Ghosts in Kentucky: Genteel spirits
The spectral residents of America’s most haunted neighbourhood
ONE evening in 1918 a Louisville belle paced anxiously on the front steps of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, waiting for her lover, a soldier stationed at a nearby camp. When he did not come she believed herself spurned; in fact, he lay in his barracks, quarantined and dying from Spanish flu—the same disease that killed the young woman days later. Some say she can be seen of an evening pacing there still.
Then there is Avery, who haunts an ornate pink house that housed both a chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and allegedly (not at the same time) a brothel. He appears to warn inhabitants of impending doom. He supposedly saved one inhabitant from immolation in a kitchen fire and another from having her head crushed by a cinderblock thrown through the window. Not far away, at the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum, the ghost of Mr Conrad, who built the mansion, has been known to appear wagging his finger at stragglers who wander off from tour groups.
At 48 square blocks, Old Louisville is one of America’s largest historic districts, and has a reputation as one of the most haunted. It abounds in brick and stone Victorian-era mansions. With their ornate turrets, spires, gabled windows and forbidding facades, many of them certainly look haunted. And given their age and size, most of them must have had people die in them at some point.
As for what to do with a haunted house, that varies; running out the front door screaming is one option, but you can also get to know the spook in question. David Dominé, who writes about Old Louisville’s history, said that the ghost haunting his house quietened down as soon as he learned that her name was Lucy and she was a maid. He sold that house to a ghost-fancier precisely because it was haunted.
And there are plenty of ghost-fanciers: around 5,000 people a year take Mr Dominé’s tours, around half of those from out of state. Chris Morris, the master distiller and resident historian for Brown-Forman, which makes several Kentucky bourbons (including Woodford Reserve, whose distillery is home to two ghosts), notes that Kentucky was largely settled by Irish and Britons, and “Celts believe in ghosts.” In other words, Kentucky may abound not in restless spirits, but in people who believe in them.
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