“We were in our living room opening our gifts on Christmas morning when we heard a thud in the hallway. We looked out in the hall and there at the bottom of the steps stood the ghostly woman. She only stayed a couple of seconds and then she was gone.
“In January and February, we heard the thud, but we were so used to it now that we never bothered to look. My parents did ask around about the history of the house, but nobody had any information.
“March was a rainy month that year. One day that month, my parents planned to spend the day helping a neighbor with some work. They asked if I wanted to go, but there was really nothing for me to do there. I decided to stay home. I could have supper ready when they returned.
“The rain and the boredom of being alone inspired me to explore the attic. There was an old trunk up there that we had never looked through. I opened it up and took out the contents, one by one. There were some sheets and pillowcases and a few quilt pieces. A quilt was the last item in the trunk, or so I thought when I lifted it out. That’s when I saw the old journal on the bottom.
“My hands were shaking with excitement when I lifted it out and opened it. The text didn’t have an introduction. The writer did not say, ‘Dear Diary’ or anything like that. The writer had just written a partial date followed by an entry. Each entry was signed ‘Amanda.’
“The first part of the journal was full of information about daily life. Amanda wrote about her garden, the crops, and her husband’s frequent absence from home. Now and then there was a personal entry about her loneliness and her longing to have a child. She began to comment on her husband’s change in attitude toward her. He refused to think about having a baby. He refused to take Amanda anywhere, even to town with him on Saturday. The only place she was allowed to go was to church, and she had no time to socialize there. As soon as the service ended, he led her away and went straight home.
“The final entries in the journal took on a more sinister tone. Amanda was suspicious at first. At church, she had heard a whisper about her husband and the young Widow Breeding. Now, when he went away at odd times, she knew he was probably going to Widow Breeding’s farm.
“Whenever she tried to talk to her husband about what was going on, he became angry and told her to leave if she didn’t like it. She couldn’t leave. She had nowhere to go and no skills to work and earn a living for herself.
“One night when he came home about 2:00 a.m., she confronted him about Widow Breeding. He didn’t deny it. He told her he was going to divorce her and marry the widow.
“Amanda was frantic. ‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave here. I have no family.’
“The last entry in the journal was dated March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. I am afraid my husband is going to kill me and make it look like an accident. What a terrible burden to bear to think that someone who promised to love you forever would be able to take your life! He says I am in the way. Maybe if he kills me, someone will find this journal and know the truth.
“That was the last thing she wrote. I could hardly wait for my parents to get home so I could show them the journal.
“They were very surprised at the journal’s contents. They decided to take it to the local church and let the reverend read it. He checked the church records and found that an Amanda was listed among the members. There was a headstone for her in the graveyard.
“The reverend then did a kind thing. He had a special memorial service for Amanda on St. Patrick’s Day, revealing the sad contents of the journal to the congregation.
“I left the journal at the church with the reverend. We stayed on for another year before Dad’s job took us elsewhere, but we never saw Amanda’s ghost again. I think all she wanted was to have the world hear her side of the story.”
Beware of March
Roberta tells this story about her grandmother and their fear of the month of March.
To this day, carry-over fears from my childhood make March a scary month for me. I read in school how Julius Caesar, though warned of his death on the Ides (the 15th) of March by a soothsayer, was murdered on that day. People said that the Ides of March was a day of doom and gloom.
I was afraid of tornadoes and the spring storms that were usually violent in nature. And no child was ever more respectful to fairies and leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day than I was! I wanted to keep a low profile during the entire month so as not to draw bad luck down on my family and me.
Grandmother Simpson reinforced my uneasiness by fearing the month of March herself.
“If I live through March,” she would often say, “I’ll live another year.”
I really worried as a child, because I loved my grandmother very much and I didn’t want her to die. I would make a daily check on her to see if she showed any signs of illness. Every year, I breathed a sigh of relief when the Ides of March passed.
“Good!” I’d say to myself. “I’ll have Grandma another year!”
Grandmother Simpson was very particular about what she cooked on St. Patrick’s Day. She believed corned beef and cabbage were essential to bring good luck. Everyone in the family loved the smell of it all through the house when she was cooking.
When I was about nine years old, we moved away from Grandmother Simpson’s farm, and the old lady went to live with her youngest son near Glasgow, Kentucky. Her health was failing, but she still had periods of feeling good enough to come visit. When she would leave, I felt sure I would see her again because she had made it through March.
In 1958, I was a senior in high school. Grandmother Simpson by then was in very poor health, so the family would visit her whenever they could. My uncle kept the family updated about her condition.
Sometimes he would say she was feeling up to having visitors, but we would find when we got there that she had taken a turn for the worse. I hoped the warm weather of spring would make her feel better.
March came, and the days passed as I counted them one by one. The Ides of March went by without incident. Then St. Patrick’s Day arrived, and my aunt fixed Grandmother Simpson corned beef and cabbage. It was one of her bad days, so she only ate a few bites. That was a very bad sign. I wished for March to pass and for Grandmother to be all right, but this March, it was not to be. I remembered her words “If I live through March, I’ll live another year.” She died peacefully on March 21, 1958.
The next year was a hard one. It was not easy to lose Grandmother. The March after her death, I was a freshman at Berea College. On St. Patrick’s Day, I thought of her corned beef and cabbage, and sadness washed over me as I realized she was really gone.
I took a walk to try to get my mind off home and all the memories. When I came back to the dorm and opened the door to my room, I was almost overwhelmed by the smell of corned beef and cabbage cooking! I stood there, taking it all in for a moment, and then the smell was gone.
There was a strictly enforced rule about no cooking in the dorm, so I knew it couldn’t be anyone really cooking anything. The dorm was located too far from the cafeteria for any cooking odors to drift over. I knew it was a sign from Grandma that I was not alone.
I smiled to myself. I could almost hear Grandmother Simpson saying, “You know, loved ones never leave. I am in another place, but I am not forever gone.”
I still remember that on scary days in March.
A St. Patrick’s Day Ghost at Waverly?
We never feel a collection of ghost stories is complete without a story about Waverly Hills Sanatorium.
Waverly Hills Sanatorium has often been described as one of the scariest and most haunted places in the world. We have visited the spooky place many times, and something always happens that we can’t explain. When we consider the background of Waverly, we are not surprised that this place has truly earned its reputation.
In the 1900s, Louisville, Kentucky, had the highest death rate from tuberculosis in the country. Louisville was such a low valley area that it was the perfect breeding ground for the tuberculosis bacteria. A cruel, brutal lu
ng disease, tuberculosis had no cure at that time. Plenty of rest, fresh air, and nutritious food were the only treatment.
In 1910 a small two-story, forty-bed hospital was built on one of the highest hills in southern Jefferson County to try to contain the disease. It was evident at once that this hospital was not big enough.
Officials began fund-raising for a larger hospital. Soon they had $11 million and land that was donated for the project. Construction was started in 1924, and Waverly Hills opened in 1926 as the most state-of-the-art tuberculosis hospital in the country.
In spite of the dedication of the doctors, nurses, and researchers, however, thousands and thousands of patients died at Waverly. To keep up the morale of those who did have a chance to recover, a “body chute” (or “death tunnel”) was built from the hospital to the bottom of the hill, where there were train tracks for trains and vehicles to pick up the dead bodies. The survivors did not have to see the dead carried away.
In 1943 Albert Schatz, a graduate student at Rutgers University, discovered the antibiotic streptomycin, which pretty much wiped out tuberculosis by the 1950s.
Waverly Hills closed in 1961. It was later reopened as Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium, but the state closed it in 1982 because of the bad treatment it gave its patients.
After that, the land changed hands several times. One owner allowed the building to be almost destroyed by vandals. It is currently owned by Charles and Tina Mattingly, who offer tours that help with the restoration of the building.
With the energy of the life and death of so many people left there, we can understand that paranormal experiences might be commonplace. We strongly urge you to take a tour and see for yourself if you think it is haunted. (You must have reservations, so before you visit, contact Tina Mattingly on Facebook or contact the Waverly Historical Society online.)
We have no identity for the ghost in the following story, but we think it might have been Irish.
A couple from out of town came to visit us one day, and we decided to treat our guests to a ghostly tour of Waverly. During the tour we experienced slamming doors and shadow people, and as we walked by the kitchen, we smelled bread cooking. Our friends were okay with all this, but the lady began to feel a bit spooked as our guide led us down the third-floor hallway.
Our friend dropped to the back of the group when a light showed up in front of us, and then she suddenly called out, “Ouch!”
We all stopped and turned around to see what had happened.
“Which one of you pinched me?” she asked.
“Nobody was behind you,” Lonnie pointed out. “None of us pinched you.”
“Well, something pinched me,” she insisted.
“Maybe it was a ghost,” said Roberta.
Our friend did not seem to be too pleased with this suggestion, but she didn’t make any more comments at the time.
We all followed our guide a little farther down the hall when again our lady friend called out, “Ouch!”
“Is one of you pulling a prank on me?” she asked. “You are trying to scare me!”
We pointed out again that we were all in front and that she was pinched from behind. She still didn’t look convinced.
Nothing further happened until we were almost at the end of the tour. Again the lady interrupted.
“Ouch! That hurt!” she said. “I want to get out of here.”
She was happy when we were finally back in our car on our way home.
“Why would something want to pinch me?” she asked.
Her husband laughed and said, “Do you know what day this is?”
“No,” she said. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day!” he told her. “You are the only one wearing brown and orange. The rest of us are wearing green!”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I never could understand why people get pinched for not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a silly custom.”
Did we have an Irish ghost in our midst that night? Was it just carrying out an old custom? Or was there a presence there that simply did not like our friend?
We have invited the couple to visit and take another tour, but the lady’s answer has always been, “I’ll think about it.”
We have a feeling that, if she does come again, it won’t be in March!
Easter
Easter is a religious holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead three days after his crucifixion by the Romans.
The holiday may be observed in several ways—by attending church services or sunrise services, taking part in egg hunts, sharing family meals, and engaging in prayer vigils.
Easter is a movable feast, which means it does not have a fixed day of celebration on the calendar. The earliest direct evidence of the celebration of Easter dates from the middle of the second century AD.
Easter was a special religious holiday to us, as it was to everyone else in our little community. We went to church, sometimes a sunrise service, and prayed in gratitude for Christ’s resurrection.
Easter gave us a good feeling because it confirmed our faith in rebirth with the new life of spring. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing, and little animals romped and played.
After church, we came home to eat a big dinner and then have an egg hunt. We didn’t have Easter baskets, and the Easter Bunny didn’t have us on his list for home delivery. Finding colored eggs and winning small prizes was good enough.
There was only one Easter superstition that we believed in. It was considered good luck to wear new clothes on Easter, so everybody usually showed up at church with new clothes to ensure good fortune during the remainder of the year. It was stylish for ladies to wear new bonnets (usually homemade) and for little girls to wear new black patent leather shoes (which had to be store bought, of course).
Home for Easter
There wasn’t much money to spend on our Easter wardrobe, so most of our clothes, especially for females, were homemade. Dresses and shirts were made from feed sacks, sacks that contained food that our fathers bought at the store for the livestock. Flour sacks and sugar sacks were used to make undergarments like panties, slips, and shorts.
Roberta’s cousin Emma lived in the city, and she would bring gifts when she came to visit. There were stockings for Roberta’s mother and grandmother, pretty anklets for Roberta and her sister, and socks for Roberta’s father. Even in the city, Emma knew about the tradition of wearing new clothes on Easter.
One story Emma told about a family she knew in the Frankfort area always stuck in Roberta’s mind. The family was poor, but the father and mother managed to provide new outfits for themselves and their little girl at Easter. The little girl liked brightly colored dresses with white lace collars. She watched her mother sew the new clothes every year and tried to learn how her mom did it.
Then, one year in February, the little girl’s mother came down with a fever. Her medicine cost quite a bit of money, and there was little money left when she died. The father barely had enough to provide food, so he told his little daughter that there would be no new clothes for Easter that year.
The weeks passed, and the daughter missed her mother very much. She looked at the sewing machine that she had never learned to use, and she often opened the dresser drawer and looked at the feed sacks and lace that her mom had put aside for her dress. She wished the material with the pretty flowered design could magically turn into a dress, but she knew that was impossible.
“Do you know how to sew?” she asked her dad, but he smiled sadly and shook his head.
The night before Easter, the father and daughter both went to bed with heavy hearts.
“I miss Momma,” the little girl told her father.
“I know,” he said. “I miss her, too.”
“Jesus rose from the dead,” the little girl said. “I wish Momma could, too.”
“She will someday,” he said. “That’s what the Bible tells us.”
“But n
ot in time to make me a new dress for Easter?” the little girl asked.
“No,” he replied. “I’m afraid not.”
He kissed his little girl, tucked her in, and went to bed himself. They would have to get up early in the morning for the sunrise service, even if they didn’t have new clothes to wear.
Both slept restlessly. During the night, the little girl dreamed she heard the sound of the sewing machine. She woke up and listened, and she could almost see her mother there in the other room. She went back to sleep and continued to dream.
It was still dark when her father woke her for breakfast.
“Look in your closet and find something to wear,” he called to her.
She got out of bed and started to the closet, but something on her chair caught her eye. She moved closer and saw two things.
“Daddy! Daddy! Come quick!” she shouted.
He hurried in to see what she was excited about, and couldn’t believe what he saw. There on the seat of the chair was a beautiful dress with a design of spring flowers and white lace stitched around the collar. Then his gaze went to the back of the chair. There hung a new shirt for him made out of white flour sacks.
They had certainly had no visitors in the night, so where could the clothes have come from? Did the mother return to make sure they would not have to wear old clothes? Had they had a visit from an Easter ghost? Would they ever know the answers? To them, it was a miracle they simply accepted.
The father and his daughter felt especially lucky that morning as they wore their new Easter clothes and attended the sunrise service, where they thanked and praised the Lord for everlasting life.
Easter Bunny
Roberta’s Great-Grandmother Alley loved sentimental stories, and her daughter, Grandma Simpson, passed a few of her stories on.
Great-Grandmother Alley was staying with friends in northern Kentucky for a short visit at Easter. She had arrived a few days early, and she was enjoying helping out with the Easter preparations.
Haunted Holidays Page 3
