Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  Acord said what fascinated her the most by the ghostly voice was she knows people today refer to the restaurant as the tavern, not the Talbott.

  Acord speculates the voice may have been Annie Talbott, the wife of George Talbott who once owned the building. When George Talbott owned the building, it was referred to as the Neiman house. However, when George Talbott died in 1912, Annie took over the building and changed the name to the Talbott Hotel. “How proud she would have been to welcome guests to the Talbott Hotel,” Acord said.

  One of the taverns current owners, Betty Kelley, said of the taverns paranormal activity, “A lot of people think ghost hunting or believing in ghosts is nonsense. I’m not totally convinced yet about the ghosts, but I will say that I am a whole lot closer to believing now than before the fire.” …

  155. “Bloodstains on the Floor”

  Jessamine County

  Once we moved into a house in Keene owned by Mr. Parks. That evening the moon was very bright, and my husband was outside. Suddenly he came running in with his eyes as big as saucers. He told me that he had cast two shadows and that something was mighty wrong around here.

  I went out with him to see, and when I was there he cast only one shadow. Well, I went back inside and began to scrub up blood in the kitchen. Before we had moved in, someone had been murdered in the kitchen. The blood had run across the kitchen floor and had stained it. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but the more I scrubbed, the redder the blood got. I used lye on it and everything else, but it just wouldn’t come up. So I gave up.

  We went to bed that night, and all of a sudden the whole house began to vibrate. It sounded like all the dishes, pots, and tableware and the whole cabinet fell over on the floor….

  We got up and lit the lamp and began to search the house, and lo and behold, everything was in its place, and there was nobody in the house. We went back to bed and tried to get some sleep. The next day we moved out of there.

  156. “Miss Lucy’s Ghost”

  Woodford County

  My husband, Leonard Nave, and I purchased a house at 131 Blackburn Court here in Versailles from the estate of Dr. Alford Blackburn in 1961. Shortly thereafter, we began renovation of the foundation and downstairs. Some of the workmen said that they had always heard that the house was haunted. Since I’d never heard that, I paid no attention.

  Later when we finished the renovating, my husband and I with our young son and daughter moved into three of the upstairs bedrooms. One particular evening around nine o’clock, my daughter who was about six years of age at this time, came to my bed and said that she couldn’t sleep. When I asked her why, she said, “There’s a woman in there.”

  Thinking this was a child’s way of stalling bedtime, I asked her to describe the woman she saw. She told me that the woman had a big hat and a long dress with black roses on it. (Children usually don’t describe colors in black.) Chills ran up and down my spine, but I tried to make light of it and let her sleep in our room.

  The next episode occurred when we remodeled another bedroom. I was expecting our third child. The whole upstairs was a mess so we decided to put the mattresses on the floor in the downstairs library. My husband was away on business. I laid down with the children to help them go to sleep. My daughter and I were facing the bookcases and my son was facing the other side. All at once he said, “Mama, there’s a woman over there.”

  I said, “Oh, sure.”

  He said, “But Mama, don’t you see her?’

  I turned to look but closed my eyes. I was afraid that if I saw anything, I would never stay in the house. All I could say was, “Go back to sleep. I don’t see anything.”

  A couple of years later, we had guests who were staying with us during a golf tournament. The children were staying with their grandparents. Our visitors stayed in our daughter’s bedroom. Since the room had four large windows, two at the front and two on the side, it was fairly light during the daytime. At night there was a streetlight nearby, so even if all the inside lights were off, it was never totally dark.

  After the first night s stay, the wife of the couple came downstairs for breakfast. I asked her if she had a good night’s sleep. She replied, “Not very well. I got up during the night to go to the bathroom. When I put my feet on the floor, I looked down and saw another pair of feet. Then to my amazement, I saw them fade away. It really frightened me. I tried to awaken my husband. He said I must have been dreaming.”

  Later in the day, my guest and I left the house to go our separate ways. When we returned, she thanked me for hanging up her clothes. I told her that I hadn’t done that, and that there had been no other person in the house. Or was there?

  After doing a little research, I discovered that the original owner of the house was Judge William E. Ashmore, a second cousin to Chief Justice John Marshall. Through Judge Ashmore s second marriage to Lettie Lafon, he had two daughters, Mary and Lucy. They were spinsters who lived in the house, which was built around 1820. “Miss Lucy” was the one that supposedly was the lost soul wandering around the house on Blackburn Court. While I personally never saw any apparitions, I certainly felt “cold spots” and felt uneasy in certain areas of the house.

  157. “An Encounter with the Supernatural”

  Allen County

  One night when I was in bed, it was around midnight, and I wasn’t sleeping that easily. Then I heard a sudden clash in the upstairs room, and I want to tell you that it scared the heck out of me! I was mainly scared because I was half asleep in the middle of the night. I did what any person would probably do: I went upstairs to see what it was. But before I took one step, I could see the door to the upper room was shut and the lights were off.

  I went to see my grandmother and she was fast asleep, so I knew it couldn’t have been her. Well, I tried to forget about it and went back to bed. Little did I know what would happen next would change the way I believe in ghosts. As I tucked myself in bed I started hearing noises like someone hammering a nail into the wall. I really didn’t know what to think about it, but it was really there and I heard it. First, it was upstairs; then I could hear its footsteps coming down the stairs. The stair steps are very old, so I could hear it easily. Then I heard it in the dining room, then the living room. Suddenly, whatever it was, was now in my room. It was as if it were pounding on the walls, but the unusual thing was that my door was locked! How on earth could it have got into my room with the door locked?

  One time it was in my face making all sorts of strange noises like hammering, clapping, stomping, and other noises I couldn’t recognize. At one point, I could feel the vibrations on the bed when whatever it was hit the wall. I hardly got any sleep that night and to top it all off a giant thunderstorm came through with terrifying lightning and thunder. When I got up the next morning, I asked my grandmother if she had heard anything like I did last night, and she said, “No.” When I told her what I had heard, she thought I was crazy.

  Since then, many supernatural things have been happening, like somebody or something will be talking to me but there’s no one there. One night, I asked the ghost for me to dream about it, and that I did. In my dream, this thing had on a black coat and it looked like a woman. Just recently, I saw the same thing sitting in a chair in my room one night.

  As I was sitting on the front porch one day, a large heavy flowerpot was lifted into the air by something, and then it was dropped. The wind most certainly couldn’t have done that. Then, one day my grandmother and I were walking in front of the church cemetery, which is right in front of the house, and she pointed to a grave and said, “That’s the man who built the house.”

  I looked at the grave of this man who built the house. Whether he has anything to do with it or not, I don’t know, but to this day supernatural and unknown things happen. I have come to truly believe that the house is infested or haunted.

  158. “Ghostly Tinkling of Bells”

  Crittenden County

  My great-great-great-grandmother, Rachel Blakely Travis, died
in 1880 at the age of ninety-two. She is buried in the Piney Fork Cemetery here in Crittenden County.

  She often entertained the children and older folks as well, by telling them accounts of her pioneer experiences. Here is a hair-raising footnote to the ghostly annals of west Kentucky.

  On her fifteenth birthday, September 5, 1803, Rachel Blakely, with her parents and family, passed through Cumberland Gap. They settled just south of Pigeon Roost Creek in what is now Crittenden County. Not many months after they arrived, a herb doctor, an old man, died where he had lived alone in his cabin on Pigeon Roost Creek. Among his effects was a quantity of wool which came into the hands of the Blakelys. Clothing material was scarce in those days and had to be preserved carefully.

  It became the duty of Rachel and a neighbor girl to card and spin the wool into yarn, preparatory to weaving it into cloth. As there was a spinning wheel and other equipment at the herb doctor’s cabin, the two girls took up abode there until they finished the job. It was not then unusual for two teenage girls to stay for days alone in a cabin deep in the woods, reached only by a trail.

  Before going to bed their first night, as was the custom, they covered the fire with ashes so as to preserve live coals for rekindling next morning. After they’d settled quietly in bed, they began to hear a tinkling sound, like that of a very small bell. They got up, uncovered some coals, kindled a fire for light, and the tinkling sound ceased. They searched but found no cause for it. They re-covered the fire, went to bed again, and the tinkling sound resumed. Again it stopped when they kindled a fire. Time and again they got up, kindled a fire and always the tinkling stopped. Obviously, it was coming from something that could tell light from dark.

  In those days, the belief in ghosts was universal. The girls had no doubt but that the spirit of the deceased herb doctor had returned to manifest his presence by simulating the sound of a bell. Whether they were scared, as most people are when they think spirits are present, family tradition does not say. At least, they did not swerve from their duty. They kept plying cords and sheel [binding cords into bundles of cloth], taking time off for only necessary household chores.

  A bundle of small vials, tied with a string, hung from a rafter. They were doubtless intended as containers for some of the doctor’s medicinal concoctions. In sweeping the floor one day, one of the girls knocked the vials with her broom handle. They sounded like the bell the girls had been hearing at night. Examination revealed roaches in the bottles. These insects, being nocturnal in habit, lay inert in the light but scurried around when it got dark, thus swinging the vials against each other to make the tinkling sound.

  159. “The Cries of a Starving Baby”

  Allen County

  Many people who worked at the now vacant Allen County War Memorial Hospital reported strange noises or unnatural occurrences while they were there. The only one that I personally experienced while working as a nurse there was hearing the crying of an infant when there were none in the hospital. Everyone talked about it, but as the new 11:00 to 7:00 supervisor, I thought they were just pulling my leg.

  One night as I walked up to the nurses’ station in the old part of the hospital, all of the staff was standing around looking spooked. I asked them what was wrong. “Don’t you hear it?” one whispered.

  I listened, and sure enough, there were the unmistakable sounds of an infant, complete with wails, gurgles, and sucking. I walked toward the hall where the sounds were coming from. “What are you doing?” someone hissed.

  “It sounds funny,” I said. “If I find a baby, I’m going to feed it.”

  As soon as I passed a room on the left the crying stopped. The room was empty except for two vacant beds. As hard as I searched, I couldn’t find an explanation, although I and others heard it often on different nights. An older nurse that I spoke to later said that the crying had been there ever since the child of an alcoholic mother died in that room after having been starved too long at home.

  160. “The Old House near Temple Hill”

  Barren County

  When the kids were younger, my girls were sleeping upstairs and they hollered for me. They thought I was upstairs with them. They looked down at the bed covers and there was a lady in white, and they thought I had come upstairs. Well, I flipped the light on downstairs and come up, and they was scared to death. They said that they had seen a lady standing at the foot of their bed.

  Well, one night my son was in the other room and he said that somebody touched him on the leg. Said he just laid there and hollered, “Help.” He could not move! He said something was touching him on the leg.

  When he was a baby, my husband was at work. We were sitting on the love seat and I happened to look out to the kitchen and there was this lady in a black, checkered dress with an apron on, and why she had a hat on, I dont know. Well, she went from the kitchen into the other room. I got up to go in there to see about her, but there wasn’t nobody there. It didn’t bother me any. I just wanted to know why there was a lady in my kitchen going through the other room.

  We’ve also had nights when something will walk across our bed, or sit down on the bed with us. It was there, but it hasn’t scared us any. There’s never been a time that we’ve been scared.

  161. “The Temple Hill Ghost House, Continued”

  Barren County

  When Matthew (grandson) was a little boy, we were in the living room, and he was in one of the bedrooms just jabbering away. So I went in there and asked him who he was talking to.

  He pointed his finger toward a corner, and said, “That woman.”

  I didn’t see anything, so I started back to the living room. Then he pointed toward my mother’s picture and said, “That woman, that woman.”

  So he was talking to my [dead] mother in the bedroom.

  This old house we live in was built prior to the Civil War, at least part of it. And on occasion, we’ll hear music coming from upstairs. We’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and a radio will be playing music upstairs. But there isn’t anybody up there.

  We don’t have any heat upstairs. We’ve got vents in the floor that the heat radiates through. On occasion, I can walk to our living room door and say, “Hey, turn it down; you are bothering me.” And the music turns off. We’ve laid there many a night and listened to the music, and we know there is nobody up there. And there’s no radio upstairs at all! There’s a child’s piano upstairs, and every now and then it will start playing. A person has to bang those keys to make them play.

  There’s also one of these old wind-up Tin Lizzie Ford cars that plays music when you wind it up. We haven’t wound it up in years, but every so often you can hear it playing music.

  One night, Dianna and I were lying there in our water bed talking. It was dark. Well, all of a sudden, somebody sat down on the side of the bed with us. It didn’t scare me or anything. All I said was, “There’s not room in this bed for three people. There’s a bed upstairs.”

  It got up, and you could hear it climbing the steps on its way upstairs.

  162. “The Guardian”

  Woodford County

  This family moved into a beautiful old home on a quaint little street in historic Versailles. It was a time of great excitement and joy for family members as each box was brought into the house. However, with each box came a delivery or a sense of anxiety and overprotection. The wife called out to her husband, “Why are you pacing there in the den while I am unpacking? The children are fine.” Even as she said that, she thought that it was so unlike him to be overprotective of the children like this, in fact to the point of pacing back and forth in the den.

  Then his voice called out, “I am not pacing in the den. I am unpacking in the kitchen.”

  The wife then wondered what she had seen and heard moving in the den if it had not been her husband, and why she had felt a weird uneasiness in the air. That same feeling soon became evident each time a new person entered the house.

  Many visitors to this old home have described
similar experiences. Early in their residence in this old house, they had a close friend from New York to come visit them. He just loved their children and spent each night rocking them and reading them books. As he reminisced with the couple later one evening, he gently confronted them with their apparent distrust of him with their children. He described an intense feeling of anxiety and said he felt as if he were being watched by a worried parent. He had not seen or heard anything, but described it as a feeling you would get from an overprotective mother. He said that the feeling he had was an uncomfortable, even a weird, eerie experience for him.

  Over the years it became apparent that the ghostly presence stayed with the children. And still to this day, it watches carefully over the kids even though they are not aware of the ghost. However, in the past few years their older daughter has described catching the glimpse of a woman in her bedroom mirror at different times. But she has never been afraid of whatever or whoever it is.

  The anxiety their ghost exuberated when they first moved into the house has now shifted to a more comfortable feeling. They imagine that the friendly woman’s spirit has learned to trust them as parents. Her ghostly presence has come to be integrated into the charm of their home, as well as appreciated for her continued devotion to protect and watch over their children.

  “Airy Mount Bloodstain”

  Woodford County

  The house at Airy Mount on McCown’s Ferry Road was built in 1794-95 by William H.S. Field on land granted to him after the Revolutionary War. He brought his wife Sarah and two young daughters from Virginia to live there. One night in 1799 Sarah was found strangled to death with her own stocking at the bottom of the main staircase. Her husband, who was asleep upstairs at the time, was accused of her murder. He testified at his trial that he had come home from an evening at the pub in town, somewhat in his cups, and had gone to bed without rousing his wife. Nevertheless, he was found guilty of her murder and was subsequently the first white man hanged in Woodford County.