Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  He stated that the family often heard footsteps coming up the stairway at night. He witnessed it himself one night while visiting. Knowing the number of steps on the stairway, family members planned to open the door once the sounds reached the top step. During this particular visit, the footsteps began climbing the stairway toward them. The sounds reached the top step and they grabbed for the door. But before they touched the door knob, it began slowly turning back and forth. They were all stunned and frozen in their tracks. Then one of them grabbed the knob to open the door and they heard something quickly run down the stairs. They all went down in the basement but found nothing. I could not believe my ears. It was so similar to what we had heard. This is evidence that the hauntings we were experiencing had been taking place for over forty years.

  We planned our party and the story of the Jones house spread throughout the school. We didn’t expect to hear anything during the party, but we were wrong. The band had taken a break and five of my friends were standing outside on the porch enjoying the cool air. They heard someone walk from the front room to the doorway where they were standing. All five looked to see who was coming outside. The footsteps stopped, but no one was there.

  Many from school wanted to go to the Jones house and hear the footsteps. My closest friends and I took over twenty people there to witness the sounds. Many times nothing happened, but when it did, I watched nonbelievers become believers. The chilling sounds echoing through the small house with each footstep was more than anyone expected. Those who heard the footsteps on the wooden stairway never imagined it would be so real or so overwhelming. It left each person speechless after they were spooked from the house by an entity which shouldn’t exist. Though many laughed at our stories of the footsteps, those who witnessed the sounds never questioned again the existence of the Jones house supernatural phenomenon.

  One night during a small get-together, my friend had an Ouija board and began asking it questions about the Jones house. As we all gathered around, the Ouija board began spelling out that the Jones house planned to hurt John. Many of the girls were upset and asked John not to go there at night. John Bingham, who had been there on many occasions and heard the noises, agreed not to go there that week.

  Later the same week, four boys went to the Jones house to see what would happen. They were there only a few minutes when something began walking up the old stairway. As the footsteps slowly climbed from the basement, they all ran toward the front door. The last boy out was undercut at the knees and fell hard onto the porch. The door was standing wide open and no one knew why he had fallen. No boards or furniture was in the front room. Three other boys had just run out the same door with nothing in their way. The fellow who fell was cut up on his face and hands from the fall. On his lower legs were marks as if a two-by-four board had hit him. This wasn’t John Bingham that was injured as the Ouija board had said; it was another John—John Snow.

  Two months later, John Bingham and Eric Defew were at the Jones house when they heard the footsteps. They wanted so bad to see it; they wanted to know if it could be seen. They waited as long as possible, but the slow, deliberate footsteps were so loud, so real, fear took control and they ran. Just before they reached the car, John remembered that he had to lock the door. He grabbed the key from the rusty nail on the porch and pulled the door closed. Just before inserting the key, the door pulled from inside the house! John pulled back to close the door again, and this time the door was jerked from his hand and slammed open! He clutched the key in his hand and ran for the car. They drove away as fast as they could go. The next morning, John knew he had placed the key in the car seat but could not find it. He went back to the Jones house to search for the key. But when he arrived, cold chills shot down his spine. He could not believe his eyes. The door was shut. It was locked, and the key was hanging on the old rusty nail.

  A couple of months later, some friends and I gathered at the Jones house. Just as was done forty years ago, we sat at the kitchen table with lit candles listening for sounds. We waited an hour, and without warning we heard the eerie sound of footsteps walking up the stairway. As the footsteps climbed toward the closed basement door, we all excitedly gathered around the door. We knew only the basement door was separating us from what had haunted us for months. John Bingham grabbed the knob and pushed the door open. We all jumped back while shining our flashlights down into the dark basement but saw nothing—nothing but the wooden stairway reaching out from another dimension. From that stairway entered something which had vanished without a trace or sound.

  A week later, John Bingham was at his home when he heard sounds coming from his bedroom closet. It sounded like someone searching through the closet looking for something. He was obviously nervous as he was the only one home. Then the noise stopped and John heard footsteps from the bedroom enter into the hallway. He quickly ran from his room into the hall but no one was there. He went from room to room searching, but no one was to be found. He knew these were the same sounds he had heard at the Jones house.

  One month later at John’s house, Clarice the cleaning lady heard someone walk down the hallway right to the door where she stood in horror. She knew no one was home or expected to be home. Just around the corner stood someone or something. She slowly looked carefully, but saw no one this time. When the Binghams arrived home later that day, they noticed most of the cleaning had not been done. It appeared Clarice had left in a hurry. She returned later to explain what had happened. Upon hearing the story, the Binghams told Clarice about John’s similar experience and about the Jones house. Clarice, an older religious woman, looked into John’s eyes with fear and said, “John, you have brought something home with you from that house. Please never go back to the Jones house, never, never go back.”

  The whole story of the Jones house remains undiscovered. Does the stairway into the cool, damp basement serve as a portal for a victim of a terrible crime? Is this soul manifesting himself in hopes to let the world know of its tragic death at the hands of the unpunished? Is it a path for a soul reaching out to the world of which it is no longer a part? Although many tried, we could never discount what took place there as anything other than a haunting. To this day, down in the dark basement of the Jones house, it waits.

  24. “Ghosts in Ditto House”

  Hardin County

  Back in 1985, Carol Goldsmith and her husband, Cookie, purchased the Ditto house. It’s an old Federal-style home, and they had it restored within four years. They had been told stories of the house being haunted, but didn’t pay much attention to what they heard. However, shortly after they started living in the front bedroom upstairs, they began hearing noises in the attic. Sounded like trunks or big boxes being moved around. They thought it might be squirrels or rats, but the noises kept getting louder and louder. The noises would occur in the middle of the night, around 2:00 A.M., and would often be replaced by noises that seemed to be coming from a wall down the hallway. This went on for a month or so.

  One night, they heard voices down the hallway. Said it sounded like two women arguing with high-pitched voices. Carol and Cookie couldn’t make out what was being said, but they did hear what sounded like their names being spoken. They heard this arguing at the same time every night for about a month. One night, they heard the voices coming in their direction, then entering their bedroom. The voices continued arguing as they were heard circling the bed.

  The Goldsmiths thought about selling the house, but didn’t because they loved the house and its history so much.

  About a year later, actually the day after Christmas, Carol was lying in bed in one of the middle bedrooms. About midmorning, while still lying there, Carol felt the presence of someone looking at her. She turned her head to the left and saw a large red-headed woman looking around the door frame at her. Carol said the woman had deep-set eyes, a disturbed look, and was in clothing from perhaps around 1900.

  The ghostly woman said nothing, and Carol was startled because she knew that she and her hu
sband were alone in the house. Realizing that she wasn’t asleep, Carol yelled for Cookie and the woman disappeared in an instant.

  Just about a month after that, Carol was again in the same bed one early morning. Her husband was at work at the police station. Carol said she opened her eyes and saw the same red-haired woman, this time standing at the foot of the bed, hands on her hips, staring down at her. Petrified, Carol bolted from the room, ran down the stairs and called her husband. He came home immediately, but the woman was already gone.

  Carol said that during that same period, they often came home at night to find the lights turned on, all the dishes turned upside down in the cupboards, and mirrors turned backward toward the wall.

  Up until that time, the Ditto house wasn’t a B and B, but they opened the house to overnight guests in 1993. One morning after the guests had departed, Carol and Cookie were downstairs in the back kitchen, while their young, part-time housekeeper was upstairs making the beds and straightening the rooms. As the housekeeper came down the stairs and turned to walk back to the kitchen, she passed by the main dining room. Glancing into the room, she was stunned to see an old gray-haired man with a long white beard sitting on the couch. She said he had on a gray Civil War uniform with its long gray coat, rows of buttons and high collar. When she saw him, the young girl ran out the back door, and never came back to work anymore.

  The house was sold to Sherry and Milton “Mickey” Dale in September 1998. Mickey was upstairs watching TV in the back bedroom one night a few weeks later, and Sherry had fallen asleep on the daybed there in the room. About 1:30 A.M., just after Mickey had fallen asleep, he suddenly became startled when he heard what seemed to be a heavy boot hitting the bottom step of the wooden stair steps. As the footsteps continued slowly, methodically, toward their room, Mickey became frightened. The hair on his head stood straight out! As the footsteps grew closer, he grabbed a flashlight and shined it toward the spot where someone should be standing about eight feet away. But there was no one to be seen. In his mind, he thought it was the Civil War soldier he had heard about coming up the stairway in heavy boots.

  Sherry rented two adjoining upstairs rooms to a young woman, her husband, and their two girls, ages five and three, for two months, beginning on September 27, 2000. But Sherry didn’t tell them of the previous hauntings in the Ditto house B and B, and doesn’t believe anyone else did either. Anyhow, one midmorning around October 8, this lady, whose name is Adrienne, said she had been outside with her children for a while.

  As she came back into the Ditto house, she said she immediately smelled the scent of strong, heavy, pipe smoke. She knew of none of the other guests, all men, who smoked a pipe. Besides, all these men worked all day each day from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 p.m. at Cosmosdale Cement Plant involving construction of new facilities.

  As Adrienne made her way up the steps, she wondered where this strong smelling smoke was coming from. She reached the top of the stairs, children in tow, and looked toward the children’s room twenty feet away. She said that the door was open, but she had closed it earlier when she left the room to go outside. Looking into the bedroom from the hallway she was terrified to see someone lying on the children’s bed smoking a pipe! This person was lying there with his legs crossed at the ankles, head propped up against the headboard, wearing dark, rough-looking clothes that looked as though they were from an earlier time period. She said that man looked that way, too! Adrienne said she stared in amazement, stunned, wondering who he was and why he was lying on the children’s bed.

  The pipe smoke circled upward and was clearly visible seen against the window and against the wall of the room. This person, or ghost, whatever it was, perhaps sensing someone staring at him, turned and looked straight into Adrienne’s eyes. For an instant, they stared at each other; then he just suddenly disappeared. He was gone from the room.

  Later, Adrienne started to tell her husband about the incident. He butted in, asking, “What have you been drinking?” But neither of them drink, and they don’t smoke.

  Adrienne told Sherry and me this story a few days after it happened. It was brought up during casual conversation. Adrienne’s family continued to rent both rooms in the house for a while, but moved out and away before Halloween.

  25. “Mrs. Petrie’s Ghost”

  Daviess Counry

  My mother, Judy, who was thirteen at the time, was living in an old two-story house in Maceo, Kentucky. The old house consisted of four rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs. There was also an outhouse behind the house.

  My granddad, Jack McKinney, was working the four-to-twelve midnight shift at the steel mill, so he was always up late at night. One night my granddad was sitting up in his bedroom reading when he heard someone going up the stairs. My mother has twelve brothers and sisters, and so Granddad yelled out asking which one of them was up? After inquiring several times and not receiving an answer, Granddad got worried and got up to check on the children. None of the children were up, but Granddad saw a ghostly female figure walking up the stairs. She turned around and looked at my granddad, smiled and then continued up the stairs where she disappeared into the bathroom.

  Granddad never told my mother or any of the other children about this until several years later when they moved from the old house. He also told Mom that the previous owners of the house had been an older couple by the name of Petrie. Mr. Petrie never allowed his wife to use the inside bathroom, but for some reason always made her use the outhouse behind the house.

  Granddad just figured that what he saw going up the stairs was Mrs. Petrie’s ghost and that she was going to use the inside bathroom.

  26. “Unfriendly Packing”

  Nelson County

  Our family moved to Bloomfield a year and a half ago. We bought a house that was built by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Spence Minor, in 1813. The house is on the national historic register as the Minor Manor. My brother and I were afraid of the big, old house. I slept in the room that was once occupied by my cousin Nick. He died in the house a bachelor at the age of eighty-five from a heart attack. There have been no children living in the house in over a hundred years. When we bought the house we were told that the orchard never produces much fruit. But during our first summer here, we had more peaches, pears, and apples than we knew what to do with. Everyone said my mom had a green thumb, but she said that she didn’t do anything but provide a little love and care to the grounds. She said that the house just needed a family.

  In December of our first year, we had to evacuate due to a boiler system malfunction that smoked the entire house and messed up everything we owned with oil and soot. We spent the next three months with friends while our house was being cleaned. The insurance company paid this fire restoration company to restore the house and property…. This was no small task, given that our home is over 5,000 square feet.

  The first day of the job, Sonya the cleaning lady asked if the house was haunted. She said she felt a positive force coming from my bedroom. She said that everything plastic had to be thrown away because it was covered with toxic oil that would be hazardous if a child were to put it in its mouth. Sonya went on to tell me that she had put all the plastic toys in a box in my room and then had gone downstairs for lunch. When she returned to my room all the toys were scattered on the bedroom floor, and her watch that she left on the sink was resting in the bottom of the toilet bowl. No one else had been in the house except for the women who were helping her clean, and they all had lunch together that day. No one could explain what had happened.

  One lady told my mother that she would clean any room in the house except my room. She said the spirit in that room was very protective of the children and did not want her in there. It was like somebody didn’t want them to throw away our toys. I think I know who it was. I believe it was cousin Nick. Unfortunately, the cleaning lady who was afraid of my room will never be able to tell her stories again because she died of an aneurysm one night after a hard day’s work at our house.


  Several of the ladies told many stories of their experiences in the house, but none touched me like the one Sonya told about the toys. All I know is, I am no longer afraid of the noises I hear at night, and I don’t even jump when my door opens and closes by itself. I just smile and say that my cousin Nick must be checking up on me.

  27. “The Disappearing Guide at an Old, Abandoned House”

  Green County

  One night these friends of mine and I were going out to an old abandoned house in the country. The road we had to take there was covered with trees, and it made the road seem like a tunnel because the trees were so thick. The reason we were going out to this old house was because it was supposed to be haunted. We were getting close to the house when this woman ran out in front of the truck and stopped. She just stood there looking at us. We stopped the truck and the headlights seemed to go right through her, like she didn’t have a shadow. She motioned for us to follow her so we got out of the truck and ran towards her. She ran away real fast, then turned to motion for us to follow again, so we did. She ran right up to the house where we were going and opened the front door and looked back at us. We were about fifty yards behind her. When we got to the door, it was nailed shut from the outside. We pulled the nails out and went in anyway. We looked all through that old house but nobody was there at all.

  28. “A Man’s Ghost in an Upstairs Window”

  Muhlenberg County

  There was a married couple living in an old, two-story house. The woman was left alone during the day while her husband worked. Every day she would hear noises upstairs but when she went up to check, there was never anybody there. She complained to her husband and he also checked it out and found nothing. The wife was getting really scared to live there, and she couldn’t convince anybody that the noises weren’t her imagination. One day she went shopping and took a cab back home after she was done. She was telling the cab driver about the noises and how everybody thought she was crazy since they had not heard anything and couldn’t find anything. As they pulled in the driveway, the cabdriver got a funny expression on his face and said, “Lady, if there is nobody in that house, who’s that man staring out the window upstairs?”