Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  Maggie would take one leap, and over she would go. Seems as you could hear her say, “Stick on partner, here we go.”

  We always knew when we saw them coming if Gnatt was drunk or not by the way the mare would act. She would come to the gate and just sail over it, and never wait for it to be opened.

  In 1920, I had an older sister, Emmezell, who way lying on her deathbed. To her, there was not any of us who was as dear as Gnatt. While lying there dying, Emmezell called Gnatt to her bedside and asked him to give up his rowdy ways and to be a good boy; quit his drinking, and lay down his Sweetheart.

  He saw that she was going fast, so he said, “Sis, I promise, I promise.”

  Not long after her talk with Gnatt, she died. He laid down his pistol and quit drinking for about two months, then he started drinking again, and picked his Sweetheart back up. The first day, he started hunting for trouble, he got drunk and started back home riding Maggie. He had his gun and a box of shells along. When he got about three miles from home, he heard someone singing.

  At first, he thought the singing was far off, but it began to get closer and closer. At last, it sounded as if it was under Maggie’s belly. He began to sing to himself to try to drown out the voice, but it didn’t work. The louder he sang, the louder it sang. Then he listened to the words of the song, and he said, “Sis, oh Sis, this is you, for I have heard you sing this song so many times.”

  She was singing “The Drunkard’s Hell.”

  The horse even acted like it heard her singing, and tried to get Gnatt to get off. Gnatt gave Maggie the spur and the faster she got, the louder the voice sounded. So Gnatt took out his pistol and shot all his shells trying to drown out the singing, but the voice got louder and louder.

  When he got to the house, he was saying, “Mom, Mom, Emmezell is out there right now under Maggie’s feet.”

  Mom said, “Son, what on earth are you talking about?”

  Then he told her what happened to him. However, that didn’t stop him until about four years ago.

  Gnatt still talks about Sister’s ghost behind him. This really happened to my brother, Gnatt Hudson. I was only six years old at the time, but I remember it quite well.

  30. “The Touch of My Mother”

  McCreary County

  One night I was resting on my bed. It was January 14, 1991, the day that my mom passed away, but one year later. I felt real bad. Something touched my arm two times. I jumped up, but I saw nothing. So, I laid back down. Then, whatever it was touched my feet. Then, I thought, well, maybe it’s Mom.

  At that point, I started feeling so much better.

  31. “The Ghost of a Wife Seeking Vengeance”

  Cumberland County

  Now, this is a ghost story. It was told many years ago. They said that this mans wife told him that if she died before he did, that she would come back and haunt him. So she died before he did.

  Well, he said that every night when he fell asleep, something with icy, cold hands would hit him. Well, he got tired of this, and was scared as well, so one night he took his pocket knife to bed with him. That night, when this thing, whatever it was, took hold of his hand, he struck it with his knife.

  They always told that the next morning he found a finger that he had cut off, there in bed with him. The finger that he found had his wife’s gold ring on it. He’d cut it off with his knife. After that, the ghost never did come back again to bother him.

  32. “A Visit from My Uncle”

  Jessamine County

  When my cousin visits us, she always asks my mom to tell us a ghost story that happened to her when she was about fourteen years old. This is how Mom tells it:

  “It was late one chilly December night in 1974, here in Nicholasville. My sister was awake studying in what used to be my grandmother’s room before she had a stroke and went to the nursing home. I was asleep in my own room, which was next to my grandmother’s room. I was awakened by this noise that was coming from her room—a noise that sounded like paper crumpling. At the same time that I woke up, my sister came into my room to see what I was doing. She’d heard the same noise and thought it was coming from my room.

  “We listened closely to see if we could tell what the crumbling noise was. It sounded like it was coming from in between the walls. As the noise continued, I asked my sister to come to my room and spend the night. That noise just would not go away. We both lay there awake in my bed, silently listening, unable to move or discuss what was happening. I mean we were scared but whatever we heard did not seem evil-intended.

  “During the night we also heard other noises, like furniture moving across the floor, glass dishes being taken from the cabinet and placed on the table and counter top, and finally, footsteps walking down the hallway.

  “We got out of bed the next morning but were still unable to discuss or determine what we had heard. Mom was already up and straightening up the living room. So we asked her if she had heard anything that night, but she wouldn’t say anything. I felt like she knew something that she wasn’t telling us.

  “The Christmas tree was still in the living room, and most of the presents that we had opened were still under the tree. However, I did notice that some of the presents had been moved across the room. As I looked around I also noticed that some pictures on top of the TV were turned over, face down. …

  “When New Year’s day came, we all had plans for the night. As for me, I was going to a party and spending the night with a friend. My sister was baby-sitting, and Mom went to our neighbors. The next day when I got home, Mom told me that we would be spending the night with our neighbors.

  “She did tell me that when she got home the night before that the furniture in the living room had been moved around. We were all somewhat scared, so our neighbor came over to our house to stay with us the next night.

  “That was a quiet night. The cold, damp feeling was gone, and everything seemed back to normal again.

  “After that, it was years before we could talk about that December night. My sister and I finally got the nerve to ask our mom what she knew about the things that happened back then. She told us that she also heard the crumbling noises and furniture scraping across the floor, and glass dishes being moved around. She said that she thought it was an intruder in our house, so she came out of her room with a shoe in her hand ready to defend us. She walked down the hall and turned into the living room. There by the front door was a mist that sunk immediately to the floor. But just as she saw this mist, she thought she heard the name “Josie” in a low whisper. That made her think that it was her uncle, who had passed away when she was a young child. She also said that there were dishes on the counter and table, and the furniture was moved around from where it was.

  “Looking back at that strange time, we finally understand what had happened. Grandmother s older brother, who also had been in a nursing home because of a stroke and had died there, had come to visit us to let us know how much my grandmother still needed us. And it may be that he was also putting things back the way he thought Grandmother had them when she left the house to go to the nursing home.

  Whatever the reason, he gave us strength we needed to visit her and to make her final living years here on earth as happy as we could.

  33. “A Mother’s Ghost at a Window”

  Graves County

  My mother was born in 1913 in Graves County, Kentucky. She told me this story of what happened when she was a child. She often passed by this haunted house that was located along the Kentucky-Tennessee border. She would visit her Uncle Charlie and Aunt Lora Smith. Often she would ride with Uncle Charlie in his horse-drawn buggy when he would go into town. They would pass by this house, and he told her the following story about that house.

  This married couple that once lived there did not have children for a long time. After several years of marriage, they became the proud parents of a new baby. They just doted on this child. Well, when the child was about six months old, the mother and the father and the littl
e one were all found dead. Nobody knew then, nor do they know now, at whose hand they all died.

  The mother and father had evidently been murdered first, and the child had died of starvation because nobody had found their bodies for some time.

  There was this portico, or the same thing as a carport as we call it today. It was like a little roof or shed supported by columns, built onto the side of this huge, old, white two-story house that had gingerbread trim. There, in this portico, sat a surrey—a fancy horse-drawn buggy—for many years.

  My mother, when she was a little girl, traveled with Uncle Charlie in what would have been considered a buckboard, not a fancy means of conveyance like a surrey. He told her that people passing along the road by this old house often heard a baby crying, and the sounds seemed to be coming from the surrey. When people would go up to the surrey and pat it with their hands, the baby would stop crying. Then, as they walked away the baby would begin to cry again. But Mother never did do that herself. Her uncle could never get her to go up into the yard.

  The house itself was also haunted on the inside, as Uncle Charlie, my mother, and others who passed along by the old house often thought they glimpsed the baby’s mother looking out of an upstairs window trying to see where her baby was. Oh, that must have been a very sad mother longing to comfort her crying baby.

  The deaths of the three family members occurred long before my mother’s time, but she did hear the baby crying several times when she would travel along the road there in front of that old house. It always gave her the creeps. That old house was still there when I was a little girl. I never heard or saw anything when I went by there, but I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if I did! When I was a little girl just about everybody in that community talked about the ghosts of that family, and some still do.

  34. “A Great-grandmother’s Return”

  Jefferson County

  Its been told by my mother and grandmother that my great-grandmother, when she was dying, stated that she would come back to visit her children and grandchildren. As for me, I didn’t know anything about what she had said.

  We have three floors in the house in which we live. Well, one night I was in the basement. From the basement you can look up toward the kitchen and the library. These rooms are close together. That night, apparently my great-grandmother came back to see her children, for when I looked up toward the library I could see this misty figure floating along the top of the steps. I didn’t see any feet, but I could tell that it was a black lady with silver hair and a long, white gown. As I said, I didn’t see any feet; she was just levitating there. As I was lying on the couch when I saw that, I thought maybe that I was just dreaming. Sol closed my eyes in hopes that she would go away. But she didn’t; she just stayed there in this floating-like position.

  I closed my eyes again and opened them, but she was still there. I closed my eyes a third time, but she was still there. I didn’t know what to do. I think I was half asleep and half stupid because I got up and went to the stairway to get a closer look. When I got almost to the stairway, she disappeared. But I was close enough to see that it was indeed a black woman with silver hair. However, she was not real, but floating.

  Later, when I told my mother about it, she told me that she, too, has had several experiences like this one. She truly believed that it was my great-grandmother who just comes back to see how the family is doing.

  35. “Was It the Ghost of Mom?”

  Jefferson County

  My mother died a year ago, and at that time I was living in an apartment with some friends. My dad and sisters wanted me to move back in the house, so about a week after Mom was buried I moved back home. It was really eerie, for without her there it was creepy, creepy. At first I said, “I am not going to let this get to me.” But it did. Every little noise in the house made me jump. I was walking around, all paranoid.

  My friend, Charity, moved in with me…. My dad thought I might like having a friend live with me, since Mom was gone. I used to tell her about these noises and how I was paranoid all the time. She believed me, too. I guess she could see how much it bothered me.

  Anyway, here comes the scary part. One night, me and Charity were sleeping. We were sharing my double bed. We kept hearing noises and feeling like someone was in the room with us. I thought Charity was asleep, but she sat up and said, “Laura, I think someone is in here.”

  I said, “Me, too.”

  Well, we turned on the light and sat there for a while. Then we looked around and everything was okay, so we turned the light off and went back to bed. Just as I began dozing off, I felt a chill at the foot of the bed. Then my feet started getting really cold because the whole foot of my bed was getting colder and colder.

  Charity began to cry, and whispered, “Laura, there is something cold on my feet.”

  I screamed out, “Me, too!”

  So we jumped out of bed and threw on some shoes. That was like three o’clock in the morning, but we left that room, went and got in the car and drove over to Charity’s house and slept there. I think we stayed there for about a week, then moved into an apartment.

  I know that house my family lives in is haunted, but I don’t know if it’s Mom or not.

  36. “A Telephone Call from a Dead Father”

  Pulaski County

  My dad died on April 4, 1984, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Needless to say, I was in complete shock and had a hard time dealing with it. So for a week after his death, I stayed with a friend of mine, Laura. Her parents were out of town on spring break.

  One night, Laura and I were watching movies until late. The phone rang, and something in my mind told me that I needed to answer the phone. For some odd reason I chose to answer it upstairs instead of downstairs where we were. I ran up the steps and picked up the phone. The voice on the other end sounded very distant, but it was a voice that gave me cold chills. It was Dad’s voice! He had a distinct, coarse voice, so I knew it was he. I could feel my heart pounding because I was so excited.

  He basically just said, “Hello,” and made small talk, but it soothed me just to hear it. I woke up from my state of shock when I heard myself scream, “Wait!”

  After that incident took place, I felt a peace I hadn’t felt since his death.

  37. “Granny Hayden and the Ghost Star”

  Lyon County

  When Mom loaded my brother and sister and me into the car, and went to the store and bought lemon drops, I knew that we were going to see Granny Hayden. She was an old woman who always wore dresses she made herself with a bibbed apron pinned on the front. She had a fondness for lemon drops, which she never bought for herself. She always found something in the house to give the children—a flowerpot, or a penny, or a bar of soap shaped like a shoe. She played the piano and the harmonica and guitar—sometimes two at the same time! She knew more songs than I knew numbers, and she laughed and hugged us and we loved her.

  Her name was Emma Kuhn Hayden, and she was my great-grandmother. She was known for her hands …; they could make almost anything—quilts, paper stars, a crocheted tablecloth with the Lords Prayer worked into it—which all her children would fight for when she died.

  She was known for her independence. Her husband had been dead for a while when I knew her, but she lived by herself on their farm … and kept animals and would one day drop dead in the chicken house with no fuss at all. She was known for her lack of selfishness … and for her perfect grace in never seeing herself as anyone beyond ordinary. And the thing I would like most to ask her about if I had known her beyond early childhood is another thing altogether. She saw her sister leave this world, and told this story as if it were not the least bit out of the everyday rhythm of her life.

  Granny Hayden’s ancestral people, the Kuhns, were an unusual family to appear in the Land between the Rivers. Her father, Emil Maximillian Kuhn, was born in Baden in 1841 and was a scholar at Heidelberg University. For a reason somehow involving religious vows he did not care to take, he fled Germa
ny and came to the United States at the time of the Civil War. He and his wife, Frieda Beichoff Kuhn, became professors at the University of Cincinnati…. They came Between the Rivers when he took a position as an agent of the DeGraffenrieds in 1884….

  The place where the Kuhns lived was made up of hills and hollows, and it was a long way from Germany. It was a long way from anywhere, as we would see it today…. For a mother, the greater hardships were physical and natural. People, especially children, got sick. Many of the people Between the Rivers during those years were too far from a doctor to even consider him or her a necessity. A doctor might be brought in, literally, for a birth or a very grave injury or illness, but even then the physical and financial difficulties of reaching one in time must be weighed against the patient s potential to be healed by God, time, and home remedies. Families had their own, sometimes peculiar, ways of treating sickness. Many remedies contained ingredients we would consider harmful today, such as kerosene and turpentine. My own grandmother treated almost every minor affliction with one or two colors of Watkins salve, pink or green, until she couldn’t buy it anymore…. A lot of people still get sick, and everybody still dies. There were children [back then] who became ill one day and died the same night, before the necessity for getting the doctor was much more than obvious. That s what happened to Elsa.

  Elsa woke one morning with a fever—no one knew how much fever, because there was no thermometer—and was told to stay in bedIt was a bitterly cold day, which would have been weighed into the balance of whether or not to go for the doctor. The doctor, in this case, was more than miles away. He was miles through the woods and over the ridge, and down to the ferry, which might not be running on such a cold day. He was up from the ferry landing in the little town of Kattawa…. There was no one to ride for him except Emma, the oldest sister….