54, “The Mysteriously Opening Door”
Monroe County
My sister stayed at a home here in northern Monroe County, in an old house with doors that had only wooden drop latches. I don’t think that you could lock them from the outside, but on the inside all you had to do was lower this wood bar into the wood latch.
The people that lived there told my sister that the door to her bedroom would come open by itself. Well, she didn’t believe them. But I’ll have you know, each night when she went to bed that latch would raise and the door would come open. But there was nobody there. She said that happened many times.
When she’d go to bed, she knew that there was nobody in that room but her. Then, she’d hear that latch moving and that door would swing open.
She said that was true. That latch would raise of a night. She heard it many times, and the door would open, yet there was never anybody there.
She found out later that a man with no head had also been seen there.
55. “The House on Center Street”
Henderson County
A house on Center Street is the house that the people in Henderson identify as the town’s haunted house. All anyone needs to do is drive by to see how so many stories could evolve concerning one old house. It is an old three-story house that sets back slightly off the street. The architecture of the house, with its Gothic arches and ornate stonework, lends to the foreboding presence of the house. Actually, it seems strange why this house is not located off some country road out in the country. In fact, it is located just two or three blocks from the downtown area.
I can remember the first time I ever heard a story related to this house. Because I went to grade school outside of town near the subdivision that my family lived in, I was not familiar with the stories about this house in town. When I went to junior high in the city (fairly close to the house on Center Street I might add) it was then that I heard about this haunted house. A girl in one of my classes told the story of how the house became haunted.
It seems that when the house was relatively new, it was owned and operated by a fairly wealthy family. One of their kids was a girl, age fourteen. She was her parents’ pride and joy, and her father worshiped her with all his heart. Yet as with all stories of this nature, a problem arose to put clouds on the horizon. It so happened that this father s lovely young daughter was in love with some fellow and had her heart set on getting married.
The father became both enraged and heartbroken to learn that his daughter would want to get married and leave him. He insisted that she was much too young to get married, so he forbade her from ever seeing the young man again. They began to argue about this, and the father ended up locking the girl in her room. Her bedroom was on the third floor of the house. She sat by the window and gazed out, waiting for her lover to come and rescue her. At this point in the story various versions begin to appear. The version that I first heard depicted the young girl climbing out the window in order to elope with her boyfriend. She lost her grip and fell face down onto the paved sidewalk below.
Other versions claim that she jumped to her death as an act of suicide. One version even suggests that the father, in a fit of rage, pushed her out the window. Regardless of how and why she fell, the rest of the story is the same.
When she landed face down on the pavement, some supernatural power caused her face to leave a full imprint on the stone pavement. Feeling great remorse, the father lifted the section of the sidewalk and found that the imprint pushed through, leaving a life-size stone mask of the girls face. As a symbol of his guilt, the father mounted her mask on the front of the house.
I can attest to the fact that there is a stone mask of a young girl on the facade of the house. Who can tell whether this is the imprint of the girls face, or just a part of the ornate structure of the house? The house is now divided into several apartments. There are still rumors about the ghost of the young girl. I have heard of people leaving the apartment after living there only a short while. It is still said that on some nights one can actually see the image of the young girl looking out the window awaiting the arrival of her lover.
56. “I Am Still with You”
Jefferson County
In the old Jefferson Building on the downtown Jefferson Community College campus, a ghost is so active that the security chief keeps a file that documents all the happening his officers report. People hear footsteps when nobody is there. The elevator goes up and down on its own, carrying no visible passengers. Lights flicker and dim when storms and power surges can’t be blamed. Doorknobs are turned by unseen hands, and some employees have reported seeing a figure in the halls. Two cleaning ladies were so scared by the spooky presence that they quit their jobs. Mysterious letters, supposedly from the ghost, are left in various places. The last one was left in the chapel near Halloween in 1997. It was initialed “LSB” and announced, “I am still with you.”
The security chief, a self-proclaimed stickler for details, adds each incident to his file. In 1980, he added one of his own.
He was working the shift between midnight and dawn. He’d made his rounds, making sure the doors and windows were secure. With new batteries in his flashlight, he moved through the dark, silent halls following a routine inspection. Then it happened.
“I entered the Records and Admissions Office about 3:00 A.M.,” he says. “Suddenly my flashlight dimmed and I felt a cold draft on the back of my neck. I got this prickling sensation all up and down my spine. I had an overwhelming feeling that there was a presence in the room with me.”
He thinks the ghost could be Lucy Stites Barret, wife of James Rankin Barret, who built the structure. “There’s an inscription [carved in wood] in her memory over the fireplace in the area that used to be the library,” he points out, “and her initials were on the last letter. Whoever she is, I don’t believe she’s here to harm anyone.”
57. “Ghosts That Prefer Libraries”
Jefferson County
Two Louisville ghosts prefer libraries, namely the Shively-Newman branch on Dixie Highway and the old Jeffersontown Library on Watterson Trail. Charles Harris, who has worked at both libraries, had spooky experiences at each.
“I was at Newman from about 1989 to 1992,” he says. “I noticed the presence more in the evening when I was working late alone. I never felt threatened, but I couldn’t concentrate. One winter night in 1990,1 smelled the fragrance of fresh flowers coming from the browsing room, which connects the main library to the older auditorium. I couldn’t imagine who had brought fresh flowers in winter, so I checked. There were no flowers.”
The suspected ghost first attracted the staff’s attention in 1990 in the auditorium, a part of Shively City Hall to which the library was added. A mans voice came through the speakers in the ceiling, sounding as if he were in pain, but no source could be found. Then books and other objects began to disappear and mysteriously turn up elsewhere. Lights went off and on. Once a picture of Father Joseph Newman, for whom the library is named, fell from the wall, apparently without reason, and broke.
Recently, librarian Virginia Messer was summoned by a patron to watch her tap the keys on the electric Panasonic KX-E4000 typewriter kept in the library for public use.
“It was the strangest thing,” Messer says. “It was typing different letters from the keys she was striking. The backspace went forward and the space bar went backward. We turned it off and reset it, but it did it a couple of times.”
Shively mayor Jim Jenkins says he hasn’t heard about the odd happenings, but notes that the building was the center of community happenings when Father Newman was alive.
“They had police court there around 1970,” he says. “Father Newman had clubs and activities for teenagers. There was a lot of energy here.”
The atmosphere at the old Jeffersontown Library, on the other hand, was dreary, says Harris. “I suppose the fact that the library was on the site of the former county poor house could account for the dreary feeling,” he ex
plains.
“Many patrons came into the library describing a woman wearing a frilly white or pink dress looking out the front window. Once a family from St. Louis drove by and stopped to tell us they’d seen the woman and realized she couldn’t be real.
“This ghost seemed unhappy and made me feel like it wanted privacy. I often heard footsteps there, and once I saw a whole row of books fall off the shelf. That many books do not fall off the shelf by themselves. Yet they did, and I was standing right there looking at them when it happened. I know there was no vibration or anything to cause it.”
Harris, now the manager of the Bon Air Library, says that when the Jeffersontown Library moved into a new building next door in 1996, he never felt the presence again.
58. “Urnenled Spirir”
Boone County
A widow used to live with her daughter in a house on Frogtown Road in Union, Kentucky. The daughter lived in the attic of the house. She went to her senior prom, and her mother asked her to be back home no later than 1:00 A.M. because she didn’t want to worry about her safety. Well, the girl got started home late from the prom and was killed in a horrible car accident about 12:45 P.M.
My friend and his family moved into the house after the widow moved out. My friend said that he and his family would always hear footsteps, and the attic door would open every night at about 12:30 or so. This went on for about six months until finally my friend’s mother asked around throughout the community to find out if anything strange had happened in the house. It was then that they learned about the girl getting killed in this car wreck.
The next night when my friend’s mother heard the footsteps and the door open, she spoke out and said, “Okay, honey, I know you are home. Go on to bed. Everything is all right.”
After that incident, the footsteps stopped and have never been heard again in that house.
59. “Ghostly Footsteps”
Caldwell County
One time on a stormy summer night, Mom and Dad went out, and I was left to watch after my little brother. I watched television for a while, and then went to bed downstairs in the basement.
I heard the front door open and then I heard footsteps coming down the stairway. I was so scared that I flipped on the light switch. When I did that, whatever it was ran back up the steps.
I just laid there in bed for a while. My little brother was still sound asleep. Finally, I got so scared just thinking about what I had heard that I got my little brother out of bed and took him upstairs. We slept up there on the couch the rest of the night.
I never did know what it was that I heard.
60. “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary”
Trimble County
This friend of mind told me many years ago that her house had a bloody ghost in it. Said the house was haunted by a weird-looking, bloody creature. It all started one day when Liz and her older sister decided to play Bloody Mary.
To play this horror-like game, they went into the bathroom, turned off the lights, and started chanting, slow, real slow, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.”
After they had gone through this the fifth time, they heard this awful sounding, squealy voice that sounded like a hen cackling in a long, drawn-out voice. Suddenly, the image of an old woman appeared in the mirror there in the bathroom. The old biddy was sitting in a rocking chair, laughing, laughing, laughing. And, ugh, she was covered all over with blood that was just dripping down from her face and head.
Well, Liz and her sister were scared to death, afraid that she would reach out and grab them with her bloody hands. They tried to open the door, but could not get it open. They tugged and they pulled, but the door would not open. While they were still trying to get out the door, they noticed that the bloody woman put her hands against the mirror, then disappeared.
They said that the bloody fingerprints stayed on the mirror. They washed and scrubbed the mirror but the blood stayed on, even though it was more like a bloody image than real blood. Finally, they decided to take down the bloody mirror and replace it with another one. When they did this, the bloody creature was never again seen.
61. “The Disappearing Ghost of Little Girl”
Hopkins County
My mother told me this story about two years ago. And, whew, every time I think of it, it gives me the creeps. To start it off, she told me that Dad was gone away on a business trip and she had been up late working on a paper that she had to turn in at work the next day. She said that it was getting pretty late, and she had started to put up her things when she heard a noise coming from the living room. She said that she ignored it at first because she thought that it must have been the dogs. So she continued to gather up her things to take them to her room. Then she heard the noise again as she started getting ready for bed. She decided to go see what was going on.
When she walked close to the living room door, she saw the figure of a young girl just about my age. In fact, she thought that it was me. So when she started to walk closer, the girl began to cry.
Mom said that it was hard for her to see the girl, so she began walking toward the light switch. As Mom was walking along, she started calling out my name, “Ashlee, Ashlee, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
The girl did not answer. Mom made her way on over to the light switch and turned it on. She turned back around, and the girl had vanished.
She told me this story on Halloween, and I will never forget it, or what happened when she did. Maybe she told it just to scare me, but at least she didn’t look at me and yell, “Boo,” as she finished telling it. If she had, I would probably have fainted on the spot.
62. “A Haunted House in the South Hill Community”
Butler County
One day my father was visiting me a few years ago before he passed away. Our topic of conversation soon landed on ghost stories. Most of them were inexplicable, but people just loved to tell them and to hear them told. Well, my father said that he had a story that happened to him that would raise the hairs on my head.
At the time this story took place, my dad’s sisters were already married, and he lived alone with his mother. His father had died when he was a young boy. They lived in South Hill, a small rural community in western Butler County.
He told me that early one Saturday night in 1923, when he was only eighteen years old, it had just gotten dark outside. His mother had walked up the road just a short distance to visit some family members. He was sitting alone in the kitchen in their small two-story house, listening to an old battery-powered radio, when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs toward the kitchen. He knew that there wasn’t a soul other than himself in the house, so he began to get a little nervous. He got up from his chair and stood quietly as the footsteps proceeded across the kitchen floor and stopped at the rocking chair located there in the middle of the room.
The rocking chair then began slowly rocking back and forth. My dad told me, said, “I was as scared as all get out.”
Dad said that he ran out of the backdoor of the kitchen and halfway across the yard before stopping to look back at the house. He said that chills ran through him as he saw that the house was lit up with bright lights, as if there were electricity. The scary thing was, they didn’t have any electricity in the house back then.
I’ll never forget what my father said to me about the story. He said, “It’s hard to imagine a grown man like me being afraid, but I don’t know
“A Tiny Baby’s Skeleton”
Knox County
About fifty or sixty years ago, Aunt Becky Barton, together with two or three daughters, lived beside a narrow country road in Knox County, near Gray, Kentucky. I never knew them but have heard about them many times from my grandparents, who lived a short distance from them.
The house in which they lived was a gray, weather-beaten structure. One of the front rooms was built of logs with a stone chimney, and in later years a framed room had been added beside it, and a lean-to porch stuck on the rear….
Aunt Becky was cons
idered odd by her neighbors and her reticence concerning her family made her seem even more odd to her inquisitive neighbors. I was told that she claimed to have Indian blood and when illness struck her, she took to the woods to gather herbs from which she brewed foul-tasting remedies, which more often than not proved to be effective.
Rumors circulated that Aunt Becky s daughters were wild, and some said that men were seen going and coming at late hours, but the country folk were too polite to mention these things to Aunt Becky. Other rumors were that Aunt Becky had large sums of money hidden or buried under the house.
Finally, the old lady passed away, and I don t know what became of her daughters. Anyway, the house was empty for several years, and that was when I first remember seeing it. Then, about thirty years ago, I believe, Jim Dizney and his wife, Laura, bought the old Barton place, intending to restore and remodel the old house and raise vegetables on the sixteen acres of land.
Jim was employed in Harlan County and could only manage to move his family and possessions there on weekends. They arrived on a Saturday afternoon … but Jim had to return to his work on Sunday. Laura was left with her four or five children for the entire week. That Sunday night they were all tired and went to bed early. Sometime during the night, Laura was awakened by a peculiar knocking sound on the wall beside her bed. There were three raps, then silence, three more raps, then silence again. She told herself that the wind was blowing and something was hanging on the outside wall causing the noise. But when the same sound disturbed her the following night she called her oldest boy who was about sixteen, and asked him to see if there was anything hanging on the wall outside. He checked and there was not. This happened the next night, and the next, and every night until it really began to upset her. Three raps, then silence for a few minutes, and so on all night long.
When Jim came home on the weekend, she told him about it and asked him to investigate. He scoffed at her story and explained that it could be rats in the wall. After all, the house was old and had been vacant for a long time. He was afraid that they had a long battle with the rats ahead.
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 12
