Читать книгу Ghosthunting Kentucky - Patti Starr - Страница 9

WILDER, CAMPBELL COUNTY

ONE OF THE MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED questions I get about ghosthunting in Kentucky is, “Have you ever investigated Bobby Mackey’s place in Wilder, Kentucky?” Of all the sites that I have investigated, none can compare to the history of death, murder, and human sacrifice that is recorded at this locale. Over the years Bobby Mackey’s Music World has become known as one of the most sinister and haunted spots in America. Its reputation for being inhabited by tormented entities derived from the bizarre history that surrounds the area. For about 120 years, this place has evolved from owner to owner with a history that includes murders, suicides, demonic rituals, and slaughtered animals.

I called one of my ghosthunter graduates, Susan Rushing, who lives within a few miles of Wilder, to ask her if she could help me get into Bobby Mackey’s place for a ghost investigation and to interview some of the employees. Susan, a devoted ghosthunter herself, graciously offered to make arrangements but held me hostage to my promise that she would be able to join us on the ghost investigation. She has a knack for accomplishing anything once she sets her mind to it. Susan, with her wit and charm, had no problems securing an appointment for our team to investigate this haunted Mecca.

We also invited Cynthia Spicer, another one of my graduates, to go with us on the investigation. Even though Cynthia is a single mom raising two little girls, she still found time to work a ghosthunt. The three of us—Cynthia, Chuck, and I—headed out early in the day to meet Susan in Wilder before heading out for Bobby’s by 3:00 P.M. We came close to canceling our trip to Wilder. A few days before we were scheduled to leave, Kentucky was hit by one of the most destructive ice storms since 2003. The roads were cleared, but the walkways and parking lots were still heavily covered in ice and snow. When we arrived in Wilder and got out of the car we had to hold on to each other for stability as we started on the icy path to the front door of Bobby Mackey’s. Before we had gotten too far, Bobby Mackey’s PR/marketing manager, R.J., joined us. He was bundled in his thick, red coat, black hat, and plaid scarf in an attempt to ward off the bitter cold. He was worried that one of us might fall, so after a quick picture-taking session in front of our car, we headed for the inside of the building. R.J. loved the vanity license plate on our car, which sported the word “Ghosts,” and made sure to get a picture of it for their Web site.

As I entered the main doors of the famous honky-tonk, I felt the energy crawl up my back and shoulders, as if I was being greeted by invisible creatures of the unknown. I later explained that eerie feeling to another one of my graduates, J.C. Harris, and he told me about the time he did an investigation at Mackey’s a few months before me. He also had the same creepy feeling, which prompted him to raise his camera for quick snapshots of the entrance straight ahead. He captured an interesting mist accompanied by a faint purple spirit orb as he walked down the foyer.

Before continuing into the building, I looked to the right and saw a warning sign on the wall that stated the place was haunted, and, by entering at your own risk, the club would not be responsible if you were attacked by unseen forces. I thought it was a great marketing gimmick, but R.J. told me that someone tried to sue Bobby because they claimed they had been attacked by a ghost. The case was dismissed, but the management thought it would be best to warn others about the possible dangers.

R.J. shared with us some of the history of Mackey’s as we proceeded into the belly of this haunted icon. Since the 1800s the building has sheltered many personalities, and some of them were not so good. R.J. said that for over forty years the building served as an animal slaughterhouse where the blood of the animals would drain into a well under the basement that flowed out to the nearby Licking River. Some people believed that satanic worshippers performed sacrificial rites on the property.

Several different clubs and lounges have occupied the space. After the slaughterhouse closed, it was not until the 1930s that another company opened for business. During the years that clubs and bars were in operation, there were numerous fights, attacks, and killings that surrounded the Primrose Country Club, the Latin Quarters, the Blue Grass Inn, and the Hard Rock Café. It was Bobby’s intention to change all of that by bringing in a better type of entertainment when he opened Bobby Mackey’s Music World in 1978.

R.J. told us that Bobby gave up the chance to record songs in Nashville to put all his time and money into his new country music bar. Bobby was already a well-known country singer in Kentucky with several popular albums to his credit and was looking forward to having his own place to perform.

As I was standing near the dimly lit bar listening to R.J. recount the past, I noticed a rather husky fellow wearing a dark hoody. He walked over to join us. He was Matt Coates, the building supervisor, but he sure looked more like a bouncer to me. I thought to myself, if there were any ghosts or demons haunting this place surely they would think twice before taking him on. I turned back to R.J. to ask him more questions, and he assured me that I would probably get a better account of the hauntings by talking to Matt. He had been with Bobby Mackey for five years and was there during most of the ghost investigations that had been performed at the club. I figured now was the best time to grab my digital audio recorder to chronicle his accounts of suspicious ghostly activity.

“So, Matt,” I asked, “tell me about what you have witnessed here at Bobby Mackey’s.” Without hesitating Matt said, “One night while I was standing over by the mechanical bull, I saw a man sitting at one of the tables across the other side of the room. I started to walk over to see who he was and noticed that he was dressed like someone from the 1800s. As I approached him, he stood up, and even though it was dark, I could see that he had a mustache. He then turned and walked to the back door where he vanished.” “What did you do next?” I said. “I packed up my tools and went home.” “Did you ever see him again?” “Yes,” Matt admitted, “but I guess I’ve gotten used to him, and I don’t pay him any mind anymore.”

I asked him if he had any idea of who the man might be, and he said he might be Scott Jackson or Alonzo Walling. He told me the story of these two dental students from Cincinnati who were part of an occult group called the Seven Hooded Ghost Men in the late 1800s. They would secretly meet in the abandoned slaughterhouse and perform rituals where they would sacrifice animals and mentally retarded children. They also killed Scott’s girlfriend, Pearl Bryan, who was five months pregnant at the time, and after severing her head, they threw it down the well during a satanic ritual. They were both tried and found guilty of her murder and were hanged for this heinous crime. I gestured to my team, who were checking out the mechanical bull area for possible evidence, to go into the basement. We would proceed with the interview there.

The basement was huge, with many rooms to choose from, but our interest was in the room that contained the foreboding well. This supposed portal led into the depths of hell, where so many body parts had been banished during satanic rituals. Susan and Cynthia stopped immediately as we entered the room. I was already in the room when I heard Susan remark, “Wow!” I spun around to see what was the matter. Both women said they saw a thick mist, almost like a veil, before them, surrounding the room. Matt said that he, too, had seen this same phenomena many times, although at this particular time neither he nor I saw it. After Susan and Cynthia stepped into the room to join Matt and me, the mist vanished.

Matt pointed out a small room off to the side that he called the jail room. He said it was the room where the occultists put the children before they sacrificed them and threw them down the well. I went into the room and the others claimed that they saw a spirit orb fly around my head. Could this be a spirit from one of the children that had been thrown into the jail room?

Then Matt guided us over to an open doorway on the other side of the room, where stairs proceeded up to nowhere. I thought how bizarre that the stairs just led up to a plastered wall. It’s possible that during Prohibition, bootleggers may have used the stairs to bring liquor up to the bar. They probably brought it up from the river so no one would catch them smuggling the illegal booze. There could have been a door leading to the outside that had been closed off in later years.

I saw that in one corner of the room the floor had been ripped up and the gruesome well opening was exposed. There was a barricade of wooden slats built in front of the well so no one would accidentally fall in. I asked Matt who ripped up the floor, and as he lifted his leg to brace himself on the barricade he answered, “Carl had a dream that Johanna came to him and pointed at the floor. She told him that if he would rip up the floor in the basement, he would find the well and her diary there.”

“Who are Carl and Johanna?” I asked. Matt said that Carl Lawson was a maintenance man who’d been employed at Bobby’s for a long time. He lived in an apartment above the club. He started seeing shadows and hearing disembodied voices shortly after he came to work there. It wasn’t long until he started seeing a full-body apparition of a woman. Later, he claimed that he had conversations with her and that he thought the ghost’s name was Johanna. She was a young woman who committed suicide after her boyfriend was murdered. She found out that her father, owner of the Latin Quarters, arranged to have her boyfriend, Robert Randall, killed so that they couldn’t be together. She had met Robert Randall while he was a singer at the club and had fallen in love with him. Her father begged her to forget him, but she was bound and determined to marry him. Her father took things into his own hands and, with his mafia connection, had one of his gangsters kill him. After Johanna took her own life, they found her body in the basement in the same room that housed the well. She was five months pregnant.

I was struck by the coincidences: two women whose deaths were connected to the site of Mackey’s nightclub and both were five months pregnant at the time of their deaths. Later on, during my interview with Bobby, I found another interesting coincidence. Johanna’s boyfriend’s name was Robert Randall, and Bobby Mackey’s full name is Robert Randall Mackey. Bobby has even written a song titled “Johanna” as a tribute to her life there.

I asked Matt if Bobby and his wife, Janet, had ever experienced any of the paranormal commotion, and he shared another story with me about Janet. Shortly after they purchased the place, Janet, who was pregnant at the time, went upstairs to clean the apartment. She stopped in the middle of her work because she thought she heard voices in the apartment. At first she couldn’t make out what they were saying. When she resumed her work, they started talking again. Again, Janet stopped what she was doing. The voices grew louder and spoke more clearly, and as she listened, she understood them saying, “Get out of here.” She became very upset and started to leave the apartment. All of a sudden, she felt invisible hands take a hold of her, preventing her from leaving. She struggled and pulled away from the controlling force and ran for the stairs. Reaching for the railing, Janet started down the stairs, but the enraged ghost pushed her. She lost her footing and fell down the stairs. As she lay on her back at the bottom of the stairs, she looked up to see a figure looking down at her and then it walked away. The fall pushed Janet into premature labor. The doctor was able to stop the labor, and her healthy baby was born closer to the delivery date. Even though Janet had experienced other strange happenings, such as doors opening on their own, lights flickering with static sounds, and a ladder that walked toward her, being pushed down the stairs was enough for her. She vowed never to return to the place. However, she did return to Bobby Mackey’s Music World two years later to help bartend on Friday and Saturday nights. She would clean up quickly and leave as soon as her shift was over—and she would never stay in the building alone.

We wrapped up our investigation, and two days later I called Bobby Mackey to get his take on all the ghosts at his place. He was every bit a gentleman and so kind to answer my questions. He told me right up front that he did not believe in ghosts. He assured me that nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to him, even though Janet did have some incredible experiences. I asked him how he felt about having the same name as Johanna’s boyfriend. He said that it was a strange coincidence, but nothing more than that.

Unlike Bobby, Janet felt that Johanna was the one who pushed her, since Janet was also pregnant—here again, another coincidence. Janet also married a man with the name Robert Randall, the same name as Johanna’s boyfriend. The ghost might have believed that Janet’s husband, Bobby, was her boyfriend reincarnated. Janet admitted to Bobby that she thought that Johanna attacked her because of jealousy towards her. A couple of days after talking to Bobby, I called R.J. to get a few more details for my story. He told me that Janet had passed away only the day before. I was truly shocked and asked if she had been sick. He explained that Janet had suffered with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) for some time but had it under control with medication. She had gone to her daughter’s house to baby-sit her grandchildren while her daughter and son-in-law went out on a Valentine’s Day date. When they returned, they asked Janet if she was going to bed, and she replied that she wanted to stay up and watch TV for a while. The following morning they found Janet slumped over on the couch as if she had fallen asleep while watching TV. When they tried to wake her, they realized that she had passed away some time during the night. “At least Janet was able to spend her last hours with her grandchildren, whom she loved and adored with all her heart,” R.J. said.

I dedicate this chapter to this loving and devoted woman, Janet Mackey, who was loved by all who knew her. Janet Mackey had been married to Bobby for forty-two years and was only a couple of days short of her sixty-first birthday.