Mom cried out to the world with all her might, then pulled the covers over her head and cried herself to sleep. No one in the house heard her scream, including her two sisters there in the room with her.
When Mom awoke the next morning, Grandma asked the girls which one of them had left the door open. They all said that none of them had gotten up during the night to open the door.
To this day, Mom swears this is a true story.
6. “Grandmother’s Return”
Location unknown
This really happened to me some thirty-four years ago, and it remains in my memory almost as fresh as the night it appeared.
I was very close to my grandmother. She raised me from infancy, and I remained with her until I married and moved out. She was a truly saintly person, never a mean word or negative thought.
After my husband and I bought our first house, my grandmother stayed with us a great deal of the time, moving between our home and hers. Early in 1963, after spending some time with us, Grandma went back home to spend a few days. She was eighty-three years of age at the time, and as far as anyone knew she was feeling well and had no health problems. That very night, she passed away in her sleep. I was just devastated and missed her something awful.
For several weeks after her passing, every night I had recurring dreams during which my grandma was always in trouble and I was struggling to help her but never could. I did not wake up during those dreams, but in the mornings I would be exhausted, and the dreams always remained with me throughout the day. Truthfully, I was near the end of my rope with sorrow and could barely go to bed at night because I knew what was coming.
One night, something woke me out of a deep sleep. I don’t know what it was, but it couldn’t have been Jim because he did not rouse up during the night. I had been lying on my side, and as I turned to raise up, I saw my grandmother standing in the doorway looking at me. It was as if she were standing in front of a bright light that made a halo around her. She did not appear to have legs or feet, and she did not speak a word to me.
She was wearing nightclothes, flannel pajamas with a small pink flower design, and her blue hair net which she usually wore to bed. I could not see that she had glasses on. I was simply awestruck. I trembled; my heart was pounding. I intended to get up out of bed, so I turned away to put my feet on the floor. When I turned back, Grandma was no longer there.
After that night, I never saw her again. But I simply know that she came back to take care of me, as she always had across the years.
7. “Bloodstains on a Burial Dress”
Barren County
There was this couple that lived together in Barren County for approximately seven years, beginning in 1946. The wife/mother died, but the man remarried a few years later.
This man and his first wife had a daughter whom the mother loved very much and treated her very nice. Never did do anything that would hurt the little girl. But the man’s second wife treated the little girl something awful; would do everything mean and bad to the girl. One day the stepmother was cooking supper, when the child came in and asked the stepmother if she could have a slice of potato to eat.
The woman slapped the little girl across the mouth with the back of her hand. Blood drooled out of her mouth as the child began crying. The stepmother then went into the living room to finish her housecleaning chores. The child was still crying, but suddenly she was no longer crying.
The stepmother wondered why she wasn’t crying, so she looked into the kitchen, and there the little girl was sitting in the lap of another woman. This woman was hugging the little girl, consoling and comforting her. The woman, who was also wiping the blood from the little girl’s bloody mouth, had on a white dress. When the woman in white noticed that the stepmother was there, she disappeared.
The second wife told her husband what had happened, and the husband then told her that his first wife had told him that if anything bad ever happened to their little daughter, she would come back from the grave.
Well, the husband and his second wife went to the graveyard where the first wife was buried. They opened up the coffin of the little girl’s mother and found fresh blood on the white dress that she had been buried in. It was the blood that was wiped from the little girl’s mouth.
After that, the stepmother never again did anything wrong to the child again.
8. “Return of Great-Grandmother”
Jefferson County
Once when I was sleeping in my room, it suddenly became very cold, like a blanket of snow had fallen on the room. Then I felt as if something were coming down the hallway, and I saw a misty form standing in the doorway. I knew, for some unexplainable reason, that it was my great-grandmother. She seemed to communicate without talking, but I couldn’t quite understand why she was there.
Suddenly, the form started toward the middle of the room, then stopped and backed up. Then it disappeared through the open door.
Right after this all happened, my sister woke up and asked me why it was so cold in the room.
A few years later, I told my grandmother about what had happened, and she told me that her mother, the misty figure that I had seen, had said on her deathbed that she would come back to visit with family members if there were any way possible. I’m sure that what I had seen was the spirit of my great-grandmother, but I never knew why she had come back, especially as a cold-bearing entity.
9. “The Living Mother and Son Who Saw Each Other’s Ghost”
Johnson County
This happened to my son just before he went into the military service. He had a 1950 Ford, and it didn’t run too well. I was always worried about him when he was out in his car.
One night he had gone to see his future wife there in East Point. Well, since I’d always tell him what hour he was to be home, before he left to go see her, he said, “Now, Mom, tonight can I stay out a little later?”
I told him, “Yes.
I’d always stay up and wait for him, but I’d have the lights in my room turned out. He never knew that I was up waiting for him. When I’d hear that old Ford pull into the driveway, I’d sneak up to bed and he wouldn’t know that I was waiting for him.
So this night I lay down. It was in October and kind of cold. We had gas heaters at that time, so I lit one up. And like all gas heaters, it reflected light out into the room.
I laid down on the couch but soon fell asleep. He waked me up as he passed by, then went on upstairs. Well, the rocking chair was rocking by itself, just moving to and fro. Someone had just gotten up out of it. I just thought that my son had sat down and looked at me in the glow of this gas flame, and knowing that I’d been waiting up for him, I thought that he’d bawl me out in the morning. He wouldn’t like for his mama to be herding him so.
Well, I thought to myself, I’ll just go up and take my medicine. So I went up and looked in his room, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. I went back downstairs and sat there and thought and thought. I walked over to the window, standing there looking up the road, but I was still trying to figure out what I had just seen that made me think that it was my son.
I saw the car coming, then hurriedly got in bed, not intending to let him know that I had been up waiting for him. I heard him come inside the house, then try to walk up the stairway real quiet. He went to bed.
I couldn’t go to sleep because I had this other thing on my mind of what I had seen earlier that night. I just sat there thinking about everything. In about thirty minutes he let out the awfullest yell you ever heard. He yelled, “Mother, what are you doing in my room?”
I went to his room then and said, “What’s the matter son?”
He said, “Mother, you were standing right here over me, just moaning so pitiful like. You scared me to death.”
I said to him, “Well, honey, I wasn’t even in here.”
He said, “Yes, you were, Mother.”
So the same thing happened to us both. I came to him and he came to me. That’s strange. I
don’t understand it.
10. “Ghosts of Mother and Father”
Wayne County
The first school I ever taught was the Tuttle School, located in Morgan Hollow. I boarded in a house not too far from the school. I had to pass by the Carrender Cemetery going to and from school. Miss Neethy Tuttle, who lived near this old graveyard, claimed that it was haunted, as was this big, nearby cave where she and her friends all got their water for the house. Her friends also claimed that there were ghosts around there.
Well, I always stayed a little later in the afternoon to clean the school building before I went to my boarding house. Miss Tuttle always told me that something would happen to me because I would get back to the house a little late. She told me many times that, at twilight, she could go out to the graveyard and see her mother and father’s ghosts sitting there on their tombstones, combing their hair. I never did see them, but other people told me the same thing. Just as soon as I started teaching there, they told me all those old stories about ghosts. I reckon they wanted me to believe.
The cemetery was right at the back of the old Bohon Store, an old store that was now deserted. One afternoon when I started home from school, I never heard such wailing and mourning sounds in all my life. The sounds were coming from the old store building. I went in and I heard something upstairs. I went on up the steps, and it was two teenage boys. One of them was a small half-Indian boy, and the other was one of the neighborhood’s rough-tough boys. When I got to the top of the steps, it scared them to death that I hadn’t run, and they wondered why I hadn’t run.
I was laughing when I saw them. I never did hear of the Bohon store being haunted anymore.
At another time, I had to come around by the cave. After I left the cemetery, I came around by the cave before I got to the branch road that went up the hollow. The cave entrance is about half way up the cliff; it’s a big thing. At the foot of this cave is a big spring. This is the head of Little Sinking Creek. Well, Miss Tuttle said that many an afternoon she saw a man and a woman in white robes and long gray hair there at the cave. She’d seen them come out of the cave and go down to the spring to get some water in pitchers. They would then carry the water on their shoulders and go back inside that cave. But, now, I never did see them.
She always thought that they were her mother and father. Their house was located there near the cave. Many men, men who came into that area before the turn of the century to work as loggers, boarded there in that old house. But sooner or later, they all left. They claimed that it was so badly haunted that they couldn’t stay there. And they didn’t!
Miss Neethy Tuttle always begged me to stay there, spend the night in the house with her. This is one thing that I never did do, but I wish now that I had. I wasn’t afraid of what I’d see or what I’d hear, but I just knew that if I stayed, some of the teenage boys around there would try to scare me because I hadn’t demonstrated any fear up to that point.
Now that its too late to spend a night there, I sure wish that I had done so.
11. “The Young Woman in the Window”
Logan County
Back around 1890, a young lady in Russellville, who lived in the sextons house with her parents there by the old cemetery, was all dressed up in an evening gown, ready to go to a fancy ball. This good-looking guy had a date with her, and he was to come by and pick her up in a horse-drawn surrey.
For whatever reason, the girl had been confined to her room by her parents during the afternoon. While she was waiting for the fellow to come pick her up, a terrible storm blew in, bringing lightning, thunder, wind, and heavy rain. The young woman became despondent, then angry, knowing that the fellow would not be able to come by to take her to the ball. Not long afterwards, she walked to the window and looked out at the terrible rainstorm. Then, she clinched her fists and began shouting angry curses at God.
Her words were no more than uttered when a streak of lightning flashed and struck her dead on the spot. She tumbled against the window pane, then fell to the floor. For then and ever after, her image was imprinted on the glass in the window.
Wondering how their daughter was doing, her parents went up to the room in which they had placed her and found her body lying there on the floor. When they went running over to her, they saw the image of their daughter imprinted there in the window.
The image stayed right there even after they had scrubbed it with soap and water several times. Finally, they decided to paint over it so that they would no longer be able to see their daughter there in the window. But when they got through painting over the image and the paint had dried, the image was right there again. Painting over it didn’t hide it.
Two or three days later, the parents painted over the image again, but that still didn’t remove the image. After they had done this for the third time, and the image was still present, they decided to replace the window panes, but that still didn’t take away the image of their daughter. Eventually, they placed wooden boards over the window, boards that were left there for decades.
According to a 1973 article in the Green River Sprite, “The strange image in the window of the cupola of the home puzzled, amused, and frightened generations of Logan countians and their visitors, finally turning the home into a tourist attraction where persons came, parked, and stared at it.” The Sprite article goes on to quote Margaret Barnes Stratton, who described seeing the mysterious image, as follows: “I was one of those who parked, and stared, and distinctly saw the shadow. It was a plain, life-size shape of a woman, arms straight down, the lower part of the body ending at the window sill.”
The sexton’s house in Russellville is home to one of the most famous ghosts in the entire United States. (Photo by the author)
12. “Grandmother’s Ghost”
McCreary County
About a week after my grandmother died, we started seeing things happen at her house. Late at night, about ten o’clock, we would hear my grandmother s wheelchair rattling toward the back door. Then, we noticed the curtains would pull open, as if to see if we were home. And every morning her living room curtains were pulled open. Later on, my cousin cut down some of Grandmas flowers. Mom said she see Grandma standing looking where her flowers had been cut down.
These things really happened.
13. “The Swimming Ghost That Foretold Danger”
Hart County
My dad told me a story about a friend of his, Arnold Jones. This fellow, Jones, lived with his gramma and grampa. When he was about eleven or twelve years old, his grampa took sick and died. He had very close to his grampa, but like most kids who lose a grandparent, he was still able to function.
The kids in the area used to go swimming in the Green River all the time. But one day, Arnold Jones decided to go swimming alone. He was in the river, and he said that it suddenly came up a horrible storm with thunder, rain, and lightning. At that point, he saw his grampa swimming down the river on his back. His grandfather warned him to get out of the water because it was very dangerous to stay in it during the storm.
Soon after he got out of the water, lightning struck the river at the very spot where he had been swimming. He knew that he would have been killed if his grampa hadn’t come back to warn him of impending death.
14. “Julie’s Promise”
Russell County
I was barely five years old when I had my first ghostly experience. At that age I was too young to know that it was a ghost I had seen on a bright spring morning.
It happened when I lived with my parents on a farm just outside of Russell Springs, where the towns hospital stands today. We had just moved back from Cincinnati, where my dad had been working, and I was glad to be home. I hadn’t wanted to move to Cincinnati back in the fall because it meant leaving my favorite cousin, Julie, who played with me almost every day.
“Don’t worry,” Julie told me. “We’ll see each other again soon. I promise.”
During the months when I was away with my family, Julie was diagnosed with
tuberculosis. Back then, the disease was usually fatal. As she struggled against the inevitable, Julie asked to join the local church. Since baptisms were held outside in the creek, Julie’s mom and dad decided it might kill her to be exposed to the wet and cold. Thus, her baptism was postponed until spring, but by spring Julie had died.
At the time of Julie’s death, I had the whooping cough, so Mom and Dad didn’t take me to the funeral. They told me that Julie was dead, but they didn’t discuss the details of the funeral. When we moved back to the farm, all I knew was that Julie was gone forever and I missed her.
So on a bright spring morning while Dad was working on the farm and Mom was ironing, I was in the front yard alone, lying on the ground. As I looked at the blue sky, three little fluffy white clouds came drifting across it. Suddenly, one changed its shape. It looked like a long, flat box to my childish eyes, though later I realized it was in the shape of a coffin. The top half of the lid lifted and a woman sat up. I saw at once that it was Julie.
She leaned over and looked down, smiling and waving at me. Her blue eyes looked happy, and her naturally curly red hair blew gently around her radiant face. She didn’t speak aloud, yet I heard her in my mind.
“Come play with me,” I called.
She shook her head a bit sadly and explained that she didn’t have time. She had something important to do, but she was happy to see me again—like she promised.
All the time she was communicating with me, she was holding a gold locket in her fingers. Then one last wave, Julie lay back down, the lid closed, and the long box changed back to the little white cloud. I watched, feeling both happy and sad, as the three little clouds floated on out of sight. Then I raced into the house and told Mom what I had seen.
“Julie’s dead,” Mom reminded me. “You couldn’t have seen her. Don’t upset your Aunt Zola by telling her about this when you see her.”
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 31
