Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

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

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

  Butler County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  51. “Haunted Houses at Leonard Oak and Woodbury”

  Butler County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  52. “Ghostlike Sounds in an Old Ancestral House”

  Monroe County

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

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

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

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

  53. “Ghosts in the Antique Shop”

  Scott County

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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