they all left. They claimed that it was so badly haunted that they couldn’t stay there. And they didn’t!

Miss Neethy Tuttle always begged me to stay there, spend the night in the house with her. This is one thing that I never did do, but I wish now that I had. I wasn’t afraid of what I’d see or what I’d hear, but I just knew that if I stayed, some of the teenage boys around there would try to scare me because I hadn’t demonstrated any fear up to that point.

Now that its too late to spend a night there, I sure wish that I had done so.

11. “The Young Woman in the Window”

Logan County

Back around 1890, a young lady in Russellville, who lived in the sextons house with her parents there by the old cemetery, was all dressed up in an evening gown, ready to go to a fancy ball. This good-looking guy had a date with her, and he was to come by and pick her up in a horse-drawn surrey.

For whatever reason, the girl had been confined to her room by her parents during the afternoon. While she was waiting for the fellow to come pick her up, a terrible storm blew in, bringing lightning, thunder, wind, and heavy rain. The young woman became despondent, then angry, knowing that the fellow would not be able to come by to take her to the ball. Not long afterwards, she walked to the window and looked out at the terrible rainstorm. Then, she clinched her fists and began shouting angry curses at God.

Her words were no more than uttered when a streak of lightning flashed and struck her dead on the spot. She tumbled against the window pane, then fell to the floor. For then and ever after, her image was imprinted on the glass in the window.

Wondering how their daughter was doing, her parents went up to the room in which they had placed her and found her body lying there on the floor. When they went running over to her, they saw the image of their daughter imprinted there in the window.

The image stayed right there even after they had scrubbed it with soap and water several times. Finally, they decided to paint over it so that they would no longer be able to see their daughter there in the window. But when they got through painting over the image and the paint had dried, the image was right there again. Painting over it didn’t hide it.

Two or three days later, the parents painted over the image again, but that still didn’t remove the image. After they had done this for the third time, and the image was still present, they decided to replace the window panes, but that still didn’t take away the image of their daughter. Eventually, they placed wooden boards over the window, boards that were left there for decades.

According to a 1973 article in the Green River Sprite, “The strange image in the window of the cupola of the home puzzled, amused, and frightened generations of Logan countians and their visitors, finally turning the home into a tourist attraction where persons came, parked, and stared at it.” The Sprite article goes on to quote Margaret Barnes Stratton, who described seeing the mysterious image, as follows: “I was one of those who parked, and stared, and distinctly saw the shadow. It was a plain, life-size shape of a woman, arms straight down, the lower part of the body ending at the window sill.”

The sexton’s house in Russellville is home to one of the most famous ghosts in the entire United States. (Photo by the author)

12. “Grandmother’s Ghost”

McCreary County

About a week after my grandmother died, we started seeing things happen at her house. Late at night, about ten o’clock, we would hear my grandmother s wheelchair rattling toward the back door. Then, we noticed the curtains would pull open, as if to see if we were home. And every morning her living room curtains were pulled open. Later on, my cousin cut down some of Grandmas flowers. Mom said she see Grandma standing looking where her flowers had been cut down.

These things really happened.

13. “The Swimming Ghost That Foretold Danger”

Hart County

My dad told me a story about a friend of his, Arnold Jones. This fellow, Jones, lived with his gramma and grampa. When he was about eleven or twelve years old, his grampa took sick and died. He had very close to his grampa, but like most kids who lose a grandparent, he was still able to function.

The kids in the area used to go swimming in the Green River all the time. But one day, Arnold Jones decided to go swimming alone. He was in the river, and he said that it suddenly came up a horrible storm with thunder, rain, and lightning. At that point, he saw his grampa swimming down the river on his back. His grandfather warned him to get out of the water because it was very dangerous to stay in it during the storm.

Soon after he got out of the water, lightning struck the river at the very spot where he had been swimming. He knew that he would have been killed if his grampa hadn’t come back to warn him of impending death.

14. “Julie’s Promise”

Russell County

I was barely five years old when I had my first ghostly experience. At that age I was too young to know that it was a ghost I had seen on a bright spring morning.

It happened when I lived with my parents on a farm just outside of Russell Springs, where the towns hospital stands today. We had just moved back from Cincinnati, where my dad had been working, and I was glad to be home. I hadn’t wanted to move to Cincinnati back in the fall because it meant leaving my favorite cousin, Julie, who played with me almost every day.

“Don’t worry,” Julie told me. “We’ll see each other again soon. I promise.”

During the months when I was away with my family, Julie was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Back then, the disease was usually fatal. As she struggled against the inevitable, Julie asked to join the local church. Since baptisms were held outside in the creek, Julie’s mom and dad decided it might kill her to be exposed to the wet and cold. Thus, her baptism was postponed until spring, but by spring Julie had died.

At the time of Julie’s death, I had the whooping cough, so Mom and Dad didn’t take me to the funeral. They told me that Julie was dead, but they didn’t discuss the details of the funeral. When we moved back to the farm, all I knew was that Julie was gone forever and I missed her.

So on a bright spring morning while Dad was working on the farm and Mom was ironing, I was in the front yard alone, lying on the ground. As I looked at the blue sky, three little fluffy white clouds came drifting across it. Suddenly, one changed its shape. It looked like a long, flat box to my childish eyes, though later I realized it was in the shape of a coffin. The top half of the lid lifted and a woman sat up. I saw at once that it was Julie.

She leaned over and looked down, smiling and waving at me. Her blue eyes looked happy, and her naturally curly red hair blew gently around her radiant face. She didn’t speak aloud, yet I heard her in my mind.

“Come play with me,” I called.

She shook her head a bit sadly and explained that she didn’t have time. She had something important to do, but she was happy to see me again—like she promised.

All the time she was communicating with me, she was holding a gold locket in her fingers. Then one last wave, Julie lay back down, the lid closed, and the long box changed back to the little white cloud. I watched, feeling both happy and sad, as the three little clouds floated on out of sight. Then I raced into the house and told Mom what I had seen.

“Julie’s dead,” Mom reminded me. “You couldn’t have seen her. Don’t upset your Aunt Zola by telling her about this when you see her.”

I felt like I had to tell Aunt Zola, so when I saw her I told her all that I had seen. She listened intently as I described Julie’s burial clothes and the locket she was wearing. My aunt smiled when I was finished.

“I feel better now,” she told me. “I know that Julie exists somewhere and is happy.”

Years later when I was old enough to understand, Aunt Zola told me how much my ghostly experience had meant to her. She had been depressed and grieving over Julie’s death because a local preacher had told her that nobody could go to heaven without being baptized.

“This got me so worried that I nearly lost my mind,” she said. “But when you told me what you saw, my burden lifted. I knew she was with the angels.”

In our community in those days, the dead were kept at home until time for the funeral. Just before they took Julie away, my aunt placed Julie’s favorite locket around her neck and tucked it inside her dress out of sight. Nobody but my aunt knew that it was buried with Julie, until Julie came to see me one last time like she promised. To me, that says that I really saw the ghost of little Julie.

15. “Grandmother Nevils’ Ghost”

McCreary County

When I was about twelve years old, my family and I were getting ready to move from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, to Texas. Mom and Dad brought me to McCreary County to stay with Grandmother Nevils while they helped the movers pack up.

Being there was great. She would get up early and fix me the biggest and best breakfast you could ever imagine. Then, I would fix her lunch and supper. Once a day, we would clean the house and wash dishes after every meal.

Well, two weeks later, Mom and Dad come back. We stayed another week there with my grandma, then headed toward Texas. Mom Nevils wanted me to stay with her, but Mommy said I had to go. Mom Nevils became upset with Mommy and told her that she would never see Mom Nevils alive again.

We were in Texas about four to six months, if that long. The family called us and said that Mom Nevils had passed on. The funeral was held just one day before my mother s birthday. Our friends from Ft. Campbell came to the funeral with us. That night at the opening, about five people, including myself, heard Mom Nevils yell out Mommy’s name. We all heard it at the same time.

Two or three years later, we moved back to McCreary County into our old house that we let Mom Nevils stay in while we were away. For a while, everything seemed a little strange like it always did when we moved to another place.

We moved here in November ‘86. Around December, I started seeing Mom Nevils. She’d go to that bedroom and look out at the field where horses and cattle were sometimes kept. After she looked out the window, she would walk over to my bedside and stand there a while just staring at me, with her hands together. She would look at me sadly….

I was terrified at first when I saw her spirit standing beside my bed. For many months this went on. Then one day I decided to speak to her. I told her how much I missed her and how I loved her more than anybody. Her smile showed me her happiness. I felt like all that time that she was coming back to check on me and to let me know that she was no longer in misery.

16. “The Gold Tooth”

Russell County

This true story from my mother’s side of the family inspired my fictional story “Ghostland,” published in The Walking Trees. In other words, its the story behind the story.

During his lifetime, my great-grandfather Christopher Columbus Gentry had two wives named Elizabeth. Both went by the name Lizzie, but neither seemed to be the type to be a main character in a ghost story.

When my great-grandfather was married to First Lizzie (my great-grandmother), he was not very generous with his money. When First Lizzie had trouble with her front teeth, Great-grandfather Christopher did not feel it was necessary to spend the money required to have the tooth fixed. Women didn’t work outside the home then, and they didn’t have money of their own. Perhaps that’s why First Lizzie didn’t stand up to him and eventually lost her tooth.

First Lizzie didn’t smile much because of the missing tooth, and she usually held her hand over her mouth after that when she talked.

During an outbreak of flu, Great-grandmother Lizzie became ill and died. It would seem that the need for a gold tooth she’d always wanted would have died with her, but that was not the case.

A while after Great-grandmother’s death, Christopher married the second Lizzie. Before long, she, too, developed tooth trouble and complained to Great-grandfather.

Maybe he felt guilty about the way he neglected First Lizzie, or maybe he had more money to spend during his second marriage. In any case, Second Lizzie got a gold tooth.

The gold tooth was a source of great pride to Second Lizzie. She smiled often to show it off at first. Then she suddenly stopped smiling. She kept her mouth closed and her lips set in a prim, straight line.

“What’s the matter with you?” Great-grandfather wanted to know.

She didn’t tell him at first, but things finally got so bad she finally had to.

“Every night,” she said, “a shadowy form comes down the stairs to my bed, floats over me, and starts plucking at my gold tooth. It’s about to drive me crazy!”

Great-grandfather was about convinced she was crazy until he watched her carefully and saw it, too. It frightened him enough to cause him to build a new house for Second Lizzie.

After Great-grandfather and Second Lizzie moved to the new house, they never saw the shadowy form again. Maybe First Lizzie forgave them and went on to rest, or maybe she didn’t follow them because she was still too embarrassed to be seen outside her old home without her missing tooth.

17. “A Dead Grandson’s Return”

Taylor County

When my brother Paul died, my grandmother was very concerned and uneasy over the loss of her grandson. One night while she was lying there in bed, she spoke to him. “Paul,” she said, “if you can hear me, give me some kind of sign that you are all right.”

Well, when Paul was living, he always walked a certain way. He kind of dragged one foot, and he always wore cowboy boots. After she had spoken to Paul, asking him to give her a sign, she and her husband heard Paul walk up to their front door. When they heard his steps, the house shook and they heard him walk away. Grandma just knew that it was Paul who had walked up to the door so, after that, she handled Paul s death much better.

18. “The Ghost That Visited the Scene of His Wife’s Death”

Jefferson County

Patti McConnell moved into an upstairs apartment on the Bardstown Road there in Louisville, with her eight-year-old daughter. The day they moved in, Patti instantly felt as if there were a presence living there in the apartment with her. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened, yet Patti said that she could always feel something or somebody there with her.

One night, Patti had been out, and when she arrived at her apartment the front door was wide open, yet she knew that she had locked it when she left earlier that evening. She walked on into the apartment, and she immediately noticed that there was no longer a presence there. Whoever it was had left.

Two weeks later, Patti decided to move back to Bowling Green. Her daughter and most of their belongings were already in Bowling Green, so Patti was all alone. Later on that same night, Patti woke up and saw a misty-like figure standing at the end of her bed. It appeared to be an old man all dressed in white, and he looked at Patti and said, “I’m coming back,” then just disappeared.

Patti immediately gathered up the rest of her things that night and drove to Bowling Green. She never returned to that apartment.

Patti also told me that she learned that an elderly woman had previously lived in the Louisville apartment, and that she had died in Patti s bedroom. Likely, that apparition she saw was that of the elderly woman’s husband.

19. “Was It Really Marcie?”

Union County

Right before my mothers best friend, Marcie, died, Marcie told people in her family that she wanted to go see my mother on the forthcoming Saturday. Unfortunately for Marcie, she didn’t hold out that long. She had suffered from some sort of illness that changed her whole personality in later years. Up until that point in time, Marcie had been a pretty happy-go-lucky sort of individual. She always had a gruff tone in her voice, but she never meant anything by that tone of voice at all until the sickness got hold of her.

She and my father had grown up together. For some stupid reason, a year or two before she died the two of them got into an argument and refused to speak to each other after that. My father was so angry with Marcie that he forbade my mother to ever speak to her again.

Sometimes when my mother is in the house all alone, she hears Marcie call out her name. She never has seen her, however. The only thing that Marcie does is to call out my mother’s name. Mother believes it is Marcie because she has something she wants to tell her.

“A Dead Mother’s Return”

Caldwell County

Mom died when I was just fifteen years old. Well, once when I was alone in my house here in Princeton, I felt something smoothing my hair down just like my mother always did when she’d rub it with her hands. I turned around, and there Mom was, her spirit, standing there right in front of me.

She said to me, “Liz, I love you.”

I was so glad to see her again, but I almost fell out of my chair when I saw her and she spoke to me.

When I looked back up toward her, she was gone.

21. “A Dead Father’s Return”

Grayson County

I woke up from a bad dream about two weeks after my father’s death. In the corner of the room sat the recliner that my father had used in the nursing home where he died. I looked over at the chair and saw my father sitting in it. He had on his pajamas.

It was really cold in the room, and I felt a sudden chill. He then looked at me and said, “Gail, everything is going to be okay.” Then, suddenly he was gone.

I felt like he had come back to tell me that it was okay that I wasn’t with him during his last day here on earth. See, I was supposed to be there with him, because I was usually with him for a little while every day there in the nursing home. My conscience felt at rest. Then I just fell back asleep. Everything was all right now.

22. “Grandmother’s Return”

Larue County

These friends of mine, the Potters, told me that they had a wonderful grandmother, who had been dead for ten years. I never met her, but they told me a lot about her, such as the very long hair that she had. She used these long hair pins to keep her hair up and in place.

It had been ten years since the grandmother had been in the house. Well, Mrs. Potter had a dream about her one night. The grandmother was sitting at Mrs. Potter’s bedside telling her that she was all right, that everything would be okay.

The next morning they found one of the grandmother s big, old hair pins right outside the bedroom door in the hallway. They truly believed that that was a sure sign that the grandmother had come back to see them.

23. “Assurance of Love from a Grandmother’s Ghost”

Ohio County

Donna Ford, my senior year psychology teacher over in Ohio County, told me that she and her sister shared a room that had two closets. One closet was theirs; one was that of their grandma, who lived with them.

When Donna was seventeen and her sister was nineteen, their granny died. The night after the funeral, they were in bed, and Donna woke up and saw their grandma walk across the room to her closet and proceeded to get her blue sweater, the one she always wore.

Donna woke her sister up and they both saw their grandmother leaving. As she left, the grandmother looked at them and said, “I love you both and would never hurt you.”

Donna thought that she had dreamed all this, but after talking with her sister the next morning, she realized that it had indeed happened. And, believe it or not, when they went to their grandmothers closet, her blue sweater was gone.

Their mother told them not to be scared because of what they saw. She told them that their granny did love them very much and that she would never hurt them.

24. “A Dead Uncle’s Return”

Cumberland County

During this summer just past, I really got depressed over the death of my uncle, who died a year ago last November. I was truly so depressed that I didn’t want to socialize with anybody. All I wanted to do was sit in my upstairs room, alone.

One day, my parents were downstairs watching television, and I was there in my room thinking. Suddenly, I felt that someone was there in the room with me. I turned around to look, but saw no one. But suddenly, I heard my dead uncle say, “Alica, don’t worry about me. I’m happy where I am.”

And at that very moment, my mother yelled out, “Alica, come on down for lunch.”

I ran on downstairs to eat, and my uncle never spoke to me again. But I truly feel that he came back and spoke to me, just to make me feel better, to help me accept the fact that he was gone.

25. “A Dead Mother’s Ghost Returns”

Russell County

When my mother was fifteen years old, she lost her mother by death. The night after her mother died, my mother told me that as she lay in her bed, she looked up and saw her mama standing there beside the bed.

My mother called out to her mother, but she didn’t answer. She just stood there for a few seconds and then walked out of the room.

Mama never saw her mother’s ghost again after that one time, and nothing unusual has happened since then.

26. “Ghost Whispers”

Warren County

One night I was lying awake in my dorm room, and my sister was asleep there in my room. I heard someone whisper my name. I just laid there, scared; afraid to look to see who it was. I felt as though someone were getting ready to strangle me or something. I was scared, truly scared. Then it whispered my name again.

That time, I jumped up and turned around real fast but no one was there that could be seen. I distinctly felt someone standing there in the room, looking down on me. I have never been able to figure out whose ghost that might have been, but something was there. I was not asleep and did not dream it.

27. “One Stormy Night”

Pike County

It was on a dark, stormy night, and there was a knock on the door of this country doctor’s house. He was very sleepy, but he came downstairs and answered the call. It was a small girl who was very scared. She said that she had to come and find a doctor because her mother was very ill and might die.

The little girl had on a wool coat and a furry hat and mittens. She also had on little black boots. It was storming very bad, and the doctor was amazed at how brave she was. He said that he would be right down. He ran up and got dressed, then grabbed his medical bag. Off they went into the night.

They walked and stumbled through the storm and finally they came to a little cottage. They went inside, and the doctor went into the bedroom. The woman was almost dead from pneumonia. He bathed her in alcohol to get her fever down, and he gave her some medicine. He stayed with her for a long time until finally she began to get some better. The crisis was almost over.

He was wondering where the little girl had gone, so he remarked to her mother, “That little girl of yours sure is brave. Not many little girls would come out in such a storm as this.”

Then he noticed that the woman acted very strangely. She said to him, “Doctor, I have no little girl. She died three months ago from pneumonia.”

The doctor couldn’t believe his ears. He said, “But she came after me in a wool coat and boots, with a furry hat and mittens! She led me here.”

The lady looked very sad, and she said, “When she died three months ago, we put her things in the closet.”

[He looked in the closet.] Sure enough, there were the very clothes the little girl had on. Suddenly, though, as he looked closer, he could see that the clothes were very misty and wet from the storm.

28. “Uncle Lish’s Buried Treasure”

Henry County

When Mrs. Sanders was about twelve years old, her Uncle Lish Williams died. He had been living with his niece Mrs. Ollie Teague, Mrs. Sanders, and her family. Some two weeks after Uncle Lish died, the family was preparing to move. Great-grandmother was in an upstairs room finishing a carpet she had been weaving so the loom could be moved. Uncle Lish’s sister, a Mrs. Johnson, was in another room. Mrs. Sanders, who was then Cleo Teague, was taking up a piece of linoleum that was tacked in front of the hall door. It was just outside the living room door where Uncle Lish died, and on the other side of the hallway was the parlor where he had been “laid out.”

My grandmother looked up, and there floating through the air toward her was Uncle Lish. His snow-white hair was combed just the way the undertaker had combed it, but only the upper part of his body was visible. She was so frightened that she ran up the steps to the weaving room. Her white and frightened little face told her mother that something was wrong.

Grandmother[, who was then just a little girl,] couldn’t speak at all. When she recovered enough to tell her mother and aunt what she had seen, Aunt Johnson was very perplexed. “He wanted to tell you something, child.”

You see, Uncle Lish was believed to have buried his money, and the story goes that those who do this will return, and if you ask them they will tell you [where it is]. My grandmother says that she had no thought of Uncle Lish that day, and so far as she could remember she did not know of the dead returning for their buried treasure.

My grandmother swears this is the truth, and says if she were meeting God right today, she could tell Him so, truthfully.

29. “Gnatt Hudson and a Spirit”

Knott County

My brother Gnatt was always a rowdy boy. He always carried a pistol, which he called his “Sweetheart.” He was always looking for fights or anything that would cause trouble. He was better known as Bad Gnatt Hudson. One reason for this was because every time you saw him, he had this little pistol by his side.

Gnatt also had a horse named Maggie. She would do anything that he asked her to do. He had her so well trained that he never had to get off her to open the gate. When he was drunk, he would say, “Come on Maggie, I’m drunk and too drunk to open the gate. You know how to get me on the other side.”

Maggie would take one leap, and over she would go. Seems as you could hear her say, “Stick on partner, here we go.”

We always knew when we saw them coming if Gnatt was drunk or not by the way the mare would act. She would come to the gate and just sail over it, and never wait for it to be opened.

In 1920, I had an older sister, Emmezell, who way lying on her deathbed. To her, there was not any of us who was as dear as Gnatt. While lying there dying, Emmezell called Gnatt to her bedside and asked him to give up his rowdy ways and to be a good boy; quit his drinking, and lay down his Sweetheart.

He saw that she was going fast, so he said, “Sis, I promise, I promise.”

Not long after her talk with Gnatt, she died. He laid down his pistol and quit drinking for about two months, then he started drinking again, and picked his Sweetheart back up. The first day, he started hunting for trouble, he got drunk and started back home riding Maggie. He had his gun and a box of shells along. When he got about three miles from home, he heard someone singing.

At first, he thought the singing was far off, but it began to get closer and closer. At last, it sounded as if it was under Maggie’s belly. He began to sing to himself to try to drown out the voice, but it didn’t work. The louder he sang, the louder it sang. Then he listened to the words of the song, and he said, “Sis, oh Sis, this is you, for I have heard you sing this song so many times.”

She was singing “The Drunkard’s Hell.”

The horse even acted like it heard her singing, and tried to get Gnatt to get off. Gnatt gave Maggie the spur and the faster she got, the louder the voice sounded. So Gnatt took out his pistol and shot all his shells trying to drown out the singing, but the voice got louder and louder.

When he got to the house, he was saying, “Mom, Mom, Emmezell is out there right now under Maggie’s feet.”

Mom said, “Son, what on earth are you talking about?”

Then he told her what happened to him. However, that didn’t stop him until about four years ago.

Gnatt still talks about Sister’s ghost behind him. This really happened to my brother, Gnatt Hudson. I was only six years old at the time, but I remember it quite well.

30. “The Touch of My Mother”

McCreary County

One night I was resting on my bed. It was January 14, 1991, the day that my mom passed away, but one year later. I felt real bad. Something touched my arm two times. I jumped up, but I saw nothing. So, I laid back down. Then, whatever it was touched my feet. Then, I thought, well, maybe it’s Mom.

At that point, I started feeling so much better.

31. “The Ghost of a Wife Seeking Vengeance”

Cumberland County

Now, this is a ghost story. It was told many years ago. They said that this mans wife told him that if she died before he did, that she would come back and haunt him. So she died before he did.

Well, he said that every night when he fell asleep, something with icy, cold hands would hit him. Well, he got tired of this, and was scared as well, so one night he took his pocket knife to bed with him. That night, when this thing, whatever it was, took hold of his hand, he struck it with his knife.

They always told that the next morning he found a finger that he had cut off, there in bed with him. The finger that he found had his wife’s gold ring on it. He’d cut it off with his knife. After that, the ghost never did come back again to bother him.

32. “A Visit from My Uncle”

Jessamine County

When my cousin visits us, she always asks my mom to tell us a ghost story that happened to her when she was about fourteen years old. This is how Mom tells it:

“It was late one chilly December night in 1974, here in Nicholasville. My sister was awake studying in what used to be my grandmother’s room before she had a stroke and went to the nursing home. I was asleep in my own room, which was next to my grandmother’s room. I was awakened by this noise that was coming from her room—a noise that sounded like paper crumpling. At the same time that I woke up, my sister came into my room to see what I was doing. She’d heard the same noise and thought it was coming from my room.

“We listened closely to see if we could tell what the crumbling noise was. It sounded like it was coming from in between the walls. As the noise continued, I asked my sister to come to my room and spend the night. That noise just would not go away. We both lay there awake in my bed, silently listening, unable to move or discuss what was happening. I mean we were scared but whatever we heard did not seem evil-intended.

“During the night we also heard other noises, like furniture moving across the floor, glass dishes being taken from the cabinet and placed on the table and counter top, and finally, footsteps walking down the hallway.

“We got out of bed the next morning but were still unable to discuss or determine what we had heard. Mom was already up and straightening up the living room. So we asked her if she had heard anything that night, but she wouldn’t say anything. I felt like she knew something that she wasn’t telling us.

“The Christmas tree was still in the living room, and most of the presents that we had opened were still under the tree. However, I did notice that some of the presents had been moved across the room. As I looked around I also noticed that some pictures on top of the TV were turned over, face down. …

“When New Year’s day came, we all had plans for the night. As for me, I was going to a party and spending the night with a friend. My sister was baby-sitting, and Mom went to our neighbors. The next day when I got home, Mom told me that we would be spending the night with our neighbors.

“She did tell me that when she got home the night before that the furniture in the living room had been moved around. We were all somewhat scared, so our neighbor came over to our house to stay with us the next night.

“That was a quiet night. The cold, damp feeling was gone, and everything seemed back to normal again.

“After that, it was years before we could talk about that December night. My sister and I finally got the nerve to ask our mom what she knew about the things that happened back then. She told us that she also heard the crumbling noises and furniture scraping across the floor, and glass dishes being moved around. She said that she thought it was an intruder in our house, so she came out of her room with a shoe in her hand ready to defend us. She walked down the hall and turned into the living room. There by the front door was a mist that sunk immediately to the floor. But just as she saw this mist, she thought she heard the name “Josie” in a low whisper. That made her think that it was her uncle, who had passed away when she was a young child. She also said that there were dishes on the counter and table, and the furniture was moved around from where it was.

“Looking back at that strange time, we finally understand what had happened. Grandmother s older brother, who also had been in a nursing home because of a stroke and had died there, had come to visit us to let us know how much my grandmother still needed us. And it may be that he was also putting things back the way he thought Grandmother had them when she left the house to go to the nursing home.

Whatever the reason, he gave us strength we needed to visit her and to make her final living years here on earth as happy as we could.

33. “A Mother’s Ghost at a Window”

Graves County

My mother was born in 1913 in Graves County, Kentucky. She told me this story of what happened when she was a child. She often passed by this haunted house that was located along the Kentucky-Tennessee border. She would visit her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Lora Smith. Often she would ride with Uncle Charlie in his horse-drawn buggy when he would go into town. They would pass by this house, and he told her the following story about that house.

This married couple that once lived there did not have children for a long time. After several years of marriage, they became the proud parents of a new baby. They just doted on this child. Well, when the child was about six months old, the mother and the father and the little one were all found dead. Nobody knew then, nor do they know now, at whose hand they all died.

The mother and father had evidently been murdered first, and the child had died of starvation because nobody had found their bodies for some time.

There was this portico, or the same thing as a carport as we call it today. It was like a little roof or shed supported by columns, built onto the side of this huge, old, white two-story house that had gingerbread trim. There, in this portico, sat a surrey—a fancy horse-drawn buggy—for many years.

My mother, when she was a little girl, traveled with Uncle Charlie in what would have been considered a buckboard, not a fancy means of conveyance like a surrey. He told her that people passing along the road by this old house often heard a baby crying, and the sounds seemed to be coming from the surrey. When people would go up to the surrey and pat it with their hands, the baby would stop crying. Then, as they walked away the baby would begin to cry again. But Mother never did do that herself. Her uncle could never get her to go up into the yard.

The house itself was also haunted on the inside, as Uncle Charlie, my mother, and others who passed along by the old house often thought they glimpsed the baby’s mother looking out of an upstairs window trying to see where her baby was. Oh, that must have been a very sad mother longing to comfort her crying baby.

The deaths of the three family members occurred long before my mother’s time, but she did hear the baby crying several times when she would travel along the road there in front of that old house. It always gave her the creeps. That old house was still there when I was a little girl. I never heard or saw anything when I went by there, but I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if I did! When I was a little girl just about everybody in that community talked about the ghosts of that family, and some still do.

34. “A Great-grandmother’s Return”

Jefferson County

Its been told by my mother and grandmother that my great-grandmother, when she was dying, stated that she would come back to visit her children and grandchildren. As for me, I didn’t know anything about what she had said.

We have three floors in the house in which we live. Well, one night I was in the basement. From the basement you can look up toward the kitchen and the library. These rooms are close together. That night, apparently my great-grandmother came back to see her children, for when I looked up toward the library I could see this misty figure floating along the top of the steps. I didn’t see any feet, but I could tell that it was a black lady with silver hair and a long, white gown. As I said, I didn’t see any feet; she was just levitating there. As I was lying on the couch when I saw that, I thought maybe that I was just dreaming. Sol closed my eyes in hopes that she would go away. But she didn’t; she just stayed there in this floating-like position.

I closed my eyes again and opened them, but she was still there. I closed my eyes a third time, but she was still there. I didn’t know what to do. I think I was half asleep and half stupid because I got up and went to the stairway to get a closer look. When I got almost to the stairway, she disappeared. But I was close enough to see that it was indeed a black woman with silver hair. However, she was not real, but floating.

Later, when I told my mother about it, she told me that she, too, has had several experiences like this one. She truly believed that it was my great-grandmother who just comes back to see how the family is doing.

35. “Was It the Ghost of Mom?”

Jefferson County

My mother died a year ago, and at that time I was living in an apartment with some friends. My dad and sisters wanted me to move back in the house, so about a week after Mom was buried I moved back home. It was really eerie, for without her there it was creepy, creepy. At first I said, “I am not going to let this get to me.” But it did. Every little noise in the house made me jump. I was walking around, all paranoid.

My friend, Charity, moved in with me…. My dad thought I might like having a friend live with me, since Mom was gone. I used to tell her about these noises and how I was paranoid all the time. She believed me, too. I guess she could see how much it bothered me.

Anyway, here comes the scary part. One night, me and Charity were sleeping. We were sharing my double bed. We kept hearing noises and feeling like someone was in the room with us. I thought Charity was asleep, but she sat up and said, “Laura, I think someone is in here.”

I said, “Me, too.”

Well, we turned on the light and sat there for a while. Then we looked around and everything was okay, so we turned the light off and went back to bed. Just as I began dozing off, I felt a chill at the foot of the bed. Then my feet started getting really cold because the whole foot of my bed was getting colder and colder.

Charity began to cry, and whispered, “Laura, there is something cold on my feet.”

I screamed out, “Me, too!”

So we jumped out of bed and threw on some shoes. That was like three o’clock in the morning, but we left that room, went and got in the car and drove over to Charity’s house and slept there. I think we stayed there for about a week, then moved into an apartment.

I know that house my family lives in is haunted, but I don’t know if it’s Mom or not.

36. “A Telephone Call from a Dead Father”

Pulaski County

My dad died on April 4, 1984, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Needless to say, I was in complete shock and had a hard time dealing with it. So for a week after his death, I stayed with a friend of mine, Laura. Her parents were out of town on spring break.

One night, Laura and I were watching movies until late. The phone rang, and something in my mind told me that I needed to answer the phone. For some odd reason I chose to answer it upstairs instead of downstairs where we were. I ran up the steps and picked up the phone. The voice on the other end sounded very distant, but it was a voice that gave me cold chills. It was Dad’s voice! He had a distinct, coarse voice, so I knew it was he. I could feel my heart pounding because I was so excited.

He basically just said, “Hello,” and made small talk, but it soothed me just to hear it. I woke up from my state of shock when I heard myself scream, “Wait!”

After that incident took place, I felt a peace I hadn’t felt since his death.

37. “Granny Hayden and the Ghost Star”

Lyon County

When Mom loaded my brother and sister and me into the car, and went to the store and bought lemon drops, I knew that we were going to see Granny Hayden. She was an old woman who always wore dresses she made herself with a bibbed apron pinned on the front. She had a fondness for lemon drops, which she never bought for herself. She always found something in the house to give the children—a flowerpot, or a penny, or a bar of soap shaped like a shoe. She played the piano and the harmonica and guitar—sometimes two at the same time! She knew more songs than I knew numbers, and she laughed and hugged us and we loved her.

Her name was Emma Kuhn Hayden, and she was my great-grandmother. She was known for her hands …; they could make almost anything—quilts, paper stars, a crocheted tablecloth with the Lords Prayer worked into it—which all her children would fight for when she died.

She was known for her independence. Her husband had been dead for a while when I knew her, but she lived by herself on their farm … and kept animals and would one day drop dead in the chicken house with no fuss at all. She was known for her lack of selfishness … and for her perfect grace in never seeing herself as anyone beyond ordinary. And the thing I would like most to ask her about if I had known her beyond early childhood is another thing altogether. She saw her sister leave this world, and told this story as if it were not the least bit out of the everyday rhythm of her life.

Granny Hayden’s ancestral people, the Kuhns, were an unusual family to appear in the Land between the Rivers. Her father, Emil Maximillian Kuhn, was born in Baden in 1841 and was a scholar at Heidelberg University. For a reason somehow involving religious vows he did not care to take, he fled Germany and came to the United States at the time of the Civil War. He and his wife, Frieda Beichoff Kuhn, became professors at the University of Cincinnati…. They came Between the Rivers when he took a position as an agent of the DeGraffenrieds in 1884….

The place where the Kuhns lived was made up of hills and hollows, and it was a long way from Germany. It was a long way from anywhere, as we would see it today…. For a mother, the greater hardships were physical and natural. People, especially children, got sick. Many of the people Between the Rivers during those years were too far from a doctor to even consider him or her a necessity. A doctor might be brought in, literally, for a birth or a very grave injury or illness, but even then the physical and financial difficulties of reaching one in time must be weighed against the patient s potential to be healed by God, time, and home remedies. Families had their own, sometimes peculiar, ways of treating sickness. Many remedies contained ingredients we would consider harmful today, such as kerosene and turpentine. My own grandmother treated almost every minor affliction with one or two colors of Watkins salve, pink or green, until she couldn’t buy it anymore…. A lot of people still get sick, and everybody still dies. There were children [back then] who became ill one day and died the same night, before the necessity for getting the doctor was much more than obvious. That s what happened to Elsa.

Elsa woke one morning with a fever—no one knew how much fever, because there was no thermometer—and was told to stay in bed It was a bitterly cold day, which would have been weighed into the balance of whether or not to go for the doctor. The doctor, in this case, was more than miles away. He was miles through the woods and over the ridge, and down to the ferry, which might not be running on such a cold day. He was up from the ferry landing in the little town of Kattawa…. There was no one to ride for him except Emma, the oldest sister….

Emma made the decision to go for the doctor herself. She dressed up warm—socks inside and outside of her boots—and she saddled the horse herself. Emma rode as fast as she dared to, on the horse she trusted, on the road she knew. There was only a little light on the ridges, and almost none in the hollows…. Emma was praying that she could make it to the doctor on time. She did not have a watch, and the time she was thinking of had nothing to do with hands on a dial, anyway….

Emma knew from countless trips before that she could look back from that point and see the light, far away, in the upstairs window of her house, the window of the bedroom that she shared with Elsa. Tonight, in the middle of the haste and the worry, she stopped and turned the horse and looked back through the darkness for that light. As she spotted it, she felt a great sense of calm and peace that grew more steady as the light, contracted itself from window size to a small radiating globe that danced inside the house like a lantern in the hand of a merry child, and then not like that at all as it gathered itself and concentrated all of its energy and flew out the window and into heaven like a backwards shooting star.

Emma calmly headed back toward the house, walking the horse now across the frozen trail and singing to herself. She cherished the calm vision that she would carry with her to her own grave. Other people might have ghost stories with rattling chains and howling winds. Other people might be riding in airplanes, and before she died, men would walk on the moon. All of these things, for her, would somehow connect with a knowledge of how close we can come to God, and still come home again. On a cold winter night Between the Rivers, she, Emma, watched her sister’s spirit leave this world as a ghostlike star.

38. “A Host of Unknown, Humorous Family Ghosts”

Henderson County

I was adopted and was raised in Louisville, later brought into Henderson County. Whenever I was on my grandfather’s farm, there was always creaking and rocking, strange things that happened. They always said it was ghosts from the cemetery. I was under three years old at the time.

Then, when I was three, my parents bought a house in Henderson on Main Street. There was a man there who was shot on the corner of the street. He passed away in the house we bought.

When I grew up, the house was always mainly dominated by young men talking and carrying on and moving things around the house, and pulling down the drapes that my Mom had put up. They would just do pranks and tricks and different things. My dad would always tell me to get off the phone and go to sleep. Well, I was never on the phone.

Well, things would get so far out of hand, such as my school books disappearing or flying across the room, or somebody sitting down on the bed, tickling my ears, and other things that would keep me from going to sleep. “All right,” I’d say, “You all just come on out and get me. Come on.”

Later on, I got married and moved into a couple of other houses, and these ghostlike things didn’t seem to follow me. But when I bought this older house that was built in 1865, they were always around. They’d run into me. Sometimes, if Fm upset about something, they’ll come in and calm me down a little bit.

They also have locked me out of the house. I’ve had this key from day one, and there’s nothing wrong with the key, but they think it’s funny. And sometimes I’ll walk into them, or you can see a little puff go down on the bed. You can just feel them. And sometimes you can put things up, and they’ll move them.

I have no idea who they are. But I do feel that they like me. They follow me. They are always with me. They were always with me on the farm, also there on Main Street where I grew up. Then I didn’t see them for a couple of years. But when I moved onto Clay Street, they wound up there on Clay Street.

And they’re the same. They don’t let anything hurt me, even though I’ve had washing machines to turn over on me. I’ve fallen off the roof, they caught me. Many other things like that have happened, and they take care of me. But they think it is hilarious when they move things on me, and it drives me crazy. You can hear them laughing.

Maybe they’re members of my family from way back then. I even see them occasionally. They’re young men—five of them.

39. “Noises in the Kitchen”

Barren County

My mother’s sister, who died of a breast cancer, was never able to let go of the spirit of her mother. She was only eight years old when her mother, well her mother and her father, were shot and killed, but she was never able to let go of her mother all those years. And I had never known of this until after her death and my uncle told me that she would never let go of her mother’s spirit.

He said that they could hear her mother—he used the words “her mother”—in the kitchen working and doing little jobs, just puttering and cluttering around. Said cabinet doors would shut and open, but there was no wind coming in through open windows or doors that would cause that to happen. He claimed that they would go in and turn on a light to see what was causing the noises, but there was never anything there. Said they heard these noises for years and years.

40. “The Annual Appearance of Grandma’s Ghost”

Simpson County

On Chestnut Street here in Franklin, March 8,1984, it was a really creepy day for my family and me. This was also my grandparents’ wedding anniversary day. Their names were Golde and Bill. Grandmother Golde died on March 9, 1983.

Well, I was sitting on my stool coloring, when all of a sudden I felt a tug on my shirt. I looked around but did not see anything that could have caused it. Then, all of a sudden, I felt another tug, and then something started pulling me backwards. When I looked around this time, it was a lady. She had short brown hair and blue eyes. Then she seemingly got scared and pushed me off the stool. When I yelled out, my mother asked me what was wrong. I told her my story. Then she told me what my grandma looked like. And it was amazing that she looked like the person I had seen.

Nowadays, I see my grandma every year on the eighth of March.

41. “Dead Grandfather’s Image in Photo”

Jefferson County

My grandfather died when I was about thirteen, about three days after Easter. You won’t believe this, but the next year after his death, we were spending Easter with my grandma because she didn’t want to be alone. It was the first time that all the grandkids had been together all at once in a long time, so my grandma wanted a picture of all of us standing on the outside of her house.

When we got the photo back, it had my grandfather standing inside the house looking out the window. She said that you could see him peeking out from behind the curtain. His image was faint, like you could see through him all the way into the kitchen and into the hallway behind.

I never saw the picture because my grandmother was so freaked out she got rid of it. But some other people saw it, and they said that it sure was creepy.

42. “Father’s Ghost in an Old Two-Story House”

Logan County

My grandfather—I called him Pa—said that when he grew up and married and had kids of his own, he and my grandma lived in an old two-story white house in the Schochoh area of southeastern Logan County. The house was surrounded by a big, huge yard and lots of trees, and it sat on several acres of land.

The hauntings started when their daughter Rita was only seven years old. She went into the backroom and came out screaming that she had seen my daddy whose name was John Green Pearson. In that same house, you could also hear the prettiest music playing when you were on the front porch. You could also hear chains going up and down the steps, and you could hear the doors slamming shut when there was no one in the house.

Pa and Ma moved out after a while. Said they couldn’t take anymore.

43. “Pranks of a Mother’s Ghost”

Shelby County

We were sitting in our house one day there in Shelby County, and our garage door opened by itself. It hadn’t worked for a long time, actually ever since my mom’s been dead. A lot of times, I’d notice lights on and doors open in the house, when you’d know these things shouldn’t be that way.

Well, we were sitting there one day and Dad came up and asked why the garage door was down. See, it hadn’t been working, and there was nobody else in the house.

I told him that there was no one else in the house. Well, he put the door up and told me that it was working again. So he went on, but in a little while he came back and told me that the garage door was down again, and wondered why I was pulling these pranks on him.

I wasn’t doing it, so I just figured it was Mom doing it, maybe pranking us. Since then, it’s been doing it a lot.

44. “Noises of a Family Ghost”

Hart County

Old Man McCreery had a place in Bonnieville near Bacon Creek. From the way Dad described the place, it was a double-pen cabin. There were lofts at each end of the house that you could get into only by climbing a ladder. The owners of this old house proclaimed that you could always hear sounds with no origins. Dad said that he remembers hearing some of these strange, eerie sounds. When he would be downstairs, he could hear someone dragging a logging chain across the upstairs loft.

One night, while they were all sitting outside visiting with my grandmother, the sound of someone throwing plates against the wall could he heard. When Granny asked them what in the world that noise was all about, the owners told her, said, “It’s just our ghosts.”

She went back into the kitchen to see what the noises were all about, but said nothing had been disturbed. No broken dishes or anything.

45. “A Ghost’s Return to Engage in Normal Pursuits”

Warren County

When I was a small girl, about nine years old, I went with my mother to visit a friend whose sister had passed away. I was not aware of the death at the time. I was playing outside with the friend’s small daughter, when I had to come in to use the bathroom. The bathroom was situated between two bedrooms, and it could only be reached by passing through one of the rooms. I entered through one side and for some reason decided to leave by the other bedroom. A lady was sitting on the bed in the bedroom, and she beckoned for me to come see what she was doing. I don’t remember exactly what it was other than it was some sort of hand work and that it was very pretty. I told her how pretty it was, and she smiled at me. I then left the room and came downstairs. My mother and her friend were sitting in the kitchen talking. I asked them who was the nice lady upstairs. They told me there was no one in the house but them. We went upstairs to investigate. The lady was gone, but there was still an impression on the bed of someone having sat there. I described the lady. Her description fit exactly the friend’s deceased sister. The room had been her bedroom. The mystery was never explained, but I can still remember the lady’s smile.

Incidentally, I never knew the deceased sister.

46. “Ghost in a Rocking Chair”

Simpson County

It was a hot summer night, and I was at my grandmother’s house on Cherry Street here in Franklin. Her name is Nadia Brindley. It was July 17, 1991, and time for me to go to bed to go to sleep. I had to sleep in the living room all by myself. I fell asleep about 10:30 that night. I woke up about 1:30 and looked in the corner beside the table and saw the red recliner moving. I was scared; felt weightless. I even had goose bumps! Then it stopped moving for about five seconds, but then moved again.

Believe it or not, I got under a blanket and fell asleep. The next morning I didn’t wake up until 10:30 A.M., and I was still scared. I thought to myself, this is the day that I have a ball game. But I couldn’t concentrate on the game because of the red recliner that kept coming back into my mind. “Grandma, why did I see the chair moving last night?” I asked her.

“It was your grandfather Brindley, and that was his favorite chair,” she told me.

47. “A Ghostly Image’s Foretelling of Death”

Hart County

What I’m about to tell happened back around 1930 when my papaw was just a boy about twelve or thirteen years old. Back then, the most popular form of entertainment where they lived was visiting with neighbors. On this one particular night, there was a fellow there who lived a few miles away. He left fairly late, and when he got home and lit his lamp, he saw a woman’s figure wrapped in a shroud floating across the bedroom.

It moved toward him, and when he saw its face, he realized that it was that of his sister-in-law. That man and this particular sister-in-law did not get along. Just as soon as he recognized who it was, the apparition disappeared. It scared this fellow literally witless, and he ran all the way back to Papaw’s house.

They were getting ready for bed, and the man nearly beat the door down trying to get into the house. They let him spend the night there, as he was too frightened to go home and sleep alone.

The next day, he received word that his sister-in-law had died.

48. “Return of Dead Husband”

Warren County

A woman whose husband had died a few months back was outside working on her home in Warren County. She lived in a rural area and had a few acres of farmland. While she was working, she noticed a blue glow coming from one of the fields, so she decided to get a closer look to see just what it was. She was astonished to see her husband standing in the middle of the field with an electrical blue aura surrounding him.

He looked exactly as he had always looked, and he spoke to her. He asked her how she was doing and then called for their dog that was by the woman’s side. When the dog walked over to the man, he got a shock and ran back to the house. The man and woman talked a while longer and then he disappeared. She hasn’t seen him since that happened.

49. “A Brother’s Return As a Ghost”

Oldham County

One night, probably in June, I had gone to bed. Well, my brother had died in a motorcycle accident a couple of months earlier. I kinda woke up, and I was sitting on my bed, and my sister was laying next to me in a different bed. So, I wasn’t sure whether I was sleeping or not. Its not like I saw my brother with certainty, it’s like I kinda saw him. It was my brother, and he was telling me everything—that he was okay, that he was in no pain, and that he loved everyone very much and that we should quit crying over him. He said that he was happy now. Well, he sort of sat there for a minute, and then he told me to tell his girlfriend that he loved her very much. And that was the end of it. I was just sitting there after that, but he was no longer there.

50. “A Husband’s Return in Human Form”

Lawrence County

I knew this lady that was part Indian. When her husband died, she was at a loss as how to run her farm and store business. One day while she was walking to her son’s house about a mile away, she met her husband in human form. He told her how to conduct the business. He also told her not to touch him, but she couldn’t resist so she reached out for him but he vanished.

This happened about sixty or so years ago at Georges Creek here in Lawrence County.

51. “The Ghost of a Murdered Woman”

Barren County

Beth left her apartment in Glasgow one morning with her two-year-old son. On her way to work she was to drop him off at her in-laws’ home, as was the arrangement of the court. His father was to pick him up there for his time with his son. Beth and the child’s father had been separated for a year, and the divorce was not final at this point.

Beth was running. She hurried into the living room and dropped off the diaper bag and the child’s toys into a chair, then rushed into the kitchen to put the milk into the refrigerator. She had gone only a few feet into the kitchen when her estranged husband walked up behind her and shot her in the back of the head. She died instantly. It is believed that Beth and the child were unaware that he was waiting for them.

The husband took the child to his brother’s house and left it there. He was later found in a wooded area. Apparently he had shot and killed himself when he realized what he had done.

Before her death, Beth lived in an apartment above her grandmother’s house. Beth’s mother left when Beth was a small child, thus Beth was reared by her aunt and grandmother. They were very proud of her. She had just completed her nursing program and had passed her boards. She had also received the highest awards for her efforts. Beth’s apartment had two entrances. One to the downstairs home of her grandmother, and one to the outside.

After the funeral, Beth’s grandmother kept the inside entrance door closed due to hot weather. And they had cleaned out her apartment, thus no longer needed to leave the door open.

Approximately one week after Beth’s murder, footsteps were heard in the upstairs apartment. They were heard so plainly that it was thought someone had broken in during the night. In checking the apartment, they found that the door to the outside entrance was still securely bolted from the inside. There was no sign of anyone.

The door to the inside entrance of the apartment then began to open slowly. The grandmother had been sleeping on a day bed at the foot of the steps. When Beth and her husband began to have trouble and Beth moved to the apartment, Beth’s grandmother feared for her. Sleeping closer to the door made her feel closer to Beth. She continued to sleep there after Beth’s death. Every night the grandmother could still see the door slowly open, but no one would be there. She began to leave the door open at night, but it would slam loudly.

One night as the grandmother was sleeping, she awoke when she heard the door open. She then saw a shimmering outline of a person walking slowly down the steps toward her. Terrified, the grandmother screamed. The figure turned slowly and went back up the stairs and into the apartment. Then the door shut.

The next day, the grandmother called a friend of the family, a person well known in solving murder mysteries. He visited with the family there at the house. He told them that Beth did not want them to be frightened, that she only wanted them to take her son out of the house of the in-laws and let him move in with her sister-in-law out of town. He went on to say that the house where Beth died was evil and the boy needed to leave. He also told them that Beth only wanted them to know how much she loved them.

At the time of writing this account, the footsteps and sightings have subsided; Beth appears to be satisfied.

52. “A Little Girl’s Vision of Her Grandmother’s Ghost”

Boyd County

When this happened I was five years old, the age when children don’t want to think about ghosts. One day, I was going from the house where my family lived over to my aunt’s house, which was just a little ways across the hill. My grandfather’s house was between our house and my aunt’s house. I was going through this field. I was just walking along and looked over and saw a woman on the porch of this log cabin. Of course, I thought it was strange. I looked at her and she was motioning for me to come over to her.

Well, for some reason I was afraid, but I kinda started to go over while she was still motioning. Then I kinda turned. When I looked back, she wasn’t there. She was gone. I went on to my aunt’s house, then come back home. I said to my mom, “Mom, there was a woman on the porch over there at Granddads cabin.”

She said, “Aw, surely not.”

I said, “Yes, she was standing there.” Then I went on to describe the woman I had seen.

Then she said to me, “Oh, 111 bet that was Aunt Martha.” That’s whose house I was going to.

I said, “No, Aunt Martha was home when I got there.”

Well, Mama just kinda shut up about it.

My grandmother Toothman died the day before I was born. A couple of years after I had seen what I thought was her standing on the porch, I was looking through some family photographs and saw my grandmother’s picture. The woman in that picture was the one I had seen standing on the porch. That was at the cabin she died in.

53. “Current Ghosts”

Casey County

My family currently has a couple of ghosts living in the house with us. My aunt heard one, and she absolutely will not stay upstairs in that room anymore. When I was twelve years old, I personally saw a little girl beside my bed several times when I would wake up. This was in Casey County. I finally got my own room, being the eldest of nine children. Occasionally, one of my brothers or sisters would get in the bed with me. One night I heard the door to the room open, and I heard footsteps walking over toward my bed. Then suddenly I felt the covers being lifted off me and felt the bed sink down beside me. Something or somebody had sat down on the bed. Thinking that it was one of the younger kids, I turned over real fast and pulled the covers back. Imagine my surprise when I looked and saw no one there. But the bed was still sunk in like someone was lying there. Well, that scared me into letting the spirit have my bed for the night. I mean I got away from there!

Later I found out that my great-aunt Effie died in her bed in that very room.

54. “The Death Shadow”

Hardin County

A dear friend of mine, who was just like a beloved family member, had been diagnosed with cancer. I had gotten to know her in later years through our church. I spent every possible moment at her bedside. Outside of sleeping and working, I was there all the time. I sing in a gospel group called the Masters Trio. She loved to hear us sing, and when we were alone I would sing for her. I kept telling her that when she got well, I was going to take her dancing.

A few months later, when the doctor called the family to her bedside for the end of her life, her husband, children, family, friends, and other loved ones gathered at her bedside. We were there for forty-eight hours nonstop.

The second night, I had a very important council meeting for which I left the hospital to attend. On the way I stopped at a local church to pray. I asked God to either heal her, as she had suffered enough, or to go ahead and take her so as to end her suffering. I cried for a long time, then straightened myself up and went on to the council meeting.

When I returned to the hospital, everyone was in need of a break, so they left for some food and fresh air. I was alone with her. Although she was unresponsive, I sat beside her and held her hand. I told her I loved her and was letting her go. I then laid over and cried for what seemed like hours….

As the P.M. turned into A.M., I was still holding her frail hand and lying over close to her. At this time, a special friend, Chester, along with a friend of his, came into the room. I had already cried until I was weak. Chester and his friend helped me into a chair at the foot of her bed. At that exact moment, the nursing staff told us that the monitors were fading out and that her life would soon be over. I was numb at that point.

Then I looked out into the hallway where I saw a dark shadow that soon took the form of a small-framed human being. It walked over to me and held out its hands as if to say, “I’m sorry.” Then it floated over to her bed and sat down beside her, laid gently down into her form and disappeared. My dear friend sat up, opened her eyes and looked at me. I said to her in the lowest whisper I’ve ever heard myself use, “It’s okay; go on home. I love you.” She laid back, closed her eyes, took two very labored breaths, then died.

Even now, a few years later, I feel a spiritual connection to her. And if you ever want to know what death looks like, I can tell you, for I have seen it.

55. “The Ghost of a Beauchamp”

Hancock County

Here’s a ghost story that s been handed down to me, and it relates to the Robert Costin Beauchamp house on U.S. 60, between Hawesville and Lewisport, here in Hancock County…. Now, I never heard this but Cudin [Cousin] Kate said she had. Cudin Kate Beauchamp Humphries was living there then. And she said occasionally a woman would come down the steps with a silk petticoat and high heels. And Cudin Kate loved to scare people and she scared Margit and all them [Margaret Beauchamp Crutcher and her sisters]; they wouldn’t go back after they’d hear this story.

So, I was sittin’ there one night. She said, “Well, I hear that woman comin’ down the steps.”

I said, “Well, open the door and let her in.” I said, “I’ve never seen a Beauchamp yet that wadn’t good company.” (Laughs.) Yeah, that’s what I said. And Cudin Kate laughed. But Aunt Pug, Kate Humphries’ mother, has told me that she’s heard her. At least two or three people have told me that they heard her. And she [the ghost] was supposed to be a Beauchamp—the ghost of a Beauchamp, and she had on a silk petticoat and high heels.

She never went up the steps. Always came down. How she got back, I don’t know. This house was built about 1842 and is still standing. It’s of double brick construction. You can blow a horn out front and you can’t hear it in the house. Thick walls.

Julia Mason and her brother Robb [who lived in the house after Kate Beauchamp Humphries’ death in the 1960s] were livin’ there. John Henderson, my husband, would pick up Robb anytime we were goin’ by there. And John was up there blowin’ the horn for Robb. I said, “John, you’ll blow for the rest of your life. You’re goin’ to have to knock on the door ‘cause he cain’t hear yah.”

Well, now the schoolchil’ren over there [across the highway from the Beauchamp house] had been makin’ up stories about it. And they said, “There’s a casket up there in the attic of the Beauchamp house.” And somebody said, “Well, Waitman Taylor, who owns the old house and rents it out, ought to go ahead and tell that story about the ghost since it’s so little [minor] compared to what the children are tellin’ [about the casket].” (Laughter.) But Waitman said that some people wouldn’t move there [if they knew the tales associated with the house. He doesn’t want the stories told for fear of not being able to rent the house to tenants.] …

Nobody has heard the woman come down the steps since Cudin Kate lived there, and she died in the 1960s. I don’t know how she got up the stairs. She just came down. If you’re a ghost, you don’t have to be logical (laughs), but I never heard her. …

56. “A Dead Mother’s Return to Her Child”

Floyd County

Mrs. M.E. Sturgill of Dewey, Kentucky, says that when she was a little girl about nine or ten, her oldest brother and his wife died, leaving a little daughter, Cynthia, about six. The grandmother took little Cynthia to raise. One night, Mrs. Sturgill, her sister Rosa, and little Cynthia were sleeping in the same bed when Mrs. Sturgill was awakened by a bright light.

Looking up, she beheld the little girl’s [dead] mother standing by the bedside. Her face shone with an unnatural brightness. The whole room was lighted bright as day. Even the garment of the dead mother shone brightly. The apparition was almost against Mrs. Sturgill (as she slept on that side of the bed). She covered her head with the covers, her heart beating like a hammer. When she ventured to peep out, the light had disappeared. The room was in darkness. Good spirits sometimes return.

57. “Confederate Soldier’s Ghost”

Trigg County

Mary Ross tells of an experience which happened in Trigg County back during the 1920s in the Land between the Rivers (now the Land between the Lakes Recreational Area). Mary and a little cousin were at their grandmother’s home playing with their dolls. They were sitting in the grass in the backyard near an old cistern. Suddenly, Mary glanced up to see a strange looking young man walking toward them from the direction of the old cistern. He stopped and watched the frightened little girls as they ran to the house calling for their grandmother.

Their grandmother quickly came out onto the back porch. The children turned and pointed toward the stranger, but there was no one there, and nowhere could he have concealed himself so quickly. They described the man and the strange-looking gray suit and cap he wore. Their grandmother told them that they had seen a ghost, and they were not the first to do so.

She went on to tell them the story about a young man, their distant relative, who lived on the property in the early 1860s. He left for the war, leaving his sweetheart’s promise to marry him when he returned. At the war s end, the young Confederate soldier returned home. Waiting for him was a letter from the girl he hoped to marry, saying she had married someone else. The soldier, despondent, committed suicide by drowning himself in the cistern. The grandmother said the little girls’ sighting was not unusual, that they should not be frightened. She went on to say that he had been seen about the family farm since 1865.

58. “Grandpa’s Ghost at the Window”

Bullitt County

One particular night, my sister Sharon was sleeping in the house that our grandfather Young was born and raised in here in Bullitt County. Grandpa Young had died not long before the night I’m talking about. Sharon was in the backroom there in the house. She woke up and saw looking in through the window at the foot of the bed a white, shadowy figure that was in the form of a person’s upper body.

She got up out of bed and went over to the window to get a closer look and saw that the figure was motioning for her to follow it. By the time all of that happened, she got really scared and ran out of the room. After she thought it over, she believes it was the ghost of Grandpa Young.

59. “Mother’s Frequent Returns”

Barren County

My mother was in another home with us, but she moved with us when we moved here. My wife, Dianna, and I can smell her. Dianna says that she smells “like a pretty woman.” She has on this old-timey powder perfume. That’s what she smells like, say back in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Both of us can tell when she’s in the room with us. The perfume-smell will float right by you, and then just disappear. We know she’s there. You don’t have to have any windows or anything open.

We have seen her several times. My wife’s grandson Matthew has seen her, and I saw her one night lying there in bed. Something happened, and I woke up. She was standing by the side of my bed, and she patted me on the shoulder and said, “Everything will be all right.” Then she was gone.

I have woke up in the middle of the night with my back and shoulders hurting, and she’ll come to me and massage my shoulders and back. She’s done this quite often. I’ve seen her many times, but she doesn’t linger.

The clothes she has on is usually a dress like the ones in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Back then, the ladies wore a double-like dress. The top part of it you could see through, but it was two-piece material. It was like a flower—a daisy. I could see her dress, and I’ve seen every bit of her except her feet.

60. “Grandfather’s Protective Spirit”

Butler County

I believe that my granddad passes by here occasionally. I have seen him once. He lived and died in Butler County. He died in 1974. I’m a firm believer in ghosts. I’m a firm believer that my mother looks out for me. I’ve seen her several times and talked to her.

And back to my granddad. He had been dead for eight or nine years when he saved my life. It was just as plain, just as clear, just as simple as you and I sitting here right now. What happened is, he turned my head around with a slap. I was driving a truck on Route 59 down in Georgia in 1983.1 fell asleep at the wheel. I could hear him hollering for me from away off, “Harold, wake up. Harold, wake up.” There wasn’t a third time; instead there was a slap. And when he slapped, I woke up and turned my head around. I was in the median of the road running about seventy miles an hour headed for the concrete abutment. I pulled the truck back onto the road, slowed down, and pulled over in the emergency lane, then turned my overhead light on and looked at my face. I had a handprint on my face. There was nobody in the truck but me.

I was born and raised in an old house in the Lee community over in Butler County. My granddad and I were very close. To me, he wasn’t Granddaddy; I called him Dad. I’ve had dreams about him. What I’m about to tell happened in 1981 or ‘82. Dianna and I lived on White’s Chapel Road here in Barren County. In my dreams, when I’d walk into this house, Dad would be in front of me. The way the old house was set up, we’d go into the living room, then turn and go into the kitchen. I would follow him through the living room, but when I’d step through the kitchen door, I’d wake up. That happened every time I dreamed about him. It happened over and over and over. Finally, one night after I dreamed and woke up, I said to me wife, “Honey, I’m going to the old cemetery at Christian Home Church in Butler County. I’ve got to go. Dad wants to tell me something.”

I got up and put my clothes on. It was as dark as it could be. I leave home and drive over to the cemetery. I was by myself. I get out of the car and walk up to Dads tombstone. I rubbed his tombstone and said to him, “Dad, what is it that you want to tell me? Whatever it is, tell me. For god’s sake, here I am.”

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him and feel him immediately beside me. He said, “Let’s go to the old house.”

I said, “Come on.” I turn around and get in my van, and he crawled in the seat beside me. I couldn’t see him, but could feel his presence there. And me and him talked on the way to the old house. I drove up to the old house, and it was as dark as a black cat. Nobody lived there and the old house was about to fall down. I pulled up and parked where I always did. I get out of the van, and Dad leads the way, no flashlight, no nothing. I followed him up the old walkway and into the door of the house. This was all identical to my dreams. When he walked into the kitchen, he turns around and faces me. At that time, I could see him just as clear as anything. He said, “If there is ever any doubt in your mind that you are unloved and unwanted, 111 meet you right here, and you’ll know that you’re loved and we’ll be watching.”

At that time, I was having a lot of doubts in my mind because of the way my real dad did me. But I won’t go into that. Anyway, my mama and my granddad are the ones that really look out for me. They’re both dead now, but I still see or hear from both of them from time to time.

61. “Grandpa’s Visit?”

Pendleton County

My grandfather always managed to “call the roll,” as we say, when he was mentioning family members. Even when what he said was questioned, he didn’t try to correct himself. Usually, even after naming several sons, daughters, grandsons, or granddaughters, he still might not have it right. So he would just leave us as named and continue with his naming process.

Grandpa died just two weeks before our second son was born. He was eighty-five years old and died a tragic death by accidentally setting himself on fire while lighting his beloved pipe. He just loved to smoke his pipe. Several nights after his funeral, I was asleep when I heard his familiar voice calling out my aunt’s name. Either I was at that stage of sleep where things that are dreamed seem very real, or I really experienced this. I still don’t know which way it was, but I do distinctly remember sitting up in bed to say, “I’m Carolyn.”

When I sat up, I saw his form, but when I called out my name, he left.

62. “A Final Goodbye?”

Pendleton County

My grandmother’s death was still very vivid for us, as it had been only a few months since we lost her. My mother had tried to make it to the hospital in time to see her one last time, but Grandmother could not hold out that long. I believe Mom was dealing with some regrets because of this, but I do not mean to say that Grandma and my mother were not close. I feel that Mom just felt she had left some things unsaid, as we all do when we lose someone fairly suddenly. Whether it was a longing for Grandma because of what I just mentioned, or whether it was something else, I just don’t know. I do know that my mother is not one to believe ghost stories, but she cannot explain what happened in any other way.

My parents used a wood stove in their house to supplement the heat that the furnace provided. This stove had an ash pan that my mother emptied at the edge of the garden that was located just a few feet from the side of their house. This is what she was doing on the evening that Fm describing, and it was just a short time after Grandmas death. There was no breeze blowing, and no lights were reflecting from the road that ran past the house. But at the moment my mother dumped the ashes, she saw a formless, shadowy-white something fly over her head. At that same moment, she distinctly felt the presence of her mother.

Mom has often tried to explain this incident about the ashes flying up above her in some way, but without a breeze blowing. Whatever it was, it just doesn’t explain Mom’s feeling of Grandmother being so near to her.

63. “A Husband’s Return”

Rowan County

A friend of mine told me that after she lost her husband to cancer, a few months later she was lying on the couch resting when all of a sudden she felt a presence and there was her husband lying there beside her. He wrapped his arms around her, and that caused her to feel more love at that time than she had ever felt. His presence just surrounded her with warmth and love.

Since that first happened, her late husband has appeared at the times when she was in a crisis of some kind, and this gave her courage to go on.

One of her other family members has also seen him.

64. “The Imprint of a Dead Girl’s Face”

Lewis County

My daddy was a C & O Railroad worker in Lewis County. He worked with a crew that kept the train tracks in a state of repair. One day while on their lunch break, he saw an old man sitting in a small cemetery crying beside a tiny grave. Daddy walked over to the old fellow to offer any comfort he might be able to give. Probably, this was a man who had lost his only child, or so he thought. He found out that the man did not know the little girl buried there, only the details of her death. Daddy came away with this story:

The little girl’s mother had died leaving behind the child and her husband. The father later remarried a woman who had not a bit of human feeling for the little girl. She began mistreating her from the very first day. Patty tried to please her stepmother, but there was no way. She was constantly slapped and shoved around. Eventually, the father also got in on the act. Together, they made poor five-year-old Patty’s life a living nightmare.

On the cold winter day that Patty died, she had been refused water for quite a while, maybe days. She had somehow slipped away from the parents and gone to the frozen creek to get water. They found her there trying to break the ice. The beating they gave her resulted in the little girl’s death. The story that was given to authorities is not clear, but they were not arrested or punished.

One day the stepmother noticed a strange looking spot on the porch pillar. With each passing day, the marking became more clear. In a few days, the picture of Patty’s face could be seen clearly on the pillar. The stepmother tried to scrub it away but it only became more apparent. The woman then brought a towel and tied it over the image. The next day she noticed another image or picture beginning to emerge from another post. In a few weeks, the house was covered with pictures of Patty. They saw her face everywhere. The harrowed parents could stand it no longer, so they went to the local law officers and confessed. They were given life in prison for the child’s murder. The man crying beside the grave was promising Patty that if the couple was ever released from jail, they would regret it. He would, he said, make their life so miserable that they would gladly kill themselves just to escape him.

Daddy said that he had no doubt that the man meant every word he said.

65. “A Dead Brother’s Peace”

Wolfe County

We’d been out somewhere and come home that afternoon, opened the door and didn’t shut it back because we could hear somebody in the shower. So I come back down to my dad’s to get his gun and went back home, and the shower was still running. So I went in there. The door was closed but the shower was running wide open. Nobody was in it. I shut it off and that was all of it.

My former wife always said that she heard doors and things opening and shutting in that house. And I’ve heard doors slam; yeah, I have.

The house is about twelve years old and is built right next to two graves and right beside the oldest cemetery in Wolfe County. Nobody knows who the two babies were, and a guy come to tell me that nobody knows who they are. The stones are not marked. I won’t bother them graves. I take care of them and keep them clean. But it just might be that the noises and sounds that we’ve heard are coming from those two little babies, or from someone else buried there. But I did dig down about ten feet to be sure that no graves would be disturbed by building the house there. So we didn’t disturb them as far as I know, but the noises may be something caused by people buried there. On the other hand, these noises just might have been the result of my brother’s death, and maybe him coming back.

I had a brother that was killed down here on the street in 1965. He was a school teacher. When they had a funeral service for him, the undertaker gave Mom his shoes and stuff to take home. She put them away. And them shoes had never been found or anything until one day I went over there. You could hear cracking and squeaking doors and everything in the world in that old house. You could be setting around and you’d hear something pop or crack.

One day I was over there at the old house. Some renters had just moved out of it, so I happened to find this box that had his shoes in it. His shoes and socks were in there just like the undertaker had put them in there. Well, I got them shoes, along with some more of his clothes that I found down there, and took them home.

My brother always talked about wanting to build a house where I built my house at, about twelve years ago. And I think he slept about where I took them shoes and stuff and stored them. I’ve got his things there in the house now, and I don’t ever hear that noise anymore.

66. “The Ghost of an Uncle at the Scene of His Death”

Letcher County

My uncle worked on a phalt [asphalt] truck in Isom over in Letcher County. And back in them times you had to stand on the back of the truck and shovel the fault. It was a real bad winter, and he went out to work on the road. They hit a real bad spot and he fell off the truck, and the truck slipped back against him and he was killed.

Today, if it’s raining, you can still see him with his shovel. I’ve seen him myself. His son goes to that same spot every year to see his dad.

67. “The Ghost of Girl Buried Alive”

Adair County

There was a family that lived in the Purdy community here in Adair County, consisting of a father, mother, and grown daughter. I believe my family was related to these people. The daughter became ill and was bedfast for many days. A doctor was sent for but was unable to come. After a few days, the daughter passed away in her sleep. The family sent to Campbellsville for a store-bought coffin and laid her to rest the same day.

Beginning the night of the funeral, the mother began having nightmares when her daughter would appear in ghostlike form and beg for someone to untie her. This went on for days and the mother was unable to get any rest. After some very troubling discussion, the mother finally persuaded her husband to dig up the girl’s body. He did, and upon opening the girl’s coffin it was discovered that their daughter had ripped the lining from her coffin and was tangled in the pieces. It was obvious she had been buried alive. Her fingers had been bleeding and most of her fingernails were broken or missing. She was untangled from the mess, and the lining repaired the best they could.

She was again laid to rest, as there was no question that she was now dead. The mother never had another visitation, or nightmare, about her daughter. The girl was at rest.