On at least one occasion, she called her parents and left our house in the middle of the night, setting off our security system. This caused other neighbors and the police to come to our house. We couldn’t figure out what was scaring her, but she kept saying that it was a ghost scaring her. She says that he comes toward her with his mouth open, as if he is screaming real loud for someone to come and help him.
What makes this scene so very interesting is that she had no knowledge of what Mr. Farley looked like. But on a particular weekend, I asked her if she would look at a picture, which had several men in it, and tell me whether or not the ghost that she had seen was in that picture.
She looked at the photograph, turned totally white, and her eyes bugged out of her head. All of a sudden, she began screaming, “It’s him, it’s him. There is the ghost.”
She had indeed pointed Mr. Farley out in the picture. I quickly took the picture away from her sight, as it was causing her to be in distress. I tried to tell her that, to my knowledge, he wouldn’t hurt her. But that did little to calm her down.
As I said before, we have heard many disturbing noises that indicate that there is something in the house. And this young girl has not only seen the ghostly image, she has shown us who he is in a picture. We have no reason to dispute her or to think what she has seen is none other than the ghostly figure of the late Don Farley.
91. “Mell Ridge Ghosts”
Green County
When I was a kid, there was a hainted house on Mell Ridge close to where I lived. Lots of people saw this white thing there, but I never did. They said my daddy shot it at close range with his 12-gauge shotgun, but it just ran off unhurt.
One afternoon, I was walking behind some kids just as we got near the house, and we heard something screaming, “Woo-oooo-oooo.” My cousin in front of me began screaming, “It’s the white thang!”
I was seventeen years old at the time. I got my rifle and went back there. All I found was a jagged piece of white paper hanging in the house. That was all I saw, but it didn’t explain the weird noise that we heard.
On another occasion, my grandma who lived there on Mell Ridge in Green County told me about the time when she and her brother, Sammy, was at home by themselves when they were young. There was this pecking sound there on the floor. Sammy picked up a stick and pecked back. The sound got louder and louder, and Sammy kept pecking louder and louder.
All of a sudden a plank on the floor came loose and the head of an old gray-haired man came up out of the floor. The kids got scared and ran off. When the mama and daddy came back to the house, they checked the floor but didn’t find a loose plank. Well, that still scared the kids to death, and it scared me too when she told me about it when I was a little boy.
92. “A Haunted House near Princeton”
Caldwell County
There is a haunted house a few miles from Princeton, which has all the accessories pertaining to the most approved ghost story. There are only the stately ruins of a palatial home, the stone walls crumbling, the garden overrun with weeds, the vines growing in tangled masses.
There are the corpses of two children lying upstairs. There is a strange disappearance of the owners, who took with them a corpse and never returned. And as a fitting climax, there are those who solemnly aver that there is a ghostly form flitting through these untenanted rooms.
The house was built by one John Harpending, but where he or any of his kin is, is a mystery. He went away twenty years ago, he and his wife, leaving the house as though expecting to return in an hour.
Mr. Harpending went to California. He invested in diamonds and sold them to miners for big prices. The miners wanted to cut a dash with their sudden wealth. His was a surer way to wealth than prospecting for gold. He made a big pile, and when he had enough he went back East, disposed of his gems, and decided to settle in Kentucky.
He bought the magnificent farm which still bears his name and on it he built a house which cost him $100,000.
Well, John Harpending and his wife lived happily and dispensed hospitality in the Old Kentucky way. Children came to them, three in all. Two of them sickened and died.
The Harpendings had peculiar beliefs. Neighborhood gossip was aroused when they refused to let the bodies be buried in the usual way. The little corpses were embalmed and laid to rest in two heavy plateglass cases, expensively decorated. These were placed on oak supports and left in an upstairs room. The bodies were clothed in white—there to await the resurrection morning.
After this episode, the house was avoided by neighbors. There was something uncanny about it, and the Harpending hospitality went begging.
For years the family lived alone.
The remaining child, a daughter, grew to womanhood. She, too, sickened and died. After her death, her father and mother went away in a carriage. They took the body of the dead girl with them. Why they did this, when they went, whether alive or dead, is among the mysteries of the past.
After a time, when none of the family returned, a few of the venturesome neighbors investigated. They found the house just as it had been tenanted. All the rich furniture, the carpets, the costly lace curtains, were untouched. It was as though the occupants might have left it for an hour s absence.
In the sick girls room was the couch she had died on. The print of her head remained on the pillow. The sheet which had shrouded her body after death lay just as it had been laid aside when the body was removed.
In the next room lay the bodies of the two children just as they had lain since death.
It is now a score of years since the Harpendings went away.
In time the old house began to decay. Each year the havoc grew. Wildflowers mingled with the choice plants of the Harpending’s beautiful garden…
It was spoken of in whispers, and after nightfall the superstitious would rather cross a graveyard than pass near [the place].
Then came stories that the house was haunted. Men who passed there at night told of seeing the ghostly form of a young woman at the window of the room where the eldest daughter died.
There were unbelievers. Men of nerve who laughed at the old wives’ tales made up a party and stood watch. The form was seen at the window when the curtains were partially drawn.
It may have been a human figure, but the watchers decided it was the vague, shadowy form of a woman which did not look to be flesh and blood. Its face was ghastly pale. Some said a queer light flickered about it. None was brave enough to enter.
And so the people thereabouts firmly believe that the spirit of some member of the Harpending family comes from the spirit land to revisit the old homestead.
The last time I saw the Harpending place, it was a grove of trees and a few meaningless ruins.
The pattern of the vast place was obvious, though, in the ruins of a water system, carriage house and the mansion itself, which had fallen into its own basement.
I was there on a bright summer day; the sky was cloudless. Then in a moment the skies grew dark and the wind came up. The big trees around the hole where the mansion stood bent and trembled in the wind.
Thunder rumbled over the swaying treetops.
93. “Weird Door Openings”
Rockcastle County
The old Nunnely house, located in the Wabd community here in Rockcastle County, had a kitchen that was built onto the back of the house. My great-uncle Fred was a young boy at the time, but he remembers that the kitchen door leading to the outside of the house would not stay closed while the family was eating. It would just unexplainably burst open.
At other times, when no one had been in the kitchen recently, they would go in and find the door open. Even when great uncle Freds grandpa nailed the door shut with what he called “buttons”—wooden pieces nailed to the wall that slid over the edge of the door—the door would still fly open.
None of the family members ever claimed to have seen or heard a ghost in this house, but they always wondered just what it might be that was causing the d
oor to open.
94. “The Ghostly House in Brandon Springs”
Calloway County
… Last spring, when I went with a group of children to the new Brandon Springs camp, I did a little research about the area, with the hope of coming up with something that would interest kids of that age. To my surprise, I came up with an apparently authentic ghost story.
It seems that on the spot where the Brandon Springs dormitories now stand, there once stood a large, two-story house, originally built about 1835 by Nathan Skinner. It sat high on the hill and overlooked the river, which was at that time the main form of transportation. It was also located on a well-used road; consequently, what with the lack of hotels in those days, many times weary travelers, whether from the riverboats, walking, or on horseback, would come to the house to ask for lodging for the night.
According to the stories, Mr. Skinner would make the travelers welcome, feed and tuck them in, and then in the dead of the night, rob them of their possessions—and, incidentally, their lives. Members of the family were reported to have heard the ghosts of these misrouted travelers, trying in vain to continue their journeys.
In later years, the house changed hands. Nathan Skinner died in 1846 and is buried nearby, probably quite near where he put his victims. Sometime around 1880, after the estate had been settled, the house was occupied by a family named Chilton. These people were not natives of the area and had probably come in when the iron furnaces were in operation. They were a close-knit, quiet family who stayed pretty much to themselves. This may have been because they were not natives, but it is more likely because of their son, who had been deformed quite severely at birth. In those days such a tragedy was looked upon with shame, and a person who was mentally retarded or crippled was kept at home but kept hidden from the public eye.
This child, whose name is not known, stayed mostly in his little room on the first floor, where he spent many hours peeking out the windows, trying to see the world that lay beyond the row of cedar trees in the yard, which had been planted there to block outsiders’ view of the house and its occupants. Before he got to be very old, the boy died, and so the legend goes, as long as the house stood, his halting steps and the sound of his crutches could be heard at night in the house.…
“I Was There”
Boyle County
I, for one, believe in ghosts. I once lived in a house that had a ghost or ghosts. The day we moved into that house here in Danville, at 1111 West Lexington Avenue, strange things happened. My dad finally sold the house and we moved out, but the thoughts of that old house have never left me.
This all took place back in the 1960s. I remember being too scared to stay alone in that place. I felt cold air in the entrance way as you go toward the stairs. It was like a wind or a strong draft. This meant that a door was open, yet I knew that no door was open at the time.
Sometimes I heard footsteps on the stairway, and then I heard them walking across the floor upstairs. It was just like someone’s boots that I heard. Even my dad heard the footsteps, and he went upstairs a few times to see what it was, but there was never anything to be seen.
Many, many times, a door to the attic would come open, even though my dad had locked it shut. He thought us kids were unlocking it, but we convinced him that we didn’t. Soon, he realized that it just unlocked by itself. I’ll never forget the time that my brother was asleep, and he awoke all of a sudden when the attic door opened. He glanced around, and in the light coming in through the window he saw the shadow of a man that looked just like Abraham Lincoln—a man with a beard.
On many occasions when I was in bed asleep, I would wake up when I felt something, maybe someone, sitting there on the side of my bed. Or I might feel cool air blowing across the bed and reach for my cover, but something would cover me up. Mom, in the other room, would ask what I wanted, or who I was talking to. As soon as I realized that it was not my mom on the bed there with me, it frightened me. However, I was never harmed. And one time I woke up to find myself standing in front of my mom and dad’s bed. I don’t know how I got there, but when my mom spoke, I woke up.
We had a parrot bird. Well, one morning we got up and found it dead. Looked like something had tried to drag it out of its cage, and the cage was locked. And I’ll never forget the time that we had some children at our house for company. One of the kids said she saw something, but she was so scared she couldn’t say what it was. We had a cat, and at times it would hiss at things that we could not see.
Till this day, I still think about that house. One time, after I had moved away for many years, I drove by the house just wondering if someone lived there. I spoke to one of the people who lived there at that time. She told me not to mention it to the children for they claim that things were already happening to them.
This family had to leave. Someone else then bought it. And all of a sudden the house is for rent here in 1999. Does this mean that they, too, now know that the house is haunted?
96. “The Moonshine House”
Logan County
This story is about my own father and mother in the first years of their marriage.
If you didn’t grow up in the sharecropper heritage, you cant begin to understand why some people are forced to live in some ramshackle houses, and why some landowners would ask and expect some people to live in shelter that livestock, if given the choice, would abandon.
Being anxious to strike out on his own, my father made a trade to raise crops of share with the local landlord. He looked at this house and was then assured that repairs would be made and that it would be liveable before time to move in.
Of course, a promise made is not a promise kept. Moving day came, and still the house was a dump. More promises followed that supplies would be brought in and that my father could do the repairs himself. Well, foolishly, Dad agreed and moved his family, consisting of himself, my mother, their firstborn son, and my grandmother, widowed and now living with her daughter.
While making some simple repairs to the house, Dad found evidence that a moonshine still had once occupied part of the house. Upstairs, upon the second-story floor was a large stain that really did look like a giant bloodstain.
Periodically, as my mother would say, you could hear anything in that house that you listened for. One time, my brother, upon hearing his little red wagon running across the living room floor, jumped down from the dining room table and ran to intercept the thief who had his toy. Well, believe it or not, his wagon was still under the bed where he always kept it stored.
One peculiar thing about that house was that the attic door would never stay shut. No matter how strong a latch they put upon it, the door would come open by itself.
My grandmother, her eyesight failing but with courage as strong as ever, said this when she saw the door come open, “Well, I’ll keep that door closed for a while.” She latched the door, then sat in a straight-back chair and leaned it back against the door itself. Just about the time that she leaned back against the door, it came open and pushed my grandmother, chair and all, into the middle of the floor.
That house was the only place that my grandfather ever left before the year’s contract was up. No repairs were ever made to the house. He could put up with the ghosts, but finding a dry place in the house to sit when the rain was falling was just too much trouble.
97. “Many Ghostly Experiences”
Boyle County
Some weird things have happened in some of the houses we have lived in.
In one place here in Boyle County, you could hear footsteps going up the stair steps. Then whatever it was would turn around and come back down, but you could never see what it was.
One time when my granddaughter spent the night with me, the next morning she told me that during the night she woke up and saw a little girl standing there beside her bed.
Another time, my daughter and granddaughter were playing upstairs, and a doll fell off the shelf. They both said that they saw big, round things in the air, and
they saw the toy box moving around. The round things they saw were about three to four feet tall.
On still another occasion, the door opened and my little girl thought it was us family members. I mean, she came running down the steps just scared to death.
Another thing I remember is when we were on the outside of the house and all the lights were off. Well, all at once the bedroom light came on. That was in the room that had a bad odor in one of the corners. It was a dusty, smoke-like smell. A lot of people say that ghosts do leave an unpleasant odor in the room where they are.
98. “Woodford County Library Ghost”
Woodford County
Very pleasantly located in the heart of the Bluegrass is Woodford County. This area has an abundance of historical riches, one of which is the Logan Helm Woodford County Library, which is located in Versailles, and is one of the oldest libraries in this part of the state. It was established in 1812 as a subscription library by the Kentucky Legislature. In 1906, it became a free public library and was named the Logan Helm Library when money was donated in memory of Logan Helm.
The gracious two-story building standing on Main Street has always been a library. It was erected in 1915 after a lightning strike caused the old building to burn… The appearance and feel in this library is like no other.
It is not known how long the resident ghost has occupied the second floor of this library, but I became aware of his presence in the early 1980s. The upstairs had been completely renovated and I had accepted a new position as head of Children’s Services. My department was on the second floor. The library was not new to me at that time, as I had served as bookmobile librarian for six years. But never at any time did I hear mention of a ghost.
Children’s [materials] and young adult materials filled the shelves, but the young people shared the space for other purposes. The office and work area were there. A large multipurpose room called the gallery was used for exhibits, meetings, and to conduct all the children’s programs. A small cozy room with a fireplace and mantle had shelves and tables that kept Kentucky and local history materials. Over the mantle hung the portrait of a local dentist who years ago had given money for a previous renovation of the building. His name honored this historical area in the library. The joy of voices and laughter, along with the quiet, more serious tones of wisdom and learning, filled every inch of the second floor.
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 16