By this time, Josh and his mom and dad had blinked their eyes more than a million times and were scared out of their wits. Their first reaction was to get away from there, so they ran. They ran just as hard as they could, finally reaching their car. They jumped inside the vehicle and sat there, spellbound.
It wasn’t long until they began staring at one another in astonishment. They confirmed that they had seen the same thing. Josh’s dad began driving away just as the grandmother pulled into the driveway.
They told her what they had seen, and the four of them then checked the house for a sign of anyone. They found nothing. The only indication of anyone living in the house other than the grandmother was an occasional shadow passing through the upstairs halls, a shadow that resembled the same elderly woman that the three of them had seen.
37. “The Old Ferrell Place”
Metcalfe County
This story is about an old house here in Metcalfe County, the old Ferreli place right up here close to Randolph. It had a basement, ground floor, upstairs, and an attic. It had the most beautiful walnut woodwork that I’ve ever seen. It had built-in cabinets and walnut mantlepieces. Just a neat early American piece of architecture.
Well, back when I was a kid, fifteen or sixteen years old, we were working on that old house. I was there alone one day, when some kind of spook or ghost, or monster got after me downstairs. I thought, “Oh, my God, if I can just get to that attic on the third story, and stick my head out of that window, I’ll yell out for help and the whole country will hear me.”
So I started up these steps, and this thing was right after me. I’d keep feeling it right behind me. I kept thinking, “Oh, if I can just get to that attic window, I know I can make somebody hear me.”
Well, believe it or not, when I got to that attic window and threw it open, I could not make a sound! Not a sound would come out of my mouth. I stood there just gasping for breath, nearly choking to death.
The more I think about what happened, the more I think that I just imagined the whole thing. You know how kids were back then. Just about anything would scare them to death.
38. “An Ancestor’s Ghost Annually Reenacts His Death”
Jefferson County
This house on Carlton Terrace had been in the family for a number of years, and now my own immediate family was moving in. It was a beautiful three-story Victorian house, and I was very excited about the thought of moving in. Grandma and Grandpa had lived there previously, but now they were both dead, so the house was available for my parents and me. Just looking at the house always made me think it was haunted, and because of this I was truly scared of the thought of sleeping in my bedroom.
Well, after we moved in, one night when the autumn mist was rolling in I was awakened by a very loud, obnoxious sound coming from inside my closet. Then, slowly my closet door opened and a white figure appeared, then vanished out of my sight. I ran out of my room and went into my parents’ room and fell asleep with them.
The following night, I was awakened by the same sound, except this time it was coming from the bathroom. I got out of bed slowly and walked toward the bathroom door. When I got to the door, I reached for the doorknob and began turning it. The handle was turning but the door was being held in a closed position by some strong force. Again, I ran to my parents’ room and awoke my mother. She walked down to the bathroom, and the same thing happened to her. She looked at me and said that they would take care of it in the morning.
I had just faded off to sleep when I heard the sound again, followed by a loud crash. This time, Mom heard it, too. The two of us got up and started walking downstairs. Much to our surprise, silverware was flying around in the kitchen, and our two St. Bernard dogs were pacing the floor. We walked to the kitchen and looked in, and suddenly all the silverware fell to the floor. We picked it up and returned to bed.
The next morning we went into the bathroom and found all the stuff in the medicine cabinet lying in the sink and on the floor. Then we walked down to the kitchen and found all the silverware on the kitchen floor. We could not figure out just what was going on. It was a bizarre situation.
Our dogs, Bandit and Brandy, began barking to let us know that they wanted to go outside. I walked to the front door to let them out, but they would not pass the pantry there in the entrance hall. I walked over and began pulling on the dogs, but they still would not budge. I asked my dad what was wrong with them, but he didn’t have an answer.
The next afternoon my mother and I walked to my uncle Steve’s and learned a very disturbing fact about our old house. Back about 1912 a young man shot and killed my great-great-grandpa. That took place right beside the hall pantry. Uncle Steve said the scent of his death might still be there and that the dogs were smelling it. See, they have a sense of smell that human beings don’t have.
A few months went by and nothing else strange happened except that the dogs would never go past the pantry. Then, at midnight on January 21, 1977,1 was awakened by a loud cry for help followed by a gunshot. I ran to the bottom of the stairs and saw both dogs lying side by side in front of the pantry, and in front of the dogs was a pool of blood. I woke up both of my parents, but they could not figure out where the blood came from. That afternoon, Uncle Steve came over and we talked to him about what was happening, and this is what we found out.
Great-great-grandpa was killed on January 21, 1912, and every year he relives his death. He also lives in our house and does anything he wants when he wants to do it. Within a few months, my family sold the house and moved to Crestwood.
On January 21, 1987, at midnight, the house on Carlton Terrace burned to the ground within a matter of minutes.
That happened exactly seventy-five years after Great-great-grandpa was shot and killed. Maybe the person who lived in the house was the killer, and Great-great-grandpa was taking his revenge.
All members of our family who were living in the house at the time it burned were killed by the flames.
39. “The Haunted House on the Hill”
Harlan County
Believing in ghosts is not something that I adhere to. However, there are unexplained accounts that leave room for one’s imagination to pursue a variety of answers.
Several years ago I rented a beautiful house on a hill in Harlan County. My young son and I were delighted to have found such a beautiful place to rent. The house was large and the rooms very spacious. A huge family room with a fireplace, bathroom, laundry room, and furnace room made up the downstairs and opened into the garage. Upstairs were kitchen, dining room, bathroom, three bedrooms, and a living room with a cathedral ceiling and fireplace. The house was surrounded on three sides by a deck, and an in-ground swimming pool was in back of the house.
It didn’t take long for the first peculiar thing to be noticed. There would be the sound of a bouncing basketball on the driveway, even on weekends when my son was visiting his father out of town. I made many trips to the window to look out and see who was out there bouncing a ball. When I looked out, the bouncing would stop until I went away. If I only peeked out the side of the curtain, it would sometimes continue, but no one was ever there, at least not to be seen.
Often, we heard the faint sounds of whispering inside and outside the house, but never clearly enough to understand anything that was being said. Each night, after we were tucked in bed, and the lights turned out, the distinct sound of footsteps could be heard coming down the hall between my son’s bedroom and mine, and then sound as if they went straight down the hallway and into my closet. Once there, the sounds of someone walking overhead were clearly heard. Quite often, there would also be the sound of someone rummaging through the kitchen drawers, and opening and closing cabinet doors, as if searching for something.
The peculiar thing was that I was not afraid of these things. I dared not mention what was happening to anyone else because they might think that I was ridiculous by letting my imagination get the best of me.
On one occasion, my cousin and h
is wife were visiting from Chicago. I put them in the guest room, and their children slept on the foldout sofa. In the middle of the night, my cousin heard the rambling sounds in the kitchen and decided to get up and join someone in a middle-of-the-night snack. Of course, no one was there. He was truly frightened but did not wake anyone to recount what had happened. The next morning, he told us. He has not been back to visit me since.
A friend from my college years and her teenage daughter came to visit me from the Cincinnati area. I put them in the guest room. She told the next morning of having awakened during the night and that the fan and lights were on. But she had not been afraid. She thought that I had done it for one reason or another. She turned off the light and went to sleep, but the next morning the light was on again.
Still another friend and her infant daughter spent the night in that same guest room. The next morning, she said that it had been very hot during the night, and wished that she dare get up and turn the fan on, but wouldn’t as she was afraid of waking her baby. She woke up a little later with the fan on and the light on dim. She said that she had the feeling that a child was in the room with them, just looking at them for some unknown reason. I had another cousin who spent the night with me on a regular basis. But she refused to stay in the house one second by herself. When I got up to go to work, she hopped in her car and left before I did. If she were waiting for a ride, or waiting for me to get home, she would sit outside rather than be in the house alone.
Only on one occasion was I aware of an “evil” presence. I entered the bottom door, by way of the garage door, with a load of groceries. As soon as I entered the room, the air was so heavy that I could hardly breathe, and the hairs all over my body stood at attention. But instead of being frightened, I became angry. I began to pray with considerable authority to rebuke the presence. I recall saying that we would live peacefully in that house, and anyone or anything that had a notion to the contrary would get out. Immediately, the atmosphere changed, and a feeling of peace returned.
The whispering continued, as did the bouncing ball, the ghostly footsteps in the hallway and overhead, and the prowling noises in the kitchen, but I was never disturbed by fear or any sense of an unfriendly presence ever again after that. When I moved out of the house, everyone who had ever visited me there told me how glad they were that I had moved. They said that there was just something about that house that made them very uncomfortable, and they didn’t like to think of me being there alone.
I’m still not sure as to what was going on, but I feel pretty certain that I was not alone in that old house on the hill.
40. “The Shaking House”
Green County
When I was a preschooler, my parents, my brother, and I lived in the southwest quadrant of Green County, in a community called Thompson School House. The local roads were dirt, there were no automobiles in the area, and telephones were few in number. My dad and mom farmed, as did everyone else in this community.
This community was made up of a one-room school, a grocery store, a tabernacle that had only a dirt floor, and eight or nine residential houses. Our house was a large two-story, T-shaped, white frame structure that stood on a large hill overlooking the rest of the community. The upper level of our house was not used, and had not been for some time. And for some unknown reason, my eight-year-old brother was afraid of the upstairs area.
He was quite mischievous and needed to be punished occasionally. As punishment, Mom would put him on the stairway, button the door, and leave him there by himself for a few minutes.
One day while he was in confinement on the stairwell, the metal roof on the house began to vibrate rather violently. Mom quickly removed my brother and called Dad from the field. The weather was warm, totally clear, with no wind or atmospheric disturbances of any kind. We stood and watched as Dad and Mom discussed what the reason for the vibration might be. There was no movement of the house or its parts except the metal roof. Being in the year 1933, airplanes were the first thing to be ruled out. As I recall, this strange happening lasted about thirty minutes, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Being early in the afternoon, and still having work to do in the field, Dad went back to the field and left the rest of us there at the house.
When evening came and Dad returned from the field, he was so determined to find the cause for the roof shaking that he crawled into the attic space above the second level of the house with a kerosene lantern. He searched that area completely but found nothing to explain the noises. The house was destroyed several years later in order to make room for a new one, but that mystery has never been solved.
41. “The Chair That Rocks by Itself
Clinton County
This is a true story. When Grandma died, that left me, Beatrice, and Jewell to stay by ourselves and take care of stuff, while Mama and Daddy took the rest of the children and went to bury Grandma at Byrdstown.
I was about fifteen years old, and Beatrice was about seventeen, and she done the cooking and stuff. Jewell was smaller than me and Beatrice, and she was as scary as you could be.
We stayed up yonder at that old house on the Roy place. That night, Beatrice and Jewell got supper ready. We had fried chicken for supper. Well, along in the night, we heard a racket upstairs. Of course, we had rats back then, but we didn’t have rats much of the time.
Beatrice wasn’t scared, but me and Jewell was scared to death. Anyway, we all slept in the same room. I slept in one bed, and they in another. Beatrice went up to the top of the steps on the way to the bedroom, just climbed up the wall. See, we had steps that just went up the wall and then on up into the loft.
There was an old woman who died there in that house, and its always been kind of a haunted house ever since she died. Angels have been seen there, along with all kinds of other stuff. Well, her old rocking chair was setting upstairs on this long platform, but the chair didn’t have no back on it. Just had the rockers and seat, but no back.
I went up there on different nights, and that old rocking chair would just be setting there, rocking back and forwards. And they was some old catalogs laying there by that old chair, and the leaves in them old catalogs would just be turning as if you’d take your hands and turn them. Sometimes, the leaves would turn real slow-like, just like someone was setting there reading a page at a time, then turn to the next page.
That rocking chair would set there and just rock by itself, while them leaves was a-turning.
42. “The Ghost That Killed Two Dogs”
Russell County
There were these brothers and sisters who decided to get rid of their old uncle. Well, they plotted and plotted and plotted. Finally, they killed him by making him fall down the stairs and break his neck. Everyone was suspicious of them, but couldn’t prove that they did it.
There was a couple that later lived in this house, but they both went crazy and had to be placed in the insane asylum. Then other people tried to live in the house, but ever night at midnight, they’d hear something fall down the stairs. It got to the point that nobody would stay in the house.
Finally, someone locked two dogs up in the house. The next morning the two dogs were found lying at the foot of the stairs with their necks broke.
No one ever knew what really went on in that house.
43. “Ghostly Premonition”
Bath County
I was about twelve years old when I saw my first ghost. Actually I don’t know if she could really be called a ghost because she wasn’t dead yet.
My parents rented a house from this older, well-to-do couple in Salt Lick. Sometimes my father did odd jobs for them, and sometimes he just went for a visit. Most of the time, he would take me or my brothers along.
On this particular summer night, I had not gone with my dad to visit them. Sometimes he and the old man liked to sit and talk for a long time, and I would get bored and restless, unless the old lady would talk to me or take me upstairs and show me her “trinkets,” or collections of old medicine bot
tles and such, which she often did.
Usually, Dad would leave by the backdoor, so I went to the backdoor and knocked and knocked. I saw the old lady walking into a bright yellow room on the left side of the hallway. I kept knocking, and she kept walking. She never did turn around to look at me or seem to hear my knock. Finally, I went to the front door and knocked. The old man came to the door, and when I asked for my father, he said that he had already left.
I ran on home and told my mom and dad that I had gone there looking for him, about knocking on the backdoor, and about the old woman not answering. They looked at each other and then back at me. Daddy said, “Honey, Mrs. Perry is in the hospital. She has been there for several days. She isn’t even home.”
A few days later, Mrs. Perry died. I don’t know what I saw meant, but I will never forget it.
Also, there was not a room where I saw her going into this room, and no rooms in the house were painted bright yellow. As I got older and looked back at what I had seen, it seemed more like a light that she walked into rather than a room painted yellow. I keep wondering, was that a sign she was going to die, or was it really a ghost of some sort?
44. “Mother’s Ghost”
McCracken County
My father and his brothers and sisters all used to live in a big, old house in Paducah. They lived with their grandmother, as their own mother had died in the house. What it was, their grandmother moved in to take care of them when their mom died.
Three months later, they began hearing a strange noise in the house. At first, they didn’t think much about the noise, but later they decided that they needed to move away from the memory of their mother. So they all left the house, going their own ways.
Their grandmother decided to keep the house. Over a period of years, whenever any of the family would go out into the countryside to visit the house they would get an eerie feeling and hear strange noises.
My aunt decided to go to the house to get away from the city. She wanted to do her artistic paintings there. So she set up her easel in the living room and began painting. She then started getting funny feelings being alone inside the house. She decided to move her stuff outside into the front yard. She took off her shoes and laid them next to her, then began to paint.
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 9