Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  I know of no ghost tales associated with this last house. Perhaps the “haints” weren’t comfortable with the constant changes from state to state. Could it be that they were only Kentucky ghosts?

  178. “Please Go Away”

  Fleming County

  My friend Alma and her husband, Buck, moved into a large house in Fleming County. The house at one time had been part of a large agricultural estate tended by slave labor. It was a spacious home with large rooms and numerous windows and doors. The dirt basement had once been a holding place for disobedient slaves. The posts still stood where the owners long ago had chained the slaves to whip them for their transgressions. No one could explain why these posts were located inside the house. Perhaps some thought the punishment was so severe that the landowners didn’t want their neighbors to know. Others thought slaves were kept there unknown to the law after they been legally declared free. The house had been rented many times over the years and even changed owners numerous times.

  On the day Alma and Buck moved in, Alma stood in front of the hall and told her husband that she felt a strange feeling that she could not explain. From that day onward, she heard strange sounds. There was distinct moaning and groaning coming from the dingy basement. She felt rushes of wind around her feet sometimes as if someone were moving quickly past her. At night, she continued to hear doors closing like someone was wandering through the house opening and slamming the doors. After a night of listening to all of this, she would come downstairs to find all her pictures turned face down on the tables. She questioned the landlord about these things, but he assured her no other renter had ever mentioned such happenings.

  One day while Alma was hanging out clothes, she heard the shuffle of feet behind her and a voice that whispered, “Hello.” Turning around to greet her visitor, she found no one there but did feel a distinct presence. She became angry, as she was tired of these daily confrontations with the ghosts of this house and intended to put an end to it. She rushed into the house where Buck sat drinking some coffee. She yelled out, “We are moving away from here!”

  He protested, saying he liked it here, but she was firm. She started packing small articles right away…. She remembered a couple of large boxes in the attic that she had put up there when they moved in. Deciding that she needed them now for her packing, she carried these large boxes toward the stair door. Suddenly, she bumped one of the boxes against an old stand sending it reeling on its legs. A large antique picture frame fell smashing to the floor. She picked up the frame and found it had a picture in it, but it had been turned backward, facing the back of the frame. Only the white cardboard showed. As she plucked the picture from the bed of broken glass, she saw it was a young woman. Her light-colored hair was pulled back away from her face, similar to the way Alma wore hers. In fact, the facial features resembled Almas. This caused Alma to leave there in a hurry, but not before she felt that sudden rush of wind again.

  Alma and Buck moved the very next day to a house in the same small community, thus enabling Buck to keep his job on the nearby farm. Alma was still curious about the old house and why the ghost had chosen her to pick on. She began questioning everybody with whom she came into contact about the history of the house.

  Over a period of many months, she pieced together the story. It was said that the landowner and his wife had gone there to live after the death of his father. The father had willed the large estate and all the slaves to his son. An old slave woman called Mamie was in charge of the slave workers in the house. She lived in a small room behind the kitchen. Mamie took a liking to a young slave boy names Jessie. She gave Jessie the job of carrying wood into the house for the night s supply. After he had finished his chore, she would slip him into her small room and carry him food from the master’s kitchen.

  The other slaves were jealous of him and the extra food he got. They began talking about his relationship with Mamie. “You cant be going there to see old Mamie. It must be the mistress of the house.” Eventually, the talk got back to the young husband. He called Jessie and his wife into the parlor and confronted them with what he had been told. Jessie denied everything, and of course the wife knew nothing. Furious, the husband forced his frightened wife and slave into the cellar where he tied Jessie to the post and made his wife watch as he proceeded to whip him until he hung limp from the post. He then forced his wife into the freezing temperature without even the benefit of a coat. She was lucky enough to be rescued by a passing neighbor, but not before she suffered frost bite and near fatal pneumonia.

  Mamie, in order to save Jessie from more punishment, confessed what she had done. The husband, sorry now for his deed, begged his wife to return, but she was outraged and refused to do so. The young landowner had lost his wife and scarred a good slave for life. He found it too much of a burden to carry, so he locked himself in the parlor and committed suicide.

  So he is likely the one whom Alma heard making noises, moving furniture, or felt so many times, after moving into the old house.

  179. “Ghostly Knocking Noises”

  Magoffin County

  About seven miles from Salyersville, out on Elk Creek, is this house where I used to live. It was a three-story house, and my parents and us five kids lived there about sixteen years ago. We lived there for about a year. Never had any problems until the second winter that we lived there. There was a knocking at one particular door. This old house had five doors to go in and out of that house. One of the neighbors, a Ward, owned the house. Well, there was a big knocking at one of the doors after we went to bed. That door was right next to my brother’s bedroom.

  My dad and brothers went outside with a shotgun. There was snow on the ground, and you could see their tracks in the snow. But there was never any tracks of anything else around the house. My brother even went under the porch, underneath his bedroom where that door was, and lit the lantern. Didn’t see anything. He checked it all out the next day, but nothing there.

  That noise went on every night for about a week, and they would go outside but nothing was there. Well, Dad and Mom started asking personal stuff. They found out that an old man—a preacher—lived there at one time. He was the first person to live there….

  Dad kept asking all these questions of the neighbors…. He found out that the preacher had died, and they had his funeral there in the house. And later on, there was a child that died, and its funeral was held there in the house, too.

  Well, after we kept hearing that knocking, we didn’t stay there any longer. We left! We stayed gone after that; would not go back in that house. And nobody else ever moved into that house after we moved out. Eventually, they tore it down.

  The neighbors knew nothing about those knocks, but the old house had been deserted for many years before we moved in. My parents never knew who or what the ghostly knocks were, whether they were those of the preacher or not. My dads mother died later on, and Dad thought that maybe the sounds were premonition signs of her impending death.

  180. “Woman’s Ghost Seen on Porch”

  Ballard County

  My mother told me this when I was a little girl back around 1915. Said there was a little country lane or road here in Ballard County that had only two houses on it. An elderly lady lived alone about a half mile down the lane, while a young couple with several children lived at the far end of the lane, or about a mile from the main road.

  The old woman died, and the family of neighbors came and sat up with the corpse all night, just the way people used to always do this. They buried her the very next day. The day after the funeral, one of the little ten-year-old neighbor boys went walking by her house and saw her standing there on her front porch. She was dressed all in white, and a gold light shone all around her. That like to have scared the little boy to death, so he ran back home and never went back down that road again.

  181. “The House on Frame Springs Road”

  Powell County

  This house I’m talking about is located on Frame Springs Road he
re in Powell County. It’s got to be at least a hundred years old. The story goes that there was a young lady that died in the house while giving childbirth. When she passed away, she came back to protect her daughter. She was very protective of girls. The house that she passed away in burned down, and she came to the very next house that was right next to hers. She still lives there today; still haunts that house.

  When my boyfriend’s sister was a little girl, she got really upset because she got punished. Her brother came in and was teasing her, and he was slapped. Said it felt like it was the ghost that actually slapped him. He came out of the house and actually had a print on his face where she had slapped him. His sister swore that she never touched him.

  His sister could communicate with this ghost, and says that she’s beautiful. And if a house gets burned down or torn down, she will meet you in the next house. She is really friendly and takes up with women. They say that you can feel her presence. It is said that she is very protective of a woman or a girl child. I’ve never seen her, but they say she is just beautiful. I’ve felt her but have never seen her. You can tell she’s there.

  My boyfriend’s father got real suspicious. They have an upstairs attic, and they said that overnight it seemed that the attic door was constantly getting opened every night. The nails would always be pulled out of the hinges. So they took the rubber bottom off some old tennis shoes and nailed them up on the door to try to keep the door shut. Said he come back the next day and the soles of the shoes were there on the attic floor, and the nails were there beside them.

  They really don’t know who the girl was or is, but some people think they know who she was in this life. I don’t know.

  We live right next door, and my daughter has experienced some of the things that have happened there.

  182. “Ghostly Activities in an Old House”

  Jessamine County

  When I attended the University of Kentucky in the early 1970s I dated a fellow who enjoyed driving the back roads of Fayette and surrounding counties. On one such occasion, he and his roommate were driving around Jessamine County when they came across what appeared to be an abandoned house. It was a story-and-a-half stone house that sat upon a slight incline. The lot was completely overgrown, and from a distance the house appeared to have been vacant many years. They decided to stop and look around and were soon amazed by what they found.

  The house itself appeared very old. There was no electricity running to it. Since they spotted a well in the backyard, they suspected there was no indoor plumbing. They circled the house and looked in through the windows. Were it not for a thick layer of dust that covered everything, one might think there were people still living in the house. Dishes were placed on the kitchen table as though a meal were to be served.

  The house was completely furnished in a somewhat Victorian-style with several marble top tables. A couple of oil lamps were still sitting about, as were several books and pieces of clothing. The bed was still covered with sheets and quilts. It didn’t make sense that anyone would move away and leave all of their belongings, but that was certainly how it looked.

  The boys left the house and continued riding around, but they couldn’t stop wondering about what they had seen. Late that afternoon, they went back to the house. What they found was just as confusing. The dishes had been removed from the kitchen table and neatly stacked on a shelf. The sheets and quilt had been removed from the bed, carefully folded, and placed at its foot. Yet there was no indication anyone but the two boys had been anywhere near the old house. They could find no footprints but their own outside the house, and from what they could see, the dust inside had not been disturbed. Neither of the boys indicated they believed in ghosts, but they could not explain what they had seen.

  The boys made a few more trips to the house later on. By that time, most of the contents of the house had been moved or stolen. I went along on one of the visits. The kitchen table and chairs were still there. The fellow I was dating described the furniture and showed me where it had been. However, with most of the contents gone, the boys had difficulty establishing their credibility. Hoping to find someone who might have had a similar experience at the house, one of them decided to make some inquiries. He claims he interviewed both a local official and the heir to the property, who was a retired school teacher. According to them, the house had indeed held all the possessions of its former owners, and it was not uncommon for things to mysteriously move around.

  The owners had included a doctor, his wife, and their two children. The entire family, he was told, had disappeared sometime during the first part of the twentieth century. No one ever knew what happened to them.

  183. “The Basement Ghost”

  Rockcastle County

  I used to play in the basement there at our house in Level Green, Rockcastle County, when I was a young girl. Even after I grew out of the playing stage, I still spent most of my time in the basement. But the “atmosphere” changed when I was about thirteen years old. I awoke one night to find a floating ball of blue light on the other side of the room. I would have passed it off as a dream, but I pinched myself to make sure I was awake.

  I watched the light as it floated around the room for several minutes, then it vanished into thin air, leaving a trail of blue light along the path it had floated. The light lingered for several moments. I didn’t sleep the rest of that night, and after that I only went downstairs when I just had to. I felt as if something was there watching everything I did, and it seemed to follow me around the basement. My parents never noticed anything when they went downstairs, but I was still convinced that the basement was haunted.

  In late 1996,1 found I wasn’t the only person to feel that way. My best friend, Vicki, was spending the weekend with me. She loved to play pool (billiards) and the table was in the basement. As soon as we got downstairs, I felt I was being watched. I didnt say anything to Vicki, because I wanted to see if she felt it, too. We played for several hours before Vicki said anything. I noticed she was losing her concentration because her playing kept getting worse. She finally put her pool stick down and told me she felt something staring at her. I didn’t say anything about what I’d seen or had felt in that same way. I didn’t want to scare her more than she already was.

  I left Vicki in the basement alone for a few minutes while I raided the kitchen for snacks. She didn’t tell me what happened while I was gone, but she didn’t let me leave her alone for the rest of the night. When I awoke that night, two more things happened that made me believe without a doubt my basement was haunted.

  First of all, I felt cold despite the fact that Vicki and I were only about ten feet from the wood burning stove. Vicki’s blanket appeared to have been dragged off of her, and she was shivering. Being used to the ghost or whatever it was by now, I didn’t let it bother me. I pulled the blanket back over Vicki and was about to lay back down when the curtains over the sliding glass door opened by themselves. That really scared me. I was too scared to go back to sleep. The curtains closed a few minutes later, and I was praying that I wouldn’t see that blue light again, because if I did I was pretty sure that I’d have a heart attack. I was still awake when Vicki woke up the next morning. I was huddled up against the wall clutching my blanket. I told her what happened with the curtains and the way her cover had been pulled off her during the night. We spent most of that day upstairs with my mom and dad.

  We were scared, but we finally did go back downstairs. It still felt as if we were being watched, but we weren’t going to let it bother us. I think that made it mad, because the next time Vicki came to see me, we spent a couple of hours in the basement before we were too scared to stay any longer. What happened is, we were both in a choir at the same time and we were practicing with a small electronic keyboard. As I played our pitches, the settings on the keyboard’s sound bank began to change all by themselves. … I know the keyboard wasn’t malfunctioning because it still works fine to this day and the batteries in it at that time were brand
new.

  Mom thought we were crazy when we went running upstairs to get away from there. After a few hours, we found the courage to go back down. I felt foolish doing it, but I told whatever ghost or spirit that was there that Vicki and I just wanted to have some fun. We didn’t want to make it mad, but that was my parents’ house that they’d built with their own hands. After that, we didn’t feel scared anymore. I felt like the ghost just wanted some recognition or something.

  To this day, when I go downstairs I can still feel a presence there, but I’m no longer scared like I used to be.

  184. “Three Little Girls”

  Lyon County

  The Campbell family has lived in the same house here in Lyon County on Highway 1943 for fifty-some-odd years. They had three boys and a daughter. One day, the youngest boy, John, was sick with a high fever and was very ill. Later that evening, his fever broke. He called for me to come to his bedroom. I went and asked him what he needed. He asked me, “Who is in the living room?”

  I said, “Nobody but me and David.”

  He looked at me and said, “Mama, there were three little girls that came in here and stood at the end of my bed. They were like stair steps, with old-timey bonnets on, dark clothing, long sleeves, and the older one said to me, ‘You will be okay/ But her lips never moved. Then they all three turned like little soldiers and then walked through your room.” Before they left, John asked them, “Who are you girls?”

  The oldest one again spoke not moving her lips and said, “Glenn.”

  A few months later, my oldest son, Danny, was hired by some relatives to help work in tobacco. Aunt Bessie had fixed lunch for the hired hands, then began talking to my oldest son, Danny, about his house and began telling him about a log cabin that used to be there years ago. Danny said he sure didn’t know that. Aunt Bessie said they had three small little girls who died there with smallpox. Danny asked, “Well, Aunt Bessie, what was their names?”