Ghosthunting Kentucky. Patti Starr
few days later Martin’s condition worsened, and the jailer sent for the doctor again. Martin had to be strapped to his bunk because he was growling, cursing, and writhing in pain. The doctor examined Martin and again could not find a reason for his pain. Later that night Martin died, and the doctor commented that he had never seen anyone die in such horrific pain before.
I now think I understood what had happened. As a ghosthunter, through my experiences and communication with the spirits, I learned that sometimes people who die a quick or violent death may not realize at first that they have passed and are now in spirit. I believe that when Martin shot his wife, and her body fell to the floor, her spirit continued to follow Martin as they took him away to jail. It didn’t take her long to realize that something was different about herself and that she could have an effect on him. She might have felt that she could show Martin how much pain and fear he had put her through during all those years of abuse. I think he probably knew it was the ghost of his wife causing his pain, and this traumatized him to death.
This helped me to understand why the female ghost that I was communicating with in the 1819 Room indicated that she did not live in that structure or die there. She just followed Martin there and then remained. I feel she protects the Inn as she has gained the confidence to know that she can no longer be hurt or abused, and that is why she is there.
A few years later, Paul told me that a couple had come to the Jailer’s Inn and stayed in the 1819 Room. They told Paul what a wonderful time they had while there, and before leaving they took some pictures of their room. When they got home and had the photos developed, there was an apparition of a woman standing in the same corner where we had captured the dark mist while experiencing the cold spot on our investigation. She sent the picture to Paul and he placed it in his desk drawer.
He was excited to get such evidence, since the Travel Channel was scheduled to come in a couple of weeks to film the Jailer’s Inn for a ghost special. They had named the Jailer’s Inn as one of the ten most-haunted places in America. When they got there, Paul pulled open the drawer to show them the photo of the female apparition, but the picture was gone. He couldn’t believe it, and to this day he has never found the picture.
I did my first ghost tour in Bardstown in 1997, and I included the Jailer’s Inn as one of the stops. Since then, Paul keeps updating me with many ghost stories from his guests and employees. One of my favorites is about a salesman who came to Bardstown to serve his clients, often staying overnight at the Jailer’s Inn. On one of his many trips to the Inn, he was sitting in a chair in his room reading a newspaper. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone walking by. He lowered his newspaper and saw a man walking past him, headed for the other side of the room. The guest turned his head to see if he had left his room door open, but it was still closed. He turned back and watched the man continue to walk forward until he passed through the wall and disappeared. The salesman was completely dumbfounded by what he has just witnessed. He got up from his chair and left his room. He found the manager and asked if he could go out behind the building. The manager took him to the back door and told him to go out and enjoy the private courtyard in back. As he walked alongside of the building and turned the corner, he saw the same man sitting on a wrought iron bench positioned across the courtyard. The salesman wanted to meet the man who could walk through walls, so he slowly walked over to him. The closer he got to the man, the more faded in appearance he became until finally the guest couldn’t see the man any more. He was so impressed by this experience that for three years he would return on the same date at the same time, hoping to experience this man’s visit one more time.
Paul later told me that when his parents bought the building and starting renovating it for a bed-and-breakfast, there used to be a door in the wall where the man had passed through. They decided to close off the door to make it part of the wall. Maybe what the guest witnessed was a previous jailer making his rounds to secure the jail. In some of my investigations where I get reports of ghosts walking through walls, I have found through research that at one time there was a door there. The spirits seem to continue to use the old portal.
Once when an employee was cleaning an upstairs bathroom at the Inn, she leaned over to scrub the sink and happened to look up into the mirror. She gasped at the sight she witnessed: a big man with a decayed face standing behind her. She screamed and ran out of the room and back downstairs. The next day she did not show up for work. She had quit her job.
In the early years of justice, lawmen didn’t always imprison the right man. It wasn’t common, but every once in a while they would accidentally hang the wrong man. The cell would be full of criminals. When the officials would come to get their man for execution, sometimes all of the men in the cell would point to the nervous one in the corner. They would grab him and hang him only to find out later that they’d hanged the wrong man. It is believed that this mistake may have happened at one time or another at this county jail. Maybe the employee had seen one of those men that had been hanged by mistake.
Since my first investigation of the Jailer’s Inn, Paul has continued to let other ghosthunter groups come to his inn to investigate for ghosts. All of us continue to find more spirits. During our annual Bardstown Ghost Hunting Get-A-Way Weekend in November my group buys all the rooms at the Jailer’s Inn and The Old Talbott Tavern, and it is amazing how much evidence of spirit activity we get over this three-day weekend. We have found children who speak to us through EVPs. We capture children’s faces in photos and see apparitions of children. Why would we get children’s spirits coming through in a jail, you might ask. When the jailers and their families lived there from 1874 until 1987, many children were born and died there. It would stand to reason that we would find children’s ghosts there.
A good friend of mine, Frances Etienne, heads a group of ghosthunters called Afterdark Paranormal Investigations. She told me about an amazing investigation her group conducted at the Jailer’s Inn. At about 1:00 A.M., Frances and her team were sitting in the courtyard with their audio cassette recorder on. Since this was the area where the hangings had occurred, they were hoping to get an EVP that would be significant to the history of the executions. When they went inside the Jailer’s Inn and rewound their recorder, they were shocked at the EVP that came through. It was a man in a deep voice that said, “May the Lord be with us.” Imagine a criminal standing on the gallows with the black bag over his head and the rope pulled tight around his neck just seconds away from a horrible death. The priest walks over to the subject and says, “May the Lord be with us and have mercy on your soul.” This EVP was a great piece of evidence of such a scene.
Even though I can see why the Jailer’s Inn was named one of the ten most-haunted places in America, it now offers another unique and more luxurious way to do time. The courtyard offers a private, sunny garden where you can sit and relax while listening to the birds and breezes that blow through the trees. Each guest room is decorated with antiques and heirlooms. The breakfast is bountiful in flavor and Southern pizzazz. It is the perfect place to be incarcerated after being found guilty of having so much fun and relaxation.
CHAPTER 8
Kentucky Theatre
LEXINGTON, FAYETTE COUNTY
FOR TWO YEARS JEFF WALDRIDGE, one of my GCI members, Chuck Starr, my husband, and I planned the future of ScareFest, a horror and paranormal convention to be held in Lexington, Kentucky. Since the historic Kentucky Theatre was going to show the movies that featured the ScareFest horror stars, we thought the theater would be a good place for the fans to have a ghost investigation.
I met with Fred Mills, the manager of the Kentucky Theatre, to talk to him about the history and hauntings of the theater. The theater was in pristine form the day I entered the ornate Italian Renaissance lobby. Its rich, golden colors and magnificent marble floor were stunning. I had never before seen such a luxurious movie theater. While talking with Fred, I learned that he had been with the theater since 1963. He told me that the theater opened in October 1922, with a special feature that made the Kentucky Theatre stand out from all the other theaters in Lexington: a house orchestra and a Wurlitzer symphonic organ that played before every movie. Could you imagine being seated in such a luxurious and elegant theater as the curtains opened to a musical overture played on the Wurlitzer organ? As you looked forward you saw lyrics flashed