Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky

by William Lynwood Montell

  That night, Jim didn’t sleep much. A strange rapping sound kept him awake. Every time heel doze off, he’d hear the noise. Next morning he wasted no time. He crawled through a trapdoor in the attic, where he found a floor that had been partially laid, but no walls had covering, just the outside weatherboarding surrounding the framework. Peering about with a flashlight for rats between the framing, he discovered a long willow pole that had been pushed down between the outside and the inside walls while it was green. This was evident because it was bent until somehow hooked under the edge of the floor. But now, it was dried, old, and brittle. It had been there for years but he managed to pull it up into the attic. On the dust covered floor and on the lower end of the stick, he found dark stains that appeared to be blood. Going downstairs, he ripped away two or three pieces of weatherboarding near the floor. Inside between the two walls was the skeleton of a tiny baby. A local doctor said the bones were those of a newborn infant.

  The strange rapping was never heard again, and the Dizneys still live there.

  64. “The Old Letter”

  Simpson County

  On this bright summer day, these two sisters, Heather and Jamie Graves, were going to their grandmother’s new house that she had just bought. These sisters were interested in what they might find up in the attic, so they went up to explore. They found an old letter and began to read it. All of a sudden, the lights went out! It was pitch dark up there, even though it was still daytime.

  They went back downstairs and told their brother Ricky what had happened. He proceeded to tell them that he’d bet that they wouldn’t spend the night up there. But they did. They went back up there at bedtime, went to bed, and were soon asleep.

  Not long after they were asleep, their grandmother went up to check on them. And do you know what they were doing? They were fighting and talking. Yelling, too. Believe it or not, they were still asleep. Their grandmother told what was taking place. When they woke up, they saw the ghost of a dead woman.

  Their grandmother told them that before she had moved into this house, a woman had lived there, and that before the woman died she had written a letter. That was the letter that Heather and Jamie had found.

  65. Cal Bingham’s Ghost”

  Muhlenberg County

  On a stormy day or night, there’s one place most people will avoid. That’s the house on Walnut Hill in Muhlenberg County, near Paradise—the eerie cabin where Cal Bingham died.

  The story goes that about seventy-five years ago, Cal Bingham, an ornery cuss disliked by most everyone, was out cutting trees along with two hired hands when a storm blew up.

  Folks say there hadn’t been one like it before or since. Lightning flew at the ground in jarring bolts while the wind raged viciously, tearing at all things standing.

  Witnesses say that old Cal Bingham raised his fist and cursed the sky for causing him delay. Almost immediately, a white-hot bolt appeared from the clouds, and seconds later Cal lay pinned beneath a lightning-felled tree.

  The two men drug him from under the tree and over to an abandoned cabin, where he lay on a cold stone hearth for hours. While his blood seeped into the rough plank floor, he cursed and ranted against the heavens until his dying breath.

  Some people say the two men didn’t go for help—not many folks cared either way.

  But ever since that day, whenever the clouds blacken and the thunder rumbles, any poor souls who have taken shelter there will testify that the old house shakes with an inner fury, and the angry curses of Cal Bingham can be heard over the moans of the wind.

  Perhaps the most chilling and perplexing fact of all is how the gray plank floor once again appears to run wet and red.

  Haunted door and stairway in the Smith/Richardson House. (Photo by Elbert Cundiff)

  66. “Footsteps and a Rattling Door”

  Breckinridge County

  There was an experience there in that Harry Richardson house, and this happened a lot. As far as I know, it s still going on.

  I heard it, Mom and Dad heard it, and Granddad heard it. Everybody that came to visit heard this. What it would be, you’d be sitting in the living room on the couch or whatever, and that door that went upstairs would rattle, just like wind was blowing against it. You’d hear what sounded like somebody wearing farm brogans—shoes—coming down the steps rattling the door and then going back up the steps. This happened a lot.

  Well, Harry Richardson had some stuff upstairs, so he kept the upstairs door locked with a padlock. I got curious and even though I knew it was wrong at the time, I pried the padlock off the door and went upstairs. I looked around. There were two windows up there, but both of them were nailed shut. So there was no way for any wind to get up there and rattle the door. I came back downstairs and fixed the hasp on the door the best that I could so that Harry would not know that I had been up there.

  But you’d still hear what sounded like feet walking up and down the steps, and you’d hear that door rattle. People who were visiting would ask, “How come that door is rattling like that?”

  Dad would just pawn it off by saying it was the wind rattling the door. But I knew better. That must have been the ghost of Emmitt Smith reenacting the day he was murdered when he came down the steps and tried to get out the door to find his heart medicine, but couldn’t find it and went back upstairs and died.

  I would say the rattling noise is still heard.

  67. “Ghosts in the Kentucky Headhunters’ Rehearsal House”

  Metcalfe County

  We have a rehearsal house up above my grandparents’ house here in western Metcalfe County. It’s where my dad and the other Kentucky Head-hunters used to practice when I was little, and they still do. They also wrote many of their songs in this house. My grandmother Young let them have that house when Dad, who is Richard, and his brother Fred was just very young. They called it the practice house. This old practice house became a very famous institution when the Headhunters won all their Academy Awards.

  Dad used to tell stuff about this woman who burned up in this house. The house didn’t burn. She was Ellen Broady, who just caught on fire at the kitchen stove and burned until she died right there in that house.

  He also said that in this same house, a man hanged himself.

  They say that you can still see their spirits up there in the house. Dad said that when the Headhunters were kids, they began their initial practice sessions right there in that house. They felt real creepy about the things they saw and heard. They said that they all could see things like black shadows and stuff like that.

  I’ve got my own music band now. I’m fourteen years old. It’s a rock’n roll group. We go up there on weekends to practice. If we stay real late, like past midnight, you start seeing stuff. And you get this eerie feeling like you’re being watched. Just like passing a graveyard in the middle of the night. Man, do we have to get out of there!

  That house up there, and that yard, man its a trip! Its the greatest house to ever be in, because there’s just so many creepy things happening up there.

  68. “The Ghost of a Slain Robbery Victim”

  Whitley County

  Late in the afternoon, my grandmother told me a story about a haunted house. She said it was about 7:00 p.m. when she went to stay with her sister. When they sat down to eat, they heard a noise in the cellar. My grandmother sat still and asked, “What was that?”

  Her sister told her that an old man had been living there a long time and some robbers took him down in the cellar and killed him. It had been said that the house was haunted. After they all went to bed, about midnight my grandmother heard footsteps coming up the stairs. It walked to the end of the hall, then turned around and walked back down.

  Grandmother got out of bed and went to see what was there. She found nothing there, so she went back to bed. All was well again until about three o’clock when she heard something knocking against the wall. It knocked about six times and then stopped. Then Grandmother got up and went downstairs to wa
ke up her sister.

  Her sister got up to listen, but the knocking was gone. Grandmother’s sister said that she was moving from that house. So the very next day, the family moved from the house up to Mill Creek, Kentucky, where Grandmother died of old age.

  69. “The Talking Spirit’s House”

  Morgan County

  Perlie Ferguson and her husband, William Ferguson, took their children to stay all night with William’s grandparents. During the late afternoon, Mary, the oldest child, went to sleep without any supper and was put to bed.

  Along in the night, she woke up very hungry and wanted her mother to go get her something to eat. Mrs. Ferguson awakened her husband and wanted him to go with her, because in order to get to the kitchen an outside porch had to be crossed. Well, he just made fun of her and told her to take the lamp and go on, that nothing was going to hurt her.

  She took the lamp in one hand and the little girl in the other and went on across the porch and into the dining room. She looked into the cupboard, but there was nothing there except an uncut apple stack cake. So she went on into the kitchen and looked in the stove and cupboard, but she found nothing to eat in there.

  She took a butcher knife out of the drawer and went back to the dining room and took the apple stack cake from the cupboard and cut a piece from it. She then poured Mary a glass of milk and set the cake with it on the table for her.

  While the child was eating her food, Mrs. Ferguson heard someone speak and say, “You will have grief.”

  She looked around to see if someone was standing behind her, but there was no one there. At first she thought it was her husband there trying to scare her, but when she saw no one, she became very frightened. She hurriedly picked up the lamp, and also Mary, and went back to her bedroom. There was her husband, sound asleep. She asked him if he had been trying to scare her, but he vowed that he had been asleep ever since she had gone. Needless to say, Mrs. Ferguson did not sleep much the rest of the night.

  About a month later, her second child, Clyde, took pneumonia fever and was very, very sick for a long time. The doctor thought he was going to die. Mrs. Ferguson believed, and still does, that the voice in the dining room earlier that month had tried to warn her of Clyde’s serious illness.

  She told her husband’s grandmother all about this some time later. Grandmother Ison told her that that was no strange occurrence in that house, but was a very common one. She even told her that in the bedroom where Mrs. Ferguson had spent the night, many times the quilts could not be held on the bed. Something would keep tugging at them all night long.

  70. “A Haunted House on Coon Branch”

  Knox County

  My granny, as I used to call my grandmother, used to live in a house up on Coon Branch that people said was haunted. You could hear things all through the night if you were awake. You could hear things sit by the fire in the front room with no light in the kitchen, and hear noises in the kitchen like someone cooking a meal. It sounded like the stove door opening and closing, dishes rattling, pots and pans falling, and a sound like a 150-pound person walking around. I never did like to stay there all night. It made me afraid.

  The house had a square hole in those days. They put things up there in the loft. There was a ladder on the wall that you could go up and down on. When the light was blown out at bedtime, that walking began up in the loft. I would lay there in bed, afraid to move. You didn’t hear weird things in the daytime.

  Once someone there was sick, and my mother and sister-in-law went over to sit up and help. Mother and the woman washed the dishes and took the light into the other room. They hadn’t been in there any time when they heard the dishpan fall and hit the floor; it rolled and made a terrible noise. They took the light and went to see. The dishpan was right where they left it. When they went back into the other room, the noises started again—walking, dishes rattling, punching the fire, and the stove doors shutting and opening.

  Granny said that if she could see it, she would ask it, “What in the name of the Lord are you here for?”

  She said that she had got up in the dark but couldn’t see a thing. She said what it was or what it meant, she never knew. Granny said that at first she was afraid, but she got used to it. She thought it was a witch or a “hant,” but she didn’t know which. She lived there for some time, and it went on as usual.

  I still feel afraid when I pass the place where the house used to stand. We called it the haunted house.

  71. “The Haunted House in the Woods”

  Greenup County

  Late one evening in November in the year 1850, a party of five men, driving ox teams, paused to rest on a mountain side. The teams had started before daylight that morning, and the day had been a hard one. The ox wagons were loaded with green staves that were used in making barrel kegs. The rough mountain trail was slick with frozen mud. It was cut into deep ruts which made it difficult for the oxen to draw the wagons. The men, being cold and hungry and realizing that they could not reach their destination, began to look for a place to spend the night. They finally saw a small house standing among the white oak trees back from the road on this little trail.

  Deciding that they would try to find shelter in the house, they approached it and found that it was deserted. They unhitched their oxen from the wagons and tied them up. They went inside the house only to find it crudely furnished.

  The men felt a little more cheerful when they had the fire burning and had eaten some food. They soon became drowsy and stretched out on the floor around the fire. After a while, they were awakened by a loud noise. Thinking that someone was at the door, they got up to investigate. They also went to see about their oxen. Finding everything all right, they went back to sleep.

  They were later awakened by the cold wind blowing into the room. The fire had died down, and the door was standing wide open. This seemed strange indeed, because they remembered that they had barred the door.

  After replenishing the fire and barring the door, they tried again to get some sleep. However, they soon heard a noise overhead that sounded like chains rattling. They got up and looked in the attic but found nothing that could have caused the noise. Most of them decided to spend the rest of the night sitting up and talking.

  In the early morning, they prepared to leave the house, and as they were hitching their oxen to the wagon, a man on horseback approached. He told them that he had seen the lights and was passing there on his way to get a doctor for his wife. The men told him about the strange happenings; then the stranger told them the gruesome story of the family who had lived in the house a few years ago. They had been found murdered in their beds.

  Do you suppose it was their ghosts that disturbed these men?

  72. “Ghostly Noises in an Old House”

  Pike County

  At one time when I was a little girl, we lived in a big house in Big Shole. At the children slept in a big room downstairs. Papa slept in a bedroom upstairs.

  One night Papa was going to be gone, so he asked Minnie to stay with us. Minnie was my half brothers wife. She had three little girls. We were told to sleep in Papa’s room instead of the big room downstairs. We went to bed, and there was a noise like a chair rocking. Minnie yelled and told us to get in the bed and quit rocking that chair so she could go to sleep. The children all told her that they were already in bed.

  The noise kept up, and the children all got scared. We asked if we could come downstairs and sleep in our regular bedroom. Minnie said, “No, I’ll come up there.”

  She came upstairs and brought a flashlight. She got in bed with all of us. When the noise started up again, she shined the flashlight on the chair. The chair was still, not moving at all. When she turned the flashlight off, the noise started up again.

  The children were never able to sleep in that room. The chair rocked so hard it could be heard all over the house.

  Papa was brave. He slept there all the time.

  “The Knocking Spirit”

  Clay County />
  Once there was this man who was going to see his girlfriend. The girl told him that there was a knocking spirit at her house. The man told her that he was not afraid of ghosts.

  They were sitting around the fire, when they suddenly heard a noise far away from where they were. The man said, “Come a little closer.”

  It continued to knock until it knocked at the door. Then he told it to come a little closer. He was scared to death, but he said, “Come a little closer.”

  Then it knocked closer, this time on his hat brim. He said that after that he never told it to come any closer, because he took off and ran away from there.

  He never went back to her house again, but she came to his. Later, they got married, but he would never go back to her house anymore.

  “The Hainted Room”

  Perry County

  Henry Smith went to visit his aunt, Linda Legg, who lived over in Perry County. Now, Mr. Smith wasn’t grown when this happened. He went in at her house right after dark, and Aunt Linda was sitting in front of the fire, smoking. She told Henry to go to the table and get him something to eat, that the food was all kivvered up at the table. He went to the table and eat, then she told him to go upstairs and go to bed.

  This house was a real old-timey house with one real large room downstairs. The old-timey stair steps come down into this big living room. There was this hainted room that sot right at the head of the steps. She told Henry that there was a table setting right by the door as he goes in, and that he would find a coal-oil lamp setting on the table with some matches laying there beside it.

  He undressed and blowed the light out and went to bed. Just about the time he hit the bed, something slammed into the side of the wall and sounded just like a baby kicking the wall. Henry felt over on the back side of the bed and caught the baby by the legs. It kept kicking him, and Henry kept on inching toward the front of the bed. The closer Henry got to the edge of the bed, the closer the baby got to him and kept right on kicking.

  When he reached the edge of the bed, he rolled right out in the floor and grabbed his britches as he took off running. Right down them steps he went, and into the big living room he went.