My attempt of defiance was indeed a big mistake, because as soon as I had uttered that question, the boxed dolls above me came crashing down upon my head. I was overcome with shock and surprise. I quickly ran outside to get my mother and grandmother. However, when we got back to my room, the music had stopped. There were only the heap of boxed dolls on the floor as proof of what had just occurred.
My uncle had a very strange experience that we still wonder about to this very day. One night after Granny had put him to bed, his wheelchair began rolling back and forth, colliding into his bed. The mere thought of this actually happening would have been dismissed as impossible because the floor in his room was sharply slanted downhill and Granny always put his wheelchair at the downward end of the floor. How could it have been possible for the wheelchair to go up and down the slanted floor unless someone had been pushing it? My uncle began hollering and my grandmother went to his room, but the wheelchair had stopped rolling and remained still for the rest of the night.
My mother, grandmother, and uncle have all heard mysterious footsteps pacing in the hall and a chorus of voices in the hall. Of course, when they open their bedroom doors, the hall is silent and no movement or sounds anywhere.
My grandmother’s sister, Aunt Helen, came down from Louisville to visit us for a week. She went to my grandmother’s room one afternoon for a short nap. She could not go to sleep, so she was just relaxing in bed, with her eyes shut. While she was lying there, an unusual voice called out to her, “Hey you!” At the exact moment those words were spoken, an unseen hand took a tight grip of her shoulder and gave it a good shake. Startled, she got out of bed and asked if anyone was there. She checked downstairs and upstairs. When she couldn’t find anything, she came on the porch and asked us if we had been in the room. None of us had, since we had been sitting on the porch for over an hour so she could take a nap. She looked bewildered, but she just went back into the house. She waited until the day she was to return home to tell us what had happened to her in my grandmother’s bedroom.
My mother had several frightening experiences upstairs in her room. One Saturday she was cleaning her room and vacuuming her carpet. When she finished vacuuming, she turned the vacuum off, unplugged it, and set it in the corner. She suddenly heard a strange noise, almost like a strong wind blowing in the room. Pictures were knocked off her dresser and her shelves and curtains were moving. All of the windows and doors were shut tight. She turned around, facing a full-length mirror that hung on her door, in time to see an unusual flash go across it. She went to the mirror and gently touched the glass. Her vacuum cleaner suddenly came on, even though it was unplugged. She was terrified for a moment as she approached the running vacuum cleaner. Right before she reached it, the vacuum cleaner shut off.
Another strange experience that my mother had was that her pictures kept falling over. She had pictures of me placed all over the house, such as in the living room, her bedroom, and in the downstairs hall. She would always find these pictures laying facedown or on the floor. At first she thought it was faulty picture frames so she bought new ones, but the pictures kept falling. After about a month, the picture incidents stopped.
The most frightening occurrence happened in the presence of all four of us. We were in the living room watching television, when a copper vase actually floated from one side of the room to the other side. We sat rooted in our chairs in silent terror. A few minutes after this happened, my picture on the television fell over and then completely fell off the television. We never told anyone but our priest about these experiences, because we were afraid they would think we were crazy. After we told our priest of all the unexplainable occurrences, he came to the house and said a blessing over the house. After he did this, we never had any strange occurrences to take place.
I know all this might sound unbelievable, but they are all true. Whether you believe them or not, they should be passed down to future generations by storytelling.
14. “The Old Slave Man”
Hardin County
As a child I grew up just a field away from the Brackett Cemetery. I had always heard ghost stories about this place but chose not to believe them. However, many a night I would lay my pillow in the window next to my bed and fall asleep looking out in the direction of the old cemetery. Often I would see what appeared to be figures or shadows wandering about out there. Sometimes, they even looked as if they had eyes that were glowing and bouncing around. But I was more intrigued than frightened. Most usually, by morning I would have convinced myself that it was flashlights, lanterns, and cigarettes of hunters, although often there was nothing in season to hunt. It made it easier to believe, but I couldn’t help but wonder.
I dated a guy once who told me stories about his family who were buried there. One night he took me there, and when he leaned over to kiss me his car horn went off and got stuck. We had to leave, but the minute we left the grounds, the horn stopped blowing.
Not long after that, some friends and I went camping in my dad’s backfield that bordered Rainey Brackett’s farm. I think the cemetery is on his property. Anyway, the campers and I decided to roam the countryside.
I remembered an old cabin I’d seen and heard stories about, and though it was dark I thought I could find it again. I had always seen it in the daylight and with adults who would not let me go in. I was just dying to see if I could see if the Slave Man stories were true.
When we got to what I thought was the yard, we met an old dog with a limp. This gave us an eerie feeling. Everyone wanted to return to the campsite, but I was so intrigued by the stories, I just knew that I had to enter the old cabin.
As we entered the old well-built cabin, I turned on my small flashlight. As we followed with our eyes trained on the small dot of light across the worn log, mud, and rock walls, and we were beginning to relax our thoughts, we heard what we assumed was a small varmint in the cellar. I wanted to check it out, and the others didn’t want me to do it alone. As I opened the narrow wooden door, it creaked so loudly it echoed for what seemed an eternity. The well-worn, squeaky stairs were so narrow we could barely get down them in our close-knit single-file pattern. As we hit the third or fourth step, we froze in our tracks. We heard this low groaning sound like that of an animal in pain. Then we heard the sound of a chain rattling. We paused, our hearts beating just like they were going to beat right out of our chests. Too far to turn back, too afraid to leave a possibly injured animal, I led the troops ever so slowly down the remaining steps.
By now, I was shaking so much that we couldn’t focus our eyes on anything in the wiggling dot of light. I grasped tightly with both hands in order to steady the light so we could see. When my feet hit the dirt floor, there was an unexpected “drip, drip” sound. We caught reflections of our meager supply of light in a small pool of water in the far corner of the tiny cellar. I laughed as nervously as they did, then I said, “See, gals, there’s nothing to be afraid of here.”
As we prepared to creep back up the narrow stairway, I flashed the light around for one final look. Then I heard a sudden gasp. One of my fellow campers had caught sight of a splattering of blood glistening on the wall. When she pointed our attention to it, no one could make a move or utter a sound.
My small dot of light seemed to have control of itself now. As the light followed the crimson trail on the wall, the light seemed smaller by inches than it was when we left home. Through no effort on my part, the light moved to a hand on a shackle—that of a black man. Then the light followed an arm to a face and eyes that were full of pain and tears. The head was covered in sweat and the chest of the old man was full of stripes as if beaten by a recent cane or whip. He was crying and begging for mercy.
Needless to say, the three of us ran so fast we don’t even recall crossing the two fences between there and home. We totally forgot about our camping gear, and didn’t go back to get it until daylight.
It was at least two weeks before I could close my eyes in sleep for more than just a few m
inutes without seeing the face of the old slave man and hearing the crack of a whip followed by the pain-filled moans and pleas for our help.
15. “A House Too Haunted to Live In”
Hopkins County
Many communities have haunted houses. In the Beulah neighborhood, the Lynn house was about one mile from any other dwelling. There were old graves around this old house. People said that travelers who stopped there for the night were killed, robbed, and buried in the backyard. These activities took place at least 150 years ago.
Sixty years ago, Sally and Edd Hicks married and set up housekeeping there. Sally, who was considered a truthful woman, was not easily frightened. Edd could easily be frightened. Sally did not like to tell about her ghostly experiences because people laughed at her. She said that perhaps we didn’t have some things now that we did have back then. She told me earnestly that there were weird things that went on at that house.
One night Sally awoke to see a great ball of fire in a corner of her room. She got up to extinguish it, but it wasn’t there, it had just disappeared. It appeared again, but she just covered her head until it was gone.
One night, a large dog reared upon her bed. It was a strange dog and twice as large as any dog she had ever seen. They moved the next day, and the house was never occupied after that.
16. “Dark Secrets of an Old, Abandoned House”
Logan County
One rainy night a traveler stopped at this large house hoping to spend the night to get out of the bad weather. The house was empty and badly in need of repair. When he was eating, he heard footsteps, and a young, beautiful girl and a young man came in. They were really upset and were talking softly, and then she started crying and the man started kissing her, trying to comfort her. Suddenly, loud footsteps were heard and a huge middle-aged man walked in. He scared the girl really bad, and he and the young man started fighting. Finally, the older man killed the young man and took him into a secret room that opened with a hidden panel. The girl ran crying into the room where the old man had put the young man he had killed. The older man just shut the panel and left them both in there.
The traveler had hidden and watched the whole thing, and as soon as he thought the way was clear, he went to the police and told them what had happened. They went to the house to investigate and sure enough they pressed the panel and the door to the room opened, and in the middle of the room were two skeletons clasped in each other s arms.
The police told the man that the owner of the house had taken this young girl who had been engaged to a young man, who was real poor, and married her because her parents wanted the old mans money. Later, the young man disappeared, too, and they had heard that all three had finally died. Nobody ever found out exactly what happened that night in the house, but the next year on the same day the house fell down during a storm and hid its secrets forever.
17. “Daniel Boone’s Ghostly Visit to Henry Clay”
Fayette County
“…. Daniel Boone, a national as well as a local hero, has been rather completely written up but I have heard a story concerning him in a sort of postmortem way, that I do not think has before been published. I heard it from a distinguished member of the family associated with the incident; and, while it is strange, there are too many well-authenticated statements of similar occurrences to lightly doubt the evidence.…
“Back in the times when Burr wore powder and shorts, when Andrew Jackson was a plumed knight, and people still remembered how ill Lord Cornwallis looked on the day of his surrender, Henry Clay was a rising young lawyer—perhaps a member of the State Legislature. Coincidentally, Daniel Boone was the honored and famed pioneer; the aged father of the Commonwealth; the universal encyclopedia of Indian lore and frontier adventure…. He was already an old man, for a tree is shown near the Virginia line with an inscription cut by his own hand, T). Boone killed a barr nere this tree, 1760.’
“A drenching thunder-shower pounded the roof of the [Henry Clay] house and rang chimes on the glass covering of the conservatory, which opened directly out of the library. The conservatory doors had been bolted and padlocked on the inside, and the house locked up for the night. While the storm was at its height, and immediately following a terrific peal of thunder, the family were startled at seeing a tall, lank figure stalk in from the conservatory. The unbidden guest was grizzled and weather-beaten and grim of visage. On his head he wore the historic coon-skin, and his raiment was of buckskin from neck to moccasin. He carried one of the six-foot rifles used a hundred years ago and a powder-horn of huge size and antique appearance hung at his side. From cap, hair, rifle, and every part and garment of the strange visitant water was streaming, and the first thought of those present was that he might be some wanderer from the mountains who had marched in, mountain fashion, without knocking, to escape the rain; but this did not seem a sufficient explanation, for the house was known to be carefully closed, and such costumes had become extinct even in the neighboring hill country twenty-five or thirty years before.
“The figure walked across the room, and without a word, deposited his rifle in the corner and seated himself in a large arm-chair opposite and facing the table at which Mr. Clay had been writing. The statesman was pretty well used to the intrusions of political admirers and lion-hunters, but something about this particular intruder seemed to give him uneasiness; however, he said pleasantly, ‘Friend, it’s a wet night to be out,’ but the man in the buckskin answered never a word, and continued to stare mournfully at his unwilling host for some seconds, after which he shouldered his rifle and departed as he had come.
“Two gentlemen of the family followed instantly, but nothing was to be seen or heard of the wild huntsman. The doors were still bolted and padlocked; nothing had been disturbed, and what was even more remarkable, the dripping rifle in the corner had left not a trace of moisture on the floor where it stood, neither was the thickly upholstered chair, in which the figure rested, the least bit dampened by contact with the streaming clothes of the visitor. The circumstances made a very painful impression on Mr. Clay, and after that night he was never known to refer to it; but his family knew that he had seen his old friend Daniel Boone, and that he regarded the appearance as a warning of impending death. Whether it was so intended or not, it is certain that the great political chieftain died soon afterward.”
18. “The Woman Who Fought Off Indians in a Haunted House”
Anderson County
… A legend has continued to haunt a log house on Ninevah Road for more than 200 years. Close your eyes for a moment, and depending on the scope of your imagination, the sound of walnuts being crushed under the car’s tires on the road becomes eerily not unlike that of crunching bones. The fallen leaves, disturbed by your footsteps, might rustle with the sound of an approach that makes you look back over your shoulder.
Yet, no one is on the path. No one visible.
Built in 1783 by Samuel Hutton, a spy serving under Captain John Hutton, the two-story house sits above a spring—like many homes constructed during the period.
Legend says that Indians entering through an opening in the stone foundation around the spring might have gone up a ladder to the interior of the house and attacked the occupants.
The savage cries that once disturbed the calm of the sloping hills down toward the spring and the house have never been entirely erased by time.
Nancy Hutton, Samuel Hutton’s wife, was left alone during one of his absences to defend their home. Her nerves must have been raw as she warily opened the trap door that led from the house to the lower floor where the spring flowed. But her eyesight was unaffected by the jitters.
Hiding behind the ladder, Nancy Hutton spotted the feathers of a red-skinned man. Her hand closed over an ax.
No one knows how many of the savages Nancy Hutton fought off and killed with her ax as they attempted to rise to the upper floor. No one can say whether it is the spirit of the murdered or of the murderess that still clings tenaciously to the unoccupi
ed, historic dwelling.
Capable not only of fighting off the visitation at the log house, Nancy Hutton stood up to her husband in a way few women of her era dared. In 1800 Samuel Hutton was ordered to appear before the Franklin County Court for nonsupport of an infant.
Apparently, Nancy had left the child at the courthouse in a demand that her husband be made to support her and the baby.
It is not difficult to imagine that a woman of Nancy Hutton’s dauntless spirit might, even now, refuse to leave the home she so valiantly defended.
19. “Brutus and the Teen Square”
Bourbon County
No one actually saw Brutus sitting in the chair at the end of the long line of chairs against the wall. That wasn’t surprising since Brutus was a ghost and none of the kids had noticed Brutus when he was still registering 98.6 and was the apple of his mothers eye. But those days were in the past now, and on this tenth anniversary of his death, Brutus returned to the place where he had spent some of his last hours as a mortal.
The chairs were a motley collection of seats for the less popular kids—a place where they could sit while their more fortunate peers were dancing at Teen Square, the Paris hangout for young people in the 1940s and ‘50s. The chair where Brutus was sitting was almost directly under the memorial on the wall that was dedicated to him, with his initials “BFS” prominently displayed. The memorial had been put up a few weeks after Brutus’s death and was now dusty and showing signs of wear. It had made the kids who ignored him in life feel better, but it had soon become just a part of the furnishings.
Two of the younger girls walked closer to Brutus’s chair. “I dare you to sit in that chair,” said Nancy to her friend Betsy.
Betsy shook her head and exclaimed breathlessly, “I wouldn’t sit there if it was the last chair on earth.”
Several of the Teen Square regulars had sworn that they could see the outline of a boy sitting in the chair—especially around Halloween, the anniversary of Brutus’s death. Some of the older boys claimed they weren’t scared, but everyone gave the chair a wide berth, especially the girls.
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 5
