The haunting of Old Lousiville

Living in Old Louisville, the third largest preservation area in the United States, was a new experience for me. At the time I moved there the neighborhood was still in transition, with a lot of rehabbing going on. Unfortunately the streets were not always clean and there were a lot of unsavory characters lurking about.

I had been living there for around five years when I discovered that, besides the unsavory characters you could see, I was surrounded by some you couldn’t see. Evidently, there were ghosts peering from many of the gardens and leaning against the mansion gates on every block. They sat on the steps of the Christian Science Church just three blocks from me and sobbed each night from the windows of the houses down the street from me. Seems as though they were everywhere.

I never saw hide nor hair of any of them…never heard them sobbing, but believe me, I wouldn’t admit it. Not with all my guests asking me with anticipation if my house was haunted and looking disappointed when I answered no. We have hundreds of visitors here all year round clamoring to book Ghost Tours in hopes of see a wisp or two floating around a corner. I honestly tried to believe, but never had much luck with it. I’m too much of a realist.

Old Louisville has beautiful tree-lined streets with turn of the century mansions built in seven major kinds of architecture. They are decorated with gargoyles, chameleons, serpents, swans, turrets, and towers and enhanced with a variety of wrought-iron fences, hand-carved doors, and stained-glass windows. There are also hidden balconies, secluded courtyards, and secret passageways. All of this dark and spooky ornamemtation sets the scene for our ghostly reputation. The many ghost legends and the historical acoutrements make Old Louisville one of the most interesting areas in Kentucky.

Come and take a Ghost Tour and you’ll hear about the young girl with black hair, who died 90 years ago, but haunts the neighborhood to this day as she waits for her betrothed on the steps of the First Church of Christ Science, only three blocks from my house. You might even see her. Let me know if you do.

A few blocks the other way, the “phantom of Brook Street”, a young girl attacked and murdered by two vagrants in a home where she worked, still comes to work daily. Other ghosts, like the Widow Hoag and the Iceboy supposedly can be seen from time to time lurking in the shadows. I’ve never seen any of them, but a few of my guests swear that they have…probably just wishful thinking.

A former high school five blocks to the north of me is haunted by students who insist on coming back every year. A gray shingled building on Sixth Street has a fascinating and eerie history and odd occurrences since the 1940s still exist to this day. Also, in the ’40s, a royal wedding took place at South Fourth Street mansion in which a local girl, married one of the richest men in the British Isles. Evidently, he died soon after they were married. and her her sad spirit still visits yearly, weeping for her lost love. And, then there’s the Conrad Caldwell museum, only a few blocks west of me, where visitors have experienced uncanny sensations when they wander off from the group, and the ghosts of Floral Terrace who constantly whisper secrets as you walk by.

So there you have it. This is where I lived…in a 4028 square foot Victorian Italianate mansion among the dense gardens of the spookiest neighborhood in the county.