Kentucky Hauntings

by Roberta Simpson Brown

“I'd like to stay,” said Carla. “I like working for myself. On the other hand, if we are going to go, it would be better to do it before we get into debt.”

  “Right,” said Christy. “So what do we do? Do we go or do we stay?”

  Just then, each woman felt a strong hand on her shoulder. Both heard a male voice whisper distinctly, “Stay!”

  Somewhat taken aback by this unexpected advice, the ladies thought it might be a positive sign that things would get better soon. They decided right then and there that they would keep the restaurant open. They considered ways to make business better. They hired a singer and guitarist to play live music, and they implemented some smart advertising plans. The changes worked, and soon business was booming.

  The ladies did some research on the previous owner and discovered that he, too, had once experienced doubts about staying in this location. He had decided to stay and had made a success of it.

  The ladies still see signs that the late owner is there with them. They feel him standing behind them as they clean the floor, or they find silverware moved around in the kitchen. When this happens, they just smile and say a silent thanks for a business manager that they don't have to pay!

  The Banshee

  This story happened to neighbors and was retold often on stormy nights when the wind would shriek like a banshee.

  The banshee is a ghost that often attaches itself to an Irish family, sometimes following that family to a new country when it moves from Ireland. The banshee appears outside the family's home and wails to let the people know of a coming death. There is much complicated folklore about the banshee and the roles it plays with families, but in the south-central part of Kentucky people connect it to a death warning only.

  To encounter a banshee was certainly not an everyday occurrence, but a banshee probably came into the lives of two neighbors who lived along Damron's Creek.

  It was a late spring day, and Logan Carter and his son, Clyde, were on their way home after hauling gravel all day. It was almost dark, and the woods along the road were already filling up with shadows. The old truck engine sputtered along, sounding almost as tired as Logan and Clyde felt. Clyde was thinking about the hot supper his mom, Lindy, would have ready. He could almost taste the beans, green onions, hot cornbread, and cold buttermilk. They drove past Dennis Sullivan's house and soon pulled into their own driveway. The younger Carter children were playing in the front yard.

  Lindy was outside with her neighbor Maggie Sullivan, the youngest girl in the Sullivan household. They were talking and picking herbs from Lindy's garden just beyond the driveway.

  “Just brew these herbs into a tea for your mother,” Lindy instructed the girl. “It should help her rest and feel better.”

  “I hope the tea works,” said Maggie. “Momma's awful sick at her stomach. She can't keep anything down, and she hardly sleeps at all.”

  “Tell her I'll bring her some chicken soup tomorrow,” said Lindy. “That usually stays down when nothing else will. It seems to give a person strength.”

  Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by something from the woods that none of them had ever heard before. A sound cut through the warm spring air that chilled their bones. It was the combination of a wail and a scream—a keen, piercing shriek. It left all of them in stunned silence for a moment when it stopped. Then Clyde spoke up.

  “What on earth was that?” he asked.

  “Maybe a wildcat,” said his dad.

  “It didn't sound like any wildcat I ever heard,” Clyde disagreed.

  Maggie turned deathly pale, a look of realization spreading across her face.

  “Oh, my Lord!” she said. “It was a banshee! It's come for Momma! I've got to get home. Momma's going to die!”

  She started toward the woods, clutching her herbs tightly. Lindy stopped her.

  “Wait, child,” she called. “You can't go into those woods by yourself! We don't know for sure what that was. It could have been an animal that would hurt you. Let Logan drive you home.”

  Lindy accepted the ride. Tears were streaming down her cheeks when she climbed into the truck beside Logan Carter.

  “That wasn't a wildcat,” she said to Logan. “The banshee has come for Momma. I need to get home as fast as I can.”

  The wailing sound rose from the woods again as they drove off. It seemed to come from near the Sullivan place.

  The Carter family stood in the yard, watching the truck go down the road.

  “What was she talking about?” Clyde asked his mother. “What's a banshee?”

  Lindy didn't know much to tell him about it. She knew that the Irish believed it was a sign of death to hear one wail. She knew that the Sullivans were Irish, so maybe the banshee had followed the family to this country. Mrs. Sullivan had talked about it briefly once in a casual conversation.

  “I didn't know how much of her story to believe,” Lindy told Clyde, “but she certainly believed it.”

  The trip was short, so Logan was back home in a few minutes. They heard the sound once more as he got out of the truck, and then they all went inside for supper.

  “Mrs. Sullivan is in bad shape,” Logan told the family as they sat around the supper table. “She sent her thanks for the herbs, though. Maggie was brewing some tea for her when I left. I only stayed a minute to pay my respects since she was so weak, but she said to tell you that she is looking forward to your good chicken soup tomorrow.”

  Lindy nodded. Chicken soup was a remedy for just about everything.

  The shock the family had felt by the shrieking in the woods subdued the conversation as the Carters ate their supper. Their talk was mostly limited to requests for food to be passed. When they finished, Lindy washed the dishes while the others went into the living room and sat quietly. It was Friday night, and things were usually livelier at the Carters' home. Tonight, though, it was as if they didn't want to do anything to call attention to themselves. Something unknown and sinister was out there in the woods, and they wanted no part of it.

  They all went to bed early, each one glancing at Logan to make sure he locked the door. They slept fitfully, waking up when they heard the terrible wailing in the distance. They were relieved to notice that the sound was not close to their house.

  The next morning after breakfast, Lindy prepared the chicken soup and got ready to take it to Mrs. Sullivan.

  “I'll drive you over,” said Logan. “I don't want you meeting up with that old wildcat.”

  “Dad,” said Clyde, “you know that wasn't a wildcat!”

  “Well,” said Logan, “whatever it was, your mother doesn't need to meet up with it while she's carrying that chicken soup.”

  He and Lindy got in the truck and drove off. The younger children moved closer to Clyde and kept a watchful eye on the woods. No one, including Clyde, wanted to venture too far from the safety of the yard. Finally, they all sat on the porch to wait for their parents to return.

  After a while, Logan and Lindy returned with sad news. Mrs. Sullivan had died just before daybreak. It was right after her death that the wailing had stopped.

  In the days that followed, the Carters debated whether a wildcat had been in the woods, or whether a banshee had come to take Mrs. Sullivan away to the other side. There was a certain amount of evidence to support both sides, but there was not 100 percent proof for either one.

  The Carters never heard the wailing again, so they tried to put the whole thing out of their minds. Sometimes it would come to mind, though, when they were walking through the woods at night, going to the country store, or heading off to visit friends. They all admitted that such thoughts always made them walk a little faster.

  The Rock Quarry

  The rock quarry was just a few miles down the main road from where we lived. We heard this story as a true happening, but sometimes kids wondered if the old folks made it up to scare them away.

  In central Kentucky, an old rock quarry stood abandoned with a few feet of water covering the
bottom. Once productive, it was now an empty, eerie-looking place. There were several “No Trespassing” signs around the boundaries, but the site had few visitors now.

  Three neighborhood boys, Derek, Aaron, and Donnie, thought the old rock quarry was mysterious and irresistible. They had been told time and again by their parents to stay away from the place because it could be dangerous, but the warnings fell on deaf ears.

  “Why do you want to play there?” their parents wanted to know. “There's no fish in the water, so you can't go fishing. And the water is muddy and the bottom has sharp rocks, so you can't go swimming. What's the attraction?”

  The truth was that the boys were not interested in fishing or swimming. They were often picked on by the other boys because they liked to read or sit around doing nothing instead of playing sports, and they wanted someplace to get away from the bullies. They liked to sit on the bank at the quarry and throw rocks into the water. They liked to read stories of monsters, so it was easy to imagine that some killer monster lurked in the scum and mud at the bottom of the quarry. They made up stories about the monster to see who could outdo the other in telling about the monster's escapades. They had formed a secret club, called the Monster Hunters, and they thought that the quarry was the perfect place to meet. It was only five miles down the road from where they lived, and they could easily reach it on their bicycles without being detected.

  One day after a particularly hard PE class where they had been ridiculed by the usual bullies, the three boys could hardly wait to get off by themselves at the quarry. It was peaceful there, and they could forget about the sweaty, smelly gym. Here they didn't have to compete against anybody. Here it was just the three of them against the quarry monster, and they were always the winners.

  The boys parked their bikes behind some bushes so they could not be seen by the road, and made their way to their favorite spot on the bank. They sat looking at the smooth surface of the water and talked about what the quarry must have been like when men and machines moved the rocks. Donnie stood up and walked right up to the water.

  “Mom said that a girl was supposed to have drowned here while the quarry was in operation,” he said to the other boys.

  “Yeah, I heard that, too,” said Derek. “Her boyfriend got mad at her and pushed her in the water.”

  Aaron was listening intently to his two friends, so none of them heard the noise in the bushes behind them. None of them noticed that two boys from PE had followed them when class was over and had been listening to their conversation. Now the two intruders dashed up behind the boys before they knew what was happening. They shoved Donnie into the murky water and threw a couple of rocks at Aaron and Derek before jumping on their bicycles and taking off.

  “Help! I can't swim!” cried Donnie, sinking under the surface.

  His two friends wanted to help, but they didn't know how to swim very well, either. They stood there watching as their friend surfaced once and went down again. Then Derek sprang into action. He grabbed a limb that was on the ground near the bank. Aaron grabbed on, too, and together they carried it to the water's edge.

  As Donnie came up again, he managed to grab hold of the limb they extended to him. Derek and Aaron doubted that they had the strength to pull Donnie from the water, but they knew it was his only chance.

  Much to their amazement, the task proved to be fairly easy. It was almost as if someone were swimming and pushing Donnie along. One last tug and Donnie was on the bank, drenched in muddy water, but safe and sound.

  They all sat on the bank quietly for a moment to catch their breath.

  “Wow,” said Derek, “I wasn't sure we were going to make it at first.”

  “Me either,” said Aaron.

  “It was the strangest thing,” said Donnie. “I thought I was going to die for sure. Then I saw a white face in the water. Next, I felt hands holding me up and pushing me toward the bank while you guys were pulling me in. As I landed on the bank, whatever was pushing stopped and disappeared.”

  “It must have been that girl who drowned,” said Aaron. “You know, the one they never found!”

  It was getting late, so the boys left the quarry and hurried home. Of course, the muddy clothes betrayed their secret meeting place to their parents. Again, they forbade the boys to go there, but the boys didn't obey for long. This time, they had a special purpose for going.

  They picked a beautiful bouquet of flowers and placed them on the bank. They threw a few flowers into the water, in case the girl really was in her watery grave there.

  Donnie whispered, “Thank you!”

  As they turned to go, they heard a splash in the water in the center of the quarry. They looked just in time to see a white figure go under the water. Then all was still.

  The Wet Doll

  When we were young children, we did not have an abundance of toys like kids do today. That made whatever toys we had extra special to us. A neighbor lady, Miss Foley, told this story, but other people had their own versions, too.

  Old stories that were passed from one generation to another often included surprising tales of toys with special powers.

  The Gill family—Ben, Bonnie, and young Charlotte and Calvin—moved into a log house on the banks of the Cumberland River. They had inherited the place from Bonnie's aunt, who had raised her family in the old house. The inheritance couldn't have come at a better time for the Gills, because their house had been burned when lightning struck it and they had been left with no place to live. They had lost everything in the fire—furniture, the children's toys, everything—and they had no money with which to replace their belongings.

  It was another stroke of good luck for the Gills that Bonnie's aunt had left some furniture in the house. Neighbors and other relatives gave them clothes, kitchen items, and bedding to help them set up housekeeping in the new place. Little Calvin made himself a fishing pole, but Charlotte had nothing special to play with. Bonnie and Ben told the children not to play near the river without them, so playtime by the water was limited.

  Several days after they moved in, it rained so hard that the children's play area was even more restricted. They couldn't play outside, so they were bored and moped around the house until Calvin got an idea.

  “Momma, may we play in the attic?” he asked.

  Bonnie thought that was a wonderful idea, so she told them to go ahead.

  Calvin and Charlotte hurriedly climbed the stairs and opened the attic door. They were greeted by a stuffy smell, but they ignored it and turned on the light by the door. As the light flooded the attic room, they were surprised to see several boxes lined up against the back wall. The excited children rushed to the boxes as though they were treasure chests. In the first box they found old clothes, blankets, and quilts. The next box contained old clothes and photo albums. The box after that held old dishes. Then they opened a box filled with old toys! Calvin took out two balls and some toy soldiers. Charlotte removed a toy tea set and a rag doll. When they had finished looking in all the boxes, they realized that the rainy day had passed without their hardly noticing.

  When Bonnie called them for supper, the children decided to bring some of the toys downstairs to play with after the meal was over. Calvin chose the soldiers, and Charlotte picked up the doll.

  Calvin was already heading for the stairs when Charlotte began screaming. He turned to see his sister throw the doll to the floor and begin to cry.

  “What's wrong?” he asked. “What's the matter with you?”

  “The doll!” she sobbed. “It opened its eyes and stared at me. Then it reached out one arm!”

  “It couldn't do that,” Calvin told her. “It's a rag doll. Its eyes don't open, and its arms don't bend. It was just the shadows playing tricks on you.”

  Their mother had heard her daughter's scream and had made it to the top of the stairs by then. Charlotte ran to her, still crying.

  “What on earth is going on up here?” Bonnie asked the children.

  Charlotte repeated
her story while Calvin stood there shaking his head. He picked up the doll and handed it to his mother.

  “See?” he said. “There's nothing wrong with it. It's just an old rag doll. Charlotte's crazy.”

  “Hush that,” Bonnie told Calvin. “Now both of you come on down to supper. Calvin, bring the doll with your soldiers so we can take a look at it later.”

  Calvin followed his mother and sister downstairs. He held the doll and soldiers out for his dad to see. Ben glanced at them and told Calvin to put them in the living room until after supper. When Calvin returned and took his place at the table, the family ate, mostly in silence.

  After the dishes were done, Bonnie joined the rest of the family in the living room. They were all looking at the toys. Ben was pointing out to Charlotte that the rag doll was normal.

  “I wonder who had this doll before I found it,” said Charlotte.

  “It must have belonged to your cousin Emma,” said Bonnie. “She drowned near here in the river when she was just a little girl. She was a sweet child. I am sure she wouldn't mind your playing with her doll.”

  The family experienced no other strange occurrence surrounding the doll, so Charlotte gradually set her fears aside. She named the doll Emma, after her dead cousin. She always kept the doll with her.

  One day, Ben took Calvin with him to help a neighbor do some work on the next farm. About midafternoon, Bonnie heard a rumble of thunder and remembered that she had heard on the radio that they might have severe storms that night. If they did, the power might go out and they might need to light the lamps. She would need oil for the lamps, so she called Charlotte and sent her off to the store to get some.

  “Stay on the path by the river, but don't go near the bank,” Bonnie told her. “Hurry and don't stop to play.”

  “Okay,” promised Charlotte, as she hurried down the path.

  Bonnie saw that the sky was darkening, so she rushed to get supper cooked. She kept an eye on the cloud and an eye on the path, hoping that Charlotte would get home before the storm hit. The clouds began to move faster, and Bonnie began to worry because Charlotte was not home yet. Then she heard the front door open.