Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  9. “Eva Carrigan’s Ghostly House”

  Breckinridge County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  10. “The Gray Lady of Liberty Hall”

  Franklin County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  11. “Ghosts of White Hall State Shrine”

  Madison County

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

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

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

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

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

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

  12. “Ghost Mother among Us”

  Hardin County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  13. “Strange Happenings at Grandma’s House”

  Butler County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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