Kentucky Ghosts and Haunted Stories
Here are the 15 most terrifying and spine-chilling stories you’ll read this year.
Key Points
Madisonville – Shepherdsville – Ashland – Spottsville Baby – Hotrod Haven, The Mountain Breaks – Mommy, Chester is coming – Okolona – Clermont & White Hall, Della Barnes – Private Residence in Louisville – Military School – Private Residence in Greenville – The Bellwitch Cemetary in Greenville, Whitehall State Historic site.
1. Ashland
In 1984, my family took a picture of my little sister. To our surprise, when we got the photograph back, there was a picture of something very unusual that appeared. There was the face of something that looked like a man and a woman with long, wirey hair, and it had a strange look on its face as if it were peering at my sister upside down through the tv screen. It can’t be fake because the greatest technology back then was the colour computer.
It is strange because the TV was turned off and a light could not reflect such a vivid image. Also, our bathroom was in the basement, but you had to walk out around the house to go down into the basement, and directly behind the toilet there was something that made a hissing noise and would follow you up the hill and breathe on the back of your neck. The demon or whatever it was scared the $#%!* out of me and everyone else who lived there.
2. Spottsville Baby
The story goes like this: A young woman who had had a love affair with an older man ended up pregnant. Afraid of what her parents may do, she hides the pregnancy. When the child is born, she immediately takes the child to a lake in Spottsville and throws the baby in, finally putting an end to her secret. Nowadays, if you drive to the bank of that lake and leave your lights on after turning your engine off, the baby is supposed to come out of the lake, climb on top of your hood, and peak into your windscreen to see who has come to visit.
Trying to turn the engine of your car on will not work; the engine will not even turn. Once the baby has had enough, he will get off the car and return to the lake, leaving you unharmed and letting you go. The baby does not hurt anyone; it just wants company.
3. Della Barnes
I was born and raised in a town very close to Paducah, KY, where the legacy of Della Barnes is so prominent. This story has been told to me for the past 35 years. The story I have on Della Barnes was told to me by my father, who was in fact born and raised in Paducah, KY, in the early 1900s (born in 1928). He even went to the cemetery one night to see if the legend was true (but fell asleep) and ended up in BIG trouble when he got home the next morning, but that’s another story.
The story I was told by my father was that Della Barnes was a beautiful woman who was married to a very jealous and wealthy man. The reason is unknown, but Della turned to prostitution as a form of income for the family. Being that her husband was so jealous, she did her best to keep it a secret, but her husband found out and went into a jealous rage, killing her. Before she was buried, he cut off her ring finger to get the wedding ring back. Her family had a statue constructed in her image to mark her grave in a very prominent cemetery in Paducah.
Lore has it that every year on the night she died, she would drop the rose in her hand, bend over to pick it up, and begin to cry. As a teenager, I went to see the statue, and on the ring finger was a red stain across the finger, and the eyes were eroded in the corners from, I guess, years of crying. Since the statue has been vandalised, broken from the waist up, and not replaced, I have not gone to see the statue personally since, but I have heard many, many stories from people who have, and I believe them. Paducah has several other ghost stories to tell, but that’s another story. I hope you believe, because I do.
4. Whitehall State Historic site
I have worked at Whitehall State Historic Site every October for four years for their “Ghostwalk at Whitehall.” I had heard the stories before about this beautiful yet mysterious home of Cassius Clay and his family. I am always sceptical until I experience things for myself, which I have done a few times. My first year, I came to the outside kitchen in which I was performing, and the door was bolted shut. I turned around for just a second to yell to the director that I needed the door opened. About 15 seconds later, when I turned around again, the door was propped wide open.
It was such an awesome experience that it brought tears to my eyes! That same year, I was changing upstairs on the third floor, and I noticed candlelight flickering on the ceiling, yet there was no candle in the room. I thought nothing of it at the time but sure did the next evening when I came back and it was not there anymore—only light from the lamp’s bulb. My third year there, I saw something a little bigger and more sufficient. I was kneeling in a room on the second floor when I noticed a shadow on the wall as if someone had passed by the door behind me. Naturally, I turned around to say something to the person, but there was absolutely nobody there. It was truly an incredible experience. So, those of you who would love to experience such things shouldn’t expect it, because that’s when it always seems to happen. Happy Haunting!
5. Private Residence in Louisville
Ever since we moved into this house four years ago, I have had some strange experiences. Most of which I dismissed as figment of my imagination or attempted to rationalize. But the most recent incident is the one that has scared me the most. I happened to be at home alone with my nine-year-old brother; it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. There is a small doorway between my kitchen and living room through which you can see into the next room.
I was standing in front of the stove, fixing a frozen pizza for dinner, and I turned my head to the right slightly in order to throw something away. I caught sight of something briskly slipping past the door. It was about the size of a child, so I assumed it was my brother. I glanced at my cat, who had been sitting in that hallway, and he had seen it too. His ears were perked up, and he was staring intently in that direction. I thought my brother was simply trying to scare me, so I called out to him, “What are you doing?” Usually when I do this, he will give up the game and answer me, but there was no answer.
I called out again, but nothing happened. I walked through the dining room and the living room and found nothing. Then I realized I hadn’t heard any steps. Our house is an old one, and the steps creak loudly when someone walks down them. I walked back into the kitchen and yelled for my brother. He came down the stairs, creeks and all, and asked me what I wanted. I asked him if he had been downstairs before, and he said no. I can tell when this child is lying; he can’t keep a straight face when he does. He was dead serious. So what had I seen? I don’t know the answer to that.
The day after this happened, my stepfather had an experience as well, only not with a child. It was about 7:00 in the morning, and I was up getting ready for work. I had walked up the steps as soon as he came down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure go down the basement stairs. It was about the size of an adult and more like a shadow. He thought it was me. When he came upstairs, I was up there, and he got nervous. He walked in to check on my brother, sound asleep. My mother was asleep as well. He walked all around the house, trying to find whatever it was he thought he had seen. Once we had gotten outside, he told me what had happened, and then I shared my experience with him as well. This is just two examples of events that we have been unable to explain.
6. Military School
Another story I have involves several incidents that occurred while I was in eighth grade at a military school. This school is located in Kentucky (that is all the information I can provide due to legal constraints). My dad went there, and I went there. The school dates back easily into the late 1700s. The surrounding town was named after it. The day I rolled up to the courtyard, I knew the place was haunted. Out of all the things I saw, one thing reached out and grabbed me first—it was this huge, towering old tree in the field behind the school, down by the rail road tracks.
It creeped me out just looking at it. I don’t mean the kind of creeped out you get when you think something is there and it’s not. I mean creepy, like it was hard to breathe, let alone speak, when my eyes were on it. My hair would stand on end and my eyes would water when I’d walk near it, which was about every day because it was the only place I could smoke and not get caught. I never said anything to anyone about it until one day I was talking to one of the teachers who had taught there since WWII, a long time ago. Anyway, he told me a few stories about the old place.
There was one about a young wife whose husband was killed in the Civil War, and she committed suicide off the bannister on the 3rd floor of the main building (it was a HUGE old house that had been turned into an office). I couldn’t bring myself to go into this house. A ghostly girl has been seen sitting in the upstairs window at night. In addition, one of the other halls burned down silently, killing three students. What happened to me and some friends when we wandered into a closed building was the worst. It was said that it was closed due to asbestos in the walls; this could be true.
But we broke in and wandered around the bottom floor, which took forever to figure out how to get to since the doors were boarded up and the windows were nailed shut. So, we found this one room and went through the window. We walked around the entire floor with flashlights; it was so dark, yet it was bright and sunny outside. We ventured down some corridors and found a hall that looked as if it had been used for two hours before all the bunks were made.
The rooms were white-glove clean; there was no dust. The clothes were still in the closets, but they were old clothes and not the same uniforms we wore. Well, we went to the last room where it had charcoal black walls and everything was just black, and there was this puddle in the centre of the room where this weird fluid was dripping up to the ceiling. Now, I realise this may sound bogus, but it took no time for me to decide this was a bad place to be, and we started running like hell to the other side of the floor (where we entered). Doors were slamming shut as we ran past.
I did a diving leap through the window and was the first out, so I turned and helped pull out the other three. As I looked down the hall as we pulled the last kid out, a thing (it looked like a person but it wasn’t, trust me) was walking towards the room. Immediately, I pulled the kid through, slammed the window shut, and booked around the back of the building. We were out of breath but yelling for help with the few breaths we could catch. Just as we neared the boarded-up window, I said something about telling one of the staff, and the window board’s glass all blew outward, right at the four of us! I had a few cuts and scratches, but nothing serious.
When I ran to tell someone, we went back and the windows were fine, except the glass was now missing, but you couldn’t see past the boards. Nor did I want to. I got in a lot of trouble for that. One day I was talking to a guy in town who said he was a local firefighter and had been for years. He told me that in that same hall, a few boys died because a can of oil caught fire and they suffocated in the smoke. Whether it was the same room, I don’t know, but I know that I never should have gone in there. I know I am only a young adult, but I’ve got many stories to tell of that horrid old school.
7. Private Residence in Greenville
1996–1998: I moved into this house in the summer of 1996, and after settling in, I noticed that the closet doors and main doors of the bedrooms would open or close by themselves. The first couple of times it was annoying, then it began to give me the creeps. At the same time, the thermostat seemed to have a mind of its own. making drastic swings overnight while I was sleeping. I’d either wake up hot or freezing. I called two different electricians, and both said I had probably changed the dial myself and forgotten! This ticked me off more than it scared me.
The worst happened on a Friday night in the fall of 1997. I was up late watching movies, and both of my cats were asleep beside me on the couch. Suddenly both of them jumped up, bent their ears back, and started to growl while staring behind me at the entrance to the den, which leads into the dining and kitchen areas. I jumped off the couch, expecting to see an intruder, but there was none. The cats immediately ran to their cat tree and curled up against each other.
As I slowly walked into the dining room, thinking about calling 911, the electric timer on my oven went off! I’m not a cook, and I hadn’t used the stove or the timer since I had lived there! I screamed, ran to the stove, turned off the buzzer, grabbed a large knife, and stood there in my kitchen like an idiot. As I was catching my breath, I checked the thermostat (on a hunch), and it had been turned down to 50 degrees. I readjusted it and searched the house, turning on all the lights.
I checked on my cats, who seemed to calm down in a matter of seconds. After that night, I began talking to the house. I’d come home and just talk to whoever was playing tricks with me, and everything settled down after that. I still live here, and I still feel like someone else lives in this house with us, but it’s not scary at all anymore. To my knowledge, nothing sinister or mysterious has ever happened in this house. It was constructed around 1959. Kim
8. The Bellwitch Cemetary in Greenville
I used to think I was crazy when a lot of this started to happen to me. At first, it scared me to death. But then I started to read and do research on ghosts and paranormal stuff. I understand today better than I used to. But to this day, some of it still scares me, and I try to be very careful. There is this graveyard that everyone has nicknamed “The Bellwitch Cemetary” back at home in Greenville, Ky. If you went there around midnight and called on her, she was said to rise from one of the graves and try to grab you, or she would appear from a tree as if she had hung herself. I didn’t believe any of this, of course.
So me and some friends started to check out the place during the daytime so that we could get familiar with the area. We then came out to it a couple of times at night, but nothing would happen, even though we were pretty scared just being there. It’s always pitch black when you go there at night, and it sits way off the road with no houses around. We had stopped going for awhile. Then one day, one of my friends wanted to visit out there. He has some family members who are buried out there. This particular day, I felt really weird. I felt like I was being watched and that something kept saying my name.
I came upon this grave that had always caught my attention every time we went out there. It was a really old grave with seashells covering the top and no headstone. I felt like I was being beckoned to go to it. As I kneeled down beside it, it seemed as though the voice of a little boy was talking to me. He said his name was Bryan and that he had died from tuberculosis when he was about nine or ten, and that his sister was buried beside him in the other grave. I know it really sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. I’m getting chills as I write this! He told me to take some shells from his grave, which I did because I was stupid at the time. After that, I felt really playful and excited for some reason.
We went back home, and I started to get really weak and tired. I felt like I had lost all my strength. After waking up, I felt better but also weird. I felt like something was there with me in my room. I went out to get some fresh air and started to feel much better. That night, my friend came back over, and me and my sisters were all sitting on the porch. I happened to glance at the empty house next door and noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I thought, “Oh no, here I go again.” I was watching the yard, and it slowly came down to our driveway, and I could see the shape of a little boy. I asked everyone if they had seen it, and they said no. I walked out to the driveway, and then it brushed against my pant legs.
I watched this figure as it looked like it was having fun and playing. This went on for several hours. After awhile, I decided to go to bed. I had laid down in bed and started to sleep when all of a sudden there was this knocking at my window, more like banging. I jumped out of bed and into the living room to see if anyone had done it, and they were all inside! I figured I was just tired of everything and went back to bed. As soon as I laid down, it happened again. So this time I went right outside and told the ghost to stop it. I still see him playing in our driveway and in the yard next door.
I went back to bed, and it stopped. The next couple of days, especially at night, you could hear laughter, someone running, and sometimes it sounded as if someone had brushed up beside you or was talking when no one was there. The knocking on my windows still continued, too. The only thing I knew to do was to pray. I got down on my knees with my Bible and started praying. I wanted him to go in peace. As I prayed, I felt a sense of relief come over me, and I started to cry.
I heard the little boy talking to me as he said, “Thank you, and I’ll always be here to watch over you.” After that, I just sat there and cried, not knowing why. But I felt really calm and peaceful, and there was a sweet scent in the air like roses throughout the house. I shortened the story a little so that it wouldn’t be so long. It is better when I tell you in person so that you get all the details. Every once in awhile I happen to be doing something and glance around, and I catch a glimpse of Bryan, as though he’s checking up on me to see how I am.
9. The Mountain Breaks
I just wanted to let you know about one of my ghostly experiences. I had heard stories from childhood about an Indian burial ground at the Mountain Breaks Park located in the Pike/Floyd County area. I remember people talking about how they would experience uncomfortable things happening to them when stepping onto this burial ground.
The stories scared me as a child, but when I reached my teens, I really lost my fear for them. So here is where it gets interesting. Me and a bunch of friends went to the mountain breaks at about 2:30 in the morning one night a long time ago. I drove through the place like crazy, knocking over trash cans and chasing possums. Being in the intoxicated state that I was, I saw the burial ground that I had always heard about. Without second thought, I pointed the car towards it and pressed the gas. I remember getting on top of the dirt and then stopping the car. I held my foot firmly on the brake as I pulled a cigarette from my pocket and lit it. While I was doing this, my buddy looked over and said, “Would you hold the brake?” “We’re rolling backwards!” I said, “I am holding the brake.” I could feel the car moving. I then shifted the car into park, and the car continued to move backward. I shut off the engine, but still the car moved backward.
When we finally came to a stop, my front tyres were probably less than an inch from where the dirt began. We sat there in awe, just trying to understand what had just happened. One thing is for sure: five drunk teenagers sobered up real quick that night. I haven’t touched a drink since and haven’t been back to the mountain breaks, and this was almost 40 years ago.
10. Mommy, Chester is coming
My father was born and raised in Perry County, Kentucky. He lived far in the hollow, near what is known as Engle. There was a small cabin with a window facing a small walking path coming up to the front porch.
My dad was just about 2 or 3 years old and remembered this story until he died at 62 years old.
It was 1938 or 1939. Toddler Gabe stood at the front window waiting for his daily visit from his mom’s brother. It was raining hard that day. Mamma kept shooing the toddler from the window while tending to her infant son and trying to complete dinner.
Again, the toddler was at the window. He kept saying, “Momma, Chester is coming. Chester is coming.” She’d look out the window, but there was no sign of Chester.
Dinner came and went. There was no Chester that evening. It was strange that he wouldn’t show up.
The next morning, the family did receive a visitor. Another family member made the long trek into the hollow to let mom know that Uncle Chester had been killed.
11. Okolona
This is a true story of a ghost that I have seen. I was nineteen at the time. It was late November 1978 in Okolona, Ky. After an evening at the local hangout, it was about midnight and time to get on the road. With my buddy Larry with me, we turn on Blue Lick Road. Well, this old road is kind of narrow, and it gets dark fast from the main road. About three miles down, there is a sharp s-curve with a graveyard just to the right. Well, just as I got to the curve, I saw a man standing right in front of my car. kind of an old-looking guy with a flannel shirt and jeans.
He has both arms out with his hands out, like he wants me to stop the car. My instinct was to stop. But as soon as I let off the gas, he was gone. It really freaked me out. But it happened so fast. After thanking about it, I’m about a mile down the road. I asked Larry if he had seen anything back at the curve. and he said no. But he wondered why, back at the curve, I let off the gas… I just wonder what I saw that night. And has anyone else seen anything there?
12. Clermont & White Hall
White Hall is really a house within a house. The “old building,” as Cassius Clay referred to his father’s home, Clermont, was built in 1798–1799 in the Georgian style. Clay wrote that the brick structure was “the first of its kind” in the country. The new building, White Hall, was built above and around Clermont by Cassius Clay in the 1860s. Also of brick, it is an interesting combination of Georgian and Italianate architecture.
Though sophisticated for its time and location on the Kentucky frontier, Clermont was simple in design. Situated on a small rise and facing the Kentucky River, the home was located at the centre of Green Clay’s extensive empire, which included distilleries, taverns, farms, and a ferry across the Kentucky River.
The first floor of the two-story home consisted of a large hall on one side, a bearing wall in the center, and, on the other side, a dining room and parlor, each with stairways leading to the second floor. Upstairs were four bedrooms, each approximately the same size. All seven rooms in the house had fireplaces.
The transformation of Clermont into White Hall occurred in the 1860s, when Cassius Clay was in Russia. Mary Jane Clay, wife of Cassius Clay, supervised the construction of White Hall. Prominent architect Thomas Lewinski and builder-architect John McMurty designed and built the addition to Clermont. The new addition more than doubled the size of the house. The first floor of White Hall was made level with the older section of the house. Clermont’s old stairways were removed; however, despite the addition of front and rear staircases, circulation throughout the house was very awkward.
Noteworthy features of the house include 16-foot ceilings, a sweeping staircase of nearly thirty steps almost 50 inches wide, and a forerunner of a central heating system fueled by two fireboxes in the basement with ducts leading to fireplaces in several rooms of the newer section of the house. Unique for its time was an indoor bathroom, divided into three closets, one containing a washbasin, another a commode, and the third a bathtub made of a hollowed-out poplar log lined with copper. Rainwater from the roof was collected in a storage tank on the top floor of the house and piped to the bathroom on the floor below.
13. Hotrod Haven
Hotrod Haven is located on Mitchel Hill Road. From the 1940s until the mid-1970s, it was a popular spot for teenagers to test their mantles and their cars. Mitchel Hill Road is a winding, twisting road, and during this time period, over 25 people lost their lives. As you are travelling down the hill, you will come out of the curves and onto a short straightaway that leads back into a sharp left-bank curve. So you can imagine the speeds a vehicle can reach in that short stretch.
Legend has it that a girl and her date were on their way to the prom on September 23, 1950, when they crashed at the bottom of the hill and died. Many reports have her travelling across the road and also at the cemetery at the top of the hill, where she is buried. With the passage of time, she has been called Mary or Sarah. No one can remember the boyfriend’s name, until now.
The cemetery at the top of Mitchel Hill Road is the private cemetery for several local families. Most notably, the Mitchels and the Griffens On September 23rd, 2000, on the “50th anniversary of their death,” I travelled this route to and from the cemetery.
At the time of the investigation, it was already dark. When you are on top of the hill, you can see for miles, and all the sounds and noises that reach you can be very unsettling. from animal noises to vehicles that are several miles away. The cemetery is right on the corner, with Mitchel Hill Road on one side and an electrical power station on the other. After taking several photos of the area, we then began searching for stones.
After checking Jefferson County records, we found only one match that fit this profile. On September 23rd, 1946, Roy Clarke and Sarah Mitchel were on their way to a school dance. As they were coming down the hill, Clarke lost control of the car and crashed into the curve. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
After several minutes, we found their stone; one single stone marked both their graves in loving memory on September 23rd, 1946.
14. Shepherdsville
I’ve had a lot of strange things happen to me in my life, and my family has told me a lot of scary stories about what they’ve seen. I am going to talk about my great-aunt Lisa’s house. The house used to belong to my father before my aunt bought it from him. This is what my father and mother and a few other people both told me about this story, and I witnessed a few of them. I guess it all started when my father was living at the house. My father and mother were divorced, but he was remarried.
My father and his friends got together to play with an Ouija board that had been discovered in the house when he moved in. My father drew a pentagon on the oujia board, and then all of them pricked their fingers with a knife and placed a drop of blood on the eye of the pointer. They never really got a response in words from the spirit world, but they did see strange things around the house. Things would happen, such as once when we were all in the kitchen sitting around the table when my dad and a few other people witnessed a cup fall off the top of the counter.
They followed it down, expecting to hear a loud crash, but to their surprise, it never hit. They looked up, and it was sitting back up on the counter. My stepmother was always babysitting her brothers’ kids, so there were always baby toys around. Once we were all sitting in the living room watching TV, and a baby rattle flew across the room and hit the TV. All of the little things like that went on while my father lived there. But when my aunt moved in, it was a different story. I once spent the night at her house with my uncle Rick, who has back problems and prefers to sleep on the couch sometimes at night.
Well, I was sleeping in the spare bedroom when I woke up to my uncle screaming. I ran into the living room; my aunt had just entered the room too. There was a red mist above my uncle. and he was screaming that his chest was burning. The red mist faded away seconds after we entered the room. My uncle’s cross necklace had burned into his chest. We even took pictures of this. He still has the scar of the cross on his chest to this day!
15. Madisonville
I have a story to tell about a house I lived in as a young person many years ago. The old house is located in Madisonville, KY, at what is now East Noel Avenue, and is very much haunted. My family and I lived in Madisonville when I was a child of 14 or 15, and from the moment I stepped through the front door I felt uneasy, almost as if I wasn’t welcome there.
My first encounter with the haunting was on that very day, as I began my exploration of the house. I saw a set of double doors to my left as I came in the front door, so I decided to look in that room first. I opened the doors with some effort, and they creaked as they slid back into the walls. As I entered the room, I noticed I could see my breath, although it was the middle of summer. As I was contemplating that strangeness, I felt something brush against me as if in a hurry to get by.
I walked to the window to peer out and jumped as the doors behind me slid shut with a bang. Fighting the urge to run back out to the street, I departed that room and moved on to the hallway. The first thing to catch my eye was the huge bannister running along the staircase. I made a mental note to slide down it later. As I was standing there admiring the bannister, I had the same feeling as earlier—that someone had brushed against me as though in a hurry to arrive somewhere.
I shivered as a chill enveloped the space around the bottom of the staircase. I continued my explorations that day and encountered some other strange things, but I will not recount them here; instead, I will share with you the history I discovered about this spooky house, which was to be my home. I began asking questions of some of the older families in the area, and one elderly man in particular remembered the stories well. Here is his account of the house. “There was a fine family that lived in that house many years ago; I just can’t call their names right now.” There was a doctor and his wife and son. The boy used to love to play in the yard and in a potting shed that was there at one time. He’d get out the trowels and rakes and play at gardening until his mother would call him in for dinner in the evening.
It would seem his favourite thing to do was slide down that big ol’ bannister. Visitors to the family used to talk about how the sound of his laughter filled the house. One sad morning, though, he fell off of the bannister and broke his neck. They say his poor mother never got over his death. She swore that she could hear his laughter and feel a coldness around the foot of the stairs where he died. Folks say that she eventually went mad and used to get downright upset when people voiced any doubt about her stories. According to legend, a brush salesman was seen going in and never coming out. People came to think that she killed him, and rather than lose his good name and his practice, her husband buried the man in the cellar. The good doctor got up and moved several months later, alone.
Later, a concerned neighbour found the woman’s decomposing body on the floor of her bedroom upstairs. She had apparently shot herself; no one knows if it was the grief she still felt for the death of her only son, the loss of her husband, or her madness. I think it was a little of all of them. “If you go and look on the hardwood floor of the front upstairs bedroom, you may find a bloodstain; it has been cleaned many times but comes back every few months… it isn’t very big, but it is there none the less.” So, that is my story, believe it or not. There are many strange feelings and happenings in that house. I am certainly glad I don’t live there anymore. I saw what looked to be the shape of a small boy in that house many times, also in the backyard. I’ve heard a few people laugh. I have no idea about the cellar… I could never quite bring myself to go down there, but my mother never could find her brushes, and when she finally did find them, they were always in the cellar.
