The next day, I was working in the yard and the neighbor kids were outside playing. I asked the little girl why she didn’t wave at me the night before. She told me that they weren’t home—that she had been visiting her grandparents and didn’t get back home until around midnight. Well, I didn’t want to scare her, so I told her that I must have been mistaken, that it must have been a reflection or something. That seemed to satisfy her, and she went on playing. However, it upset me a little. That’s when I realized I had really seen the ghost. If the family wasn’t home, it must have been a ghost. I really saw a little girl in that window!
131. “Screams of Victims Dying in Flames”
Campbell County
Up near where I live in Ft. Thomas, there was a huge old mansion that burned down. When it burned down, this old fellow went out to save a horse that was in the coach house. The old fellow and the horse were both burned to death.
On a cloudy, windy night, like when its getting ready to storm, you can go up there and still hear them screaming.
132. “The Ghost of a Murdered Man”
Shelby County
There’s an old house out there in Shelby County, and for three or four nights in a row a couple of my friends went out there. It’s a big, big, big house, and they opened a window so they could get inside. When they got inside, their flashlights went out.
I wouldn’t go out there, wouldn’t dare go. They’d go out there and walk around. They said they heard noises the first night they were there. After they heard the noises, they ran to the window to get out of the house, but the window was closed. It was old and hard to open, but it had closed by itself, or something else had closed it.
They went back again, and similar things happened. I never would go there with them.
Later on, someone told them that somebody was shot and killed in that old house, that the place was haunted.
133. “A Ghostly Fiddler”
Nelson County
The tale of a ghostly fiddler has been passed down for generations in Bardstown. The story claims a man with a fiddle came to Bardstown in the early 1780s. He had no money and played his fiddle for food and shelter. The fiddler became well known throughout the community and provided entertainment for local gatherings and dances. When he was not able to rest at someone’s home, he would sleep in a cave under the town.
One such night the man retreated into the cave for shelter. As the temperature dropped he moved deeper into the cave. He eventually found a comfortable spot and built a fire. He played his fiddle while the fire warmed the cave. As the fire burned, the cave ceiling cracked from the heat. It collapsed and trapped the fiddler.
When local residents noticed the fiddler was missing they went into the caves to find him. They found the crumbled mess of the cave, but were unable to locate the fiddler.
A little over a hundred years later, the first Nelson County Courthouse was removed and a new one built. The story claims workers in the basement of the new courthouse heard sounds coming from the cave below. At first they thought the sound was running water, but as they listened they realized it was music from a fiddle.
The music is believed to be the music of the fiddler whose ghostly tunes fill the caves where he died. For the brave souls who work at the courthouse at night, it is rumored the fiddle can still be heard in the basement.
Rita Herrmann of the Bardstown Civil War Museum provided the Standard with a copy of the ghostly fiddler story. The story was used several years ago as part of the tour of Old Bardstown Village.
“I dont know whether or not the story is real,” Herrmann said, “but the ghost story has been told for generations.”
134. “The Knocking Ghost of a Murdered Man”
Clay County
Late one afternoon about seven o’clock here in Clay County, a woman went to spend the night with her sister. When the sat down to eat, they heard a noise in the cellar. One of the women stood real still and said,” Wh-what was that?”
Her sister told her that an old man had been living there for a long time when some robbers took him down in the cellar and killed him. It had been said that the house was haunted after that happened.
They went on to bed, and about midnight one of the sisters heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Whatever it was walked to the end of the hall, then turned around and walked back down again. The woman who lived there got up out of bed and went to see what was there. Finding nothing, she went back to bed.
All was well until about 3:00 A.M., when they heard something knocking against the wall. It knocked about six times, then stopped. Then the woman got up and went downstairs to wake her sister. Her sister got up to listen but the knocking was gone. The sister that lived there said, “I’m moving out of this house!”
The very next day, the family moved from that house, never to return to live there anymore.
135. “The Overpowering Smell of Roses”
Metcalfe County
The old house we lived in at one time was located on the banks of the South Fork of Little Barren River in northern Metcalfe County. It was known by locals as the Cassady place. As far as we could ascertain, the house was built around 1850. And it was haunted!
We moved there in 1974, and everything was normal until the mid-1980s. We never saw a person, but my sister and I both saw an apparition on the stairs more than once. Also, our mother was awakened once in the middle of the night by a crying baby. Thinking it was her great-granddaughter, she went upstairs to check on her only to find her sleeping soundly.
Some remodeling was done during this period and a new bathroom was built over an old cellar, and many times I have gone in that bathroom and distinctly heard a baby crying.
One year during the 1980s an overpowering smell of roses came to the house. It started in the dining room and at times would also be in other rooms. However, it was never in all the rooms at the same time. The fragrance of roses was apparent to several family members, and one visitor we had said she was almost suffocated by the smell of roses. Believe it or not, she had not been told that we had smelled roses for several weeks.
The farm was sold in 1994, but the house was periodically occupied until 1999.1 don’t know if the occupants at that time had similar ghostlike experiences or not.
136. “Afraid to Go Home”
Campbell County
Back in 1935 my mother and father wanted to move into a house of their own. They had been living upstairs in my grandma’s house in two rooms on the second floor with their one-year-old baby daughter, Shirley (that’s me). They didn’t have much money, and houses were hard to find.
They found a small house on Fourth Street in Dayton, Kentucky, and the rent wasn’t very much. Folks living there in the neighborhood told them that the landlord had a problem keeping tenants because of strange happenings in the house. Since the rent was cheap, and they wanted to be on their own, they didn’t want to believe the stories they were hearing. So they went ahead and moved in. My grandparents and several uncles and aunts were there to help.
During the first night in the house, they were awakened by strange noises that seemed to be coming from the cellar, something like chains rattling. When they got up the next morning, they found that furniture had been moved around. A very large kitchen cabinet that was filled with dishes was in the center of the room. Needless to say they were scared but thought that maybe someone was just playing a joke on them.
The next night the same thing happened—rattling chains in the cellar, and in the morning the kitchen cabinet was back in the middle of the floor, and a chair had been moved in the living room. About this time they began paying more attention to what neighbors were saying but still didn’t believe in haunted houses.
My mother’s sister Florence and her husband said that they would spend the night with them. In the middle of the night when they heard the chains rattling, they went down to the cellar but found nothing. Next morning the large kitchen cabinet was again in the middle of the floor. While the
y were standing in the kitchen, my aunt Florence noticed that her wedding ring was not on her finger, but she had never taken it off since the day they were married. They searched the bed, the rooms, the entire house, but her wedding ring was never found.
All of them were extremely frightened and didn’t want to spend another night in that house. Grandpa, Grandma, aunts, and uncles came to help them move out of the house that very day. They never discovered what or who it was, but they were too scared to ever go back to that house. They were afraid that the ghost, or “whatever,” would be waiting there and possibly harm them.
In 1937, the Ohio River flooded its banks and most of lower Dayton was covered with water and mud. Seems like no one heard any more about strange things happening in that house. Maybe the flood chased the ghosts away.
137. “A Historic West Point House”
Hardin County
We bought the old Ditto-Lansdale house here on Elm Street in West Point in 1987 after my father-in-law passed away. It was a Civil War hospital that was built by a Mr. Ditto about 1810. My husband’s family got this house in 1964. When my husband was covering up the cistern back then, he looked down in there and saw a few headstones in it. Behind our house we have found some graves. And we have found many Indian arrowheads here in the back yard.
Numerous weird things have taken place in this house, and still do. The first ghostly thing that I ever experienced took place one day when I was upstairs cleaning. Several people here in town used to live here when it was rental property, and they’d talk about the things that happened when they used to be upstairs. One lady was pregnant, and they had a rocking chair in the house. She’d get up in the middle of the night, and the rocking chair would just be rocking of its own accord. And sometimes her husband would put his own house slippers down on the floor, and the next morning they’d be moved to another room.
I kept saying, “Yeah; right. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Upstairs, there is a great big room and a great big door. One night I was up there sweeping when the corner of my eye caught something in white floating behind me. I said to myself, “No, I don’t think so.”
Well, I kept sweeping. But there was a mirror there, too, in the other room. So I sort of looked into the mirror, and just about that time this white-like, fluffy figure floated back across the room again. This was in the middle of the day, but I got goose bumps. And whatever it was floated out the window.
A couple of years later during a July day, I was upstairs cleaning. The windows were open and the curtains were blowing. And I had a brand new refrigerator. The refrigerator was against one wall, and behind me were two windows. When I looked into the refrigerator, I could see the reflections of the curtains and the couch, and what have you.
When I got down on my hands and knees cleaning out the refrigerator, I heard the floor squeaking like someone was coming up the steps. All of a sudden the noise stopped, and I could see somebody standing behind me through this reflection in the refrigerator. I thought it was my son who had stooped down and was going to scare me. I said, “Okay, Josh, I see you, I know you are there.”
Well, he didn’t say anything. Again I said, “Okay, Josh, I know you are there, so break it up.”
I turned around to look at him, but no one was there. He was gone. The next thing I knew, the door started slamming shut. I ran down the stair steps screaming as I ran. When I got outside, my mom and my son were sitting outside in the backyard, giving my dog a bath.
So, there was nobody in the house, at least no family members.
Another thing that has happened took place back one fall. We had this big concrete porch that’s gone now. It was built during World War 1.1 had a grill out on the end of this porch. It was in October, and it was getting dark. I had been cooking, and my husband was in the house doing dishes, quite a distance from me.
I’m out there getting stuff together, and I heard some men talking. I yell out, “What?”
They yelled back, “Yahoo, yoohoo,” or something like that. I kept asking, “What? What do you want?” Then I said, “Who is it? Yahoo, yoohoo.”
About that time my husband, Danny, came out of the house and said, “What? What do you want? Who are you yelling at?”
I said, “Weren’t you just yelling at me?”
He goes, “No. What were they saying?”
I told him the word they were saying, and that I kept yelling it back to them. He told me, said, “I’ve heard it said that that’s what these Civil War soldiers yelled when they went into a battle. I guess you heard them yelling it.”
I don’t wear perfume, but several times I’ve smelled stinky perfume in the house. I don’t wear perfume. This is just an old, musty smell that I smell when it seems that someone walks past me.
My husband has also smelled it. One time he was working on the steps, stripping the paint off. He said that he felt somebody walk past him, behind him, and touch him. Said it smelled like a woman that had old perfume on her, real bad, old stinky perfume.
See, our house was built about 1810, then was used as a hotel back in the 1840s. It was then called the Reed house. We always said that what we smelled must have been one of the old prostitutes that went down the steps.
I was downstairs one time, and my husband was upstairs coming down the landing. He said that he looked up and thought that he saw me crossing the landing. He said that whatever it was, was of my stature and was wearing bluish clothes. He said that he yelled up there at me and kept yelling at me. He come on down the steps, and said, “Were you just upstairs?”
I said, “No.”
He told me that he had seen a slight, young figure that he thought was me.
We always keep everything locked up in the hallway when we’re not home. Well, me and Mom was gone one day. When we come home, I looked in this big hallway, and I said, “Mom, what have you been cooking this morning?”
She said, “I haven’t cooked anything.”
I said, “Man, it smells so delicious, like fresh bread.” I could smell yeast and apple pies, and all that stuff. We’ve smelled that several times over the years.
And I can wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning, and I smell coffee. And my brother lived upstairs for a while. He said that he would wake up about that same time, and smell fresh coffee in the room.
Two years ago, my aunt Joyce and uncle Bill were down here from Cleveland. My uncle Bill stayed upstairs, and Aunt Joyce stayed downstairs. That morning after they got up and were getting ready to leave, Uncle Bill came down and said, “Something is wrong with my watch.” He said, “It has stopped, and it never has stopped before.”
About a half hour later, Aunt Joyce looked at her watch and exclaimed, “My watch has stopped, too, but it never has done this before. I don’t understand this.”
Most of the time that we hear or see things is in the fall of the year. I can be sitting in my living room reading, with the TV and radio off. My husband is at work. There is no family noise going on.
I can see shadows walking behind me there in the living room. And I can hear people talking much of the time. I’ll jump up and run outside to see who it is, but there’s not a soul around the place.
Last summer I was out in the yard reading. I’ve got two dogs, and I had them tied up to a picnic table. My mother had already left the house. She’d been gone about a half hour or so. So I’m laying there, and the dogs started barking. And there’s a big pillar that was sort of blocking my view of the porch. But I can see the dogs under the picnic table. Well, they’re looking right at the porch, barking and howling and carrying on.
I said to myself, “What’s going on?” I sort of leaned over and looked but didn’t see anybody on the porch. The next thing I heard was a loud, walking noise, like somebody with heavy boots walking across the porch. I jumped up and looked toward the porch. The dogs were still looking that way, too, barking and carrying on. I could see what looked like just a piece of plaid shirt go by. I got big goose bumps!<
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Three or four minutes later, Mom comes up the street. I said to her, “You won’t believe what just happened. Somebody walked across this porch with big, old heavy boots on: clump, clump, clump.’” The footsteps quieted down, and then the dogs quieted down. That happened in the summer of 1998.
138. “My Ghost Girl”
Jefferson County
I live on historical ground. My house is located about fifty yards from a very old house and barn. The house was built before the Civil War, and was a stopover for the Underground Railroad. That old house and property was the Union Army Cavalry Station. It was the overseer’s house. Today, it is much in need of repair, and the owner is undecided whether to keep it or tear it down.
During the several years that I’ve lived here next to the old house, I’ve been visited by “my ghost girl,” as I call her. One night I woke up with a start and saw a young girl, I’d say in her late teens, standing by my bed looking at me. I don’t know why, but she looked English to me. She is about five feet tall, weighs about ninety pounds, has fair skin, large dark eyes, and a very pleasant face. She had on a night cap, the kind with a ruffled edge. Her night dress looked like worn white material with faded brown tulips. She disappeared, but not for long. I wasn’t frightened or disturbed. So I just turned back over and went back to sleep.
When I told family members about what I had seen, the men in the family laughed. They said, “Leave it to a woman. She sees a ghost for only a minute, but can tell you exactly what the ghost wore.”
Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky Page 22