Читать книгу Ghosthunting Kentucky - Patti Starr - Страница 15

BARDSTOWN, NELSON COUNTY

AS I WALKED THROUGH THE PUB, making sure all the guests had their needs met, I noticed a fair-haired, slim gentleman sitting at the bar. As I approached him I recognized him as the owner of the Jailer’s Inn. Since I had became the general manager of The Old Talbott Tavern in 1996, I had not taken the opportunity to go next door to introduce myself to the owner of the Jailer’s Inn. This was a perfect time for us to meet. Just as he reached for his drink, I introduced myself and we started to chat.

I learned that Paul McCoy had purchased the Jailer’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast from his parents, Challen and Fran McCoy. They had purchased the county jailhouse when it went to auction after it closed in 1987. I asked him about his business because I was trying to improve the Tavern’s business and thought we could partner on some ideas. I suggested to Paul that we might promote something special together to bring in more guests. We talked about several promos that would include a wine tasting, or mystery dinner, or romantic get-a-ways. He invited me over to his place to see his facilities and that’s when I discovered something really unique about the Jailer’s Inn. It is haunted! As I entered the front door, I was hit with an impression of a woman who was in charge and guarding this space. From the corner of my eye, I saw figures dart back and forth in the hallway. “Paul,” I said, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but do you know that this building has spirits?” He smiled and almost reluctantly admitted that he did think it might be haunted. I took the opportunity at that time to tell him about my other profession as a ghosthunter and asked him for permission to do a ghost investigation of the Jailer’s Inn. Quietly, he agreed.

Before the building was a bed-and-breakfast it served as a jailhouse for Nelson County from 1819 until 1987. The jailer’s office was on the first floor, and the prisoners stayed on the second floor until 1874 when the county built the extension on the back. They also added a tall stone fence and gallows for hanging the convicted. Once they moved the prisoners to the back of the building, the jailer and his family lived in the front part of the jail.

We set a date and I returned to the Jailer’s Inn with my small Bardstown group of ghosthunters, which included two close friends, Melody and Gary. We started our investigation on the first floor in the Library Room that housed many older books and included a king-size poster bed and sofa. We continued our search for the spirits into the next room called the Colonial Room. It offered a rustic feel with the natural limestone wall and the hand-hewn timbers that ran across the ceiling. While working in these rooms, I felt as if I had time-traveled back to the late 1800s. Since the first floor didn’t seem to be very active. we decided to move on to the second floor in hopes of finding some paranormal activity.

At the top of the stairs and to the right, we entered the 1819 Room. This room was once referred to as the dungeon. It seemed funny to call an upstairs room a dungeon, but at one time it was dark, with thick hand-hewn timbers all along the walls and ceiling with no windows to let in the light. This is the room where the jailer would shackle the criminals who had committed the most heinous crimes. At one time, the only way to get to this room was to put a ladder up on the side of the building and corral the men up through a window. Then they were chained to the walls in this dark room. The window was closed off by another door to create a secure hold with no escape. Now, it is a beautiful room with white sheer curtains flowing across the walls for a beautiful, calmer ambiance. We had great hopes that this room would be the one where we would find the most evidence of ghosts.

We set our audio recorders out, positioned our camcorders in the corner of the room, and continued to ask for the spirits to communicate with us through sight or sound. As I turned to walk into the bathroom, I felt a strong cold spot and asked one of the team to take a picture of me where I was standing. When the photo was developed, there was a thick, dark mist to the right of where I was standing, which indicated to me that we had possibly captured spirit energy.

I felt that it was the presence of a woman but couldn’t make out who she was or why she was there. I grabbed my dowsing rods and started to dowse in the room. I asked if the spirit was a female and got a “yes” response. I asked if she lived there and got a “no” response. This answer eliminated the ghost as a member of the jailer’s family. I asked her if she died there and she responded “no.” I asked if she was a visiting spirit and got a “yes.” Then her energy seemed to leave the room. Later on I asked Paul if a woman had ever been hanged at the jail, and he said he did not have a record of such an incident. I asked him if a woman had ever been incarcerated there, and he said that a couple of women had been arrested but not for any major crimes. My curiosity was about to get the best of me, so after the investigation I went to the local library to see if I could find out who this woman might be. After hours of searching the microfilm, I found an article in the newspaper that dated to 1909. The title read, “Is the Bastille Haunted?” Wow, I thought. They were writing about the jail being haunted all the way back then. The story was written by a reporter who had heard reports that the inmates were complaining about ghosts waking them up at night from loud banging, screams, and the sounds of chains dragging across the floors. He decided to research some of the prisoners who had died at the jail to see if one of them was haunting this place. One story that caught my interest was about Martin Hill, a man who drank too much bourbon, who had been arrested in 1885. His wife was greatly afraid of him when he drank because he became so mean and violent. As I was reading this story, I closed my eyes and could feel her fear, and I started to envision what she had gone through while married to this man. He would beat her so badly at times that he would break her arm or a few ribs. He would hit her in the head until she would lie unconscious. One night Martin came home drunk and grabbed his wife to start another brutal beating, but she jerked away from his grip and ran out of the house. She ran into the woods to the other side of the hill to a neighboring farmhouse. She knocked on the door and begged the farmer to let her stay with his family until morning because her husband was drinking and she feared for her life. Martin was furious that his wife had run from him. He grabbed his rifle and stormed out of the house in hot pursuit of her. It wasn’t long before he came to the farmhouse. He stood outside in the front yard waving his rifle around while swearing to kill everyone if his wife didn’t come out. The farmer came out and pleaded with Martin to go home and sleep it off. He promised him that his wife would return to him the next morning. Martin refused and before he could cause any more ruckus, his wife stepped out on the porch to plead with him. The moment Martin saw her, he lifted his rifle and shot her dead before she could speak. Martin was arrested and taken to the jail. While awaiting trail he became ill, so the jailer sent for the doctor. Martin told the doctor that he was in great pain. He said his head was throbbing, his arms ached, and it hurt for him to take a deep breath. After the doctor examined Martin, he couldn’t find anything wrong with him. All he could do was give him some pain medication.

The last hanging at the old county jail that is now the Jailer’s Inn

A 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.