The Kilowatt Kid

Cruised by the Frankfort Avenue Art House the other day and spied a new addition to his menagerie: an antique standup of Reddy Kilowatt, inexplicably in Western gear.

Pope Villa

Benjamin Henry Latrobe is considered "the Father of American Architecture" in many circles, and perhaps rightly so: he's the brain behind the design of the U.S. Capitol, the Baltimore Basilica, and the U.S. Custom House of New Orleans. Many buildings in Lafayette Square were designed by him, including even portions of the White House.

This being the case, you'd think people would have striven to preserve his residential buildings as well, but no. Of the many homes created by Latrobe, only three remain standing today.

Lexington's Pope Villa (326 Grosvenor Avenue) is best of the three by far by virtue of its peculiar - some have even called it avant-garde - design. According to its official website: "Its plan is unique in American residential architecture: a perfect square, with a domed, circular rotunda in the center of the second story. Latrobe drew inspiration from 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, but unlike Palladio’s villas, the cubic mass of the Pope Villa conceals within itself a surprising sequence of rectilinear and curvilinear rooms, dramatically splashed with light and shadow. Latrobe called these interior effects “scenery”."

Pope Villa's making a big comeback, with plans underway for a full restoration to its old-timey glory, thanks to the still-surviving blueprints found in the Library of Congress. The image above shows Pope Villa as it currently appears, and the image below shows it more as it looked during its heyday. The home was originally designed for Senator John Pope and his wife Eliza.

Maple Hill Manor

Maple Hill Manor wears many hats - it's a historic home, a Bed & Breakfast, a craft store, an orchard, a nature preserve, and an alpaca/llama farm. But it's also a haunted house. William Lynwood Montell, in his book Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky, includes a chapter devoted to Maple Hill's ghosts.

The house was built in 1851 by slaves, who took three years to painstakingly cut all wood by hand and make the bricks on-site from scratch. The original owners were Thomas McElroy and his wife young enough to be his daughter, Sarah Maxwell. Of their seven children, four of them died in the house at a very young age. Thomas and Sarah both eventually passed away in the home as well.

All of these family members have been cited as possible sources for the spirits, but there's more: the Battle of Perryville was fought in 1862, and left wounded and dead laying all over the area for miles. Many of the troops were brought to nearby Springfield homes, including Maple Hill, to recover and regroup. Some died on the premises.


Aspects of the hauntings that have occurred here have taken on a number of forms: knocks on doors with nobody there, sounds of footsteps coming from empty rooms, associated cold spots, inexplicable perfume odors, odd lights showing up in photographs, and prophetic lucid dreams experienced by some guests who have slept here.

Maple Hill Manor is located at 2941 Perryville Road in Springfield. Even without the fascinating ghost rumors and history, it's a delightful place to stay - check it out!

Free Victorian House!

One from our blog Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time:


There's no catch - the house next door to Genny's Diner on Frankfort Avenue in Louisville is FREE to a good home.

As reported on Louisville Mojo, a judge has ordered Frank Faris to give away this great old Victorian mansion to anyone who wants to take it off his hands, since he has himself been unable or unwilling to make court-mandated renovations to the historic home.


Faris purchased the property for $100,000 years ago with the intent to demolish it, but the city declared it a historic building before he got around to that. Now he's forbidden to tear it down and saddled with the cost of maintaining it to code.

So yeah, I suppose there is a catch, and that was it. Anyone who takes the free building will find themselves with the same expensive task as Faris: trying to bring this crumbling, near-collapse edifice back to life.

The Ouerbacker House

The long-abandoned Ouerbacker House, on the corner of 17th Street and Jefferson Street in Louisville, has been falling apart for years now. It's very strange, since it would seem to have been a prime piece of real estate at one time.

According to Broken Sidewalk, Metro Louisville took control of this property from a foreclosed tax business in 2005, but the property became even more abandoned during the city's stewardship, experiencing advanced decay, vandalism, and fires.



Recently there was some fear that the house would be disassembled and shipped elsewhere, but fortunately, it's not to be. There's a new Ouerbacker House Restoration Foundation that's reportedly working on saving the place and making it inhabitable again for future generations.

Blackwood Hall

Blackwood Hall, the former home of Colonel Sanders, is located near Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville.


In 1959, at the age of 69, Colonel Harland Sanders and his wife Claudia, moved their base of operations from Corbin to Shelbyville. Prior to this, the Colonel had spent many years in Corbin, Kentucky, developing his now world-famous chicken recipe Sanders' move to Shelbyville was prompted by the opening of I-75 which bypassed Corbin and killed traffic to his restaurant.




Although there have been vague rumors of Blackwood Hall being haunted, I know of no reputable evidence for this. However, Nancy Drew might have different information:

Wickland and Wickland

There are at least two historic estates called Wickland in Kentucky - the first and most famous is the one in Nelson County, on the outskirts of Bardstown.

It was built in 1813 for Charles A. Wickliffe, a Whig member of the Kentucky House of Representatives who later became Governor of Kentucky. The house has also been lived in by Charles' son Robert C. Wickliffe,(who was governor of Louisiana from 1856 to 1860) and by Charles' grandson J. C. W. Beckham. Beckham, who was born at Wickland, also went on to become a Governor of Kentucky (from 1900 to 1907).


The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels have a barbecue here every summer, and the Wickland Corn Maze Halloween event is held on the grounds every autumn. You never know what sort of horrific entities will jump out at you when you walk the corn maze, and the proceeds go to the local Future Farmers of America chapter.


Wickland is vaguely listed by some as a haunted house, but if anyone's given any specific data about this, I've missed it.

Kentucky's other Wickland is located in Shelby County, and was (rather unimaginatively) named after the first one. Charles Cotesworth Marshall, built it in 1901 and named it in honor of his wife, Elizabeth Wickliffe, who was the daughter of the aforementioned Louisiana Governor, Robert C. Wickliffe and was raised at the original Nelson County Wickland.


Wikipedia says it's in Shelbyville, but the closest major town to it is clearly Simpsonville, and if you want to be perfectly old-school accurate about it, it's in Veechdale. Remind me to drive back out there soon and take a photo.

Old Governor's Mansion

The Old Governor's Mansion in Frankfort, historically the official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, has been empty since Steve Henry vacated it in 2003. Subsequent Lieutenant Governors have chosen to live elsewhere to be closer to their hometowns.

The Kentucky Historical Society has since taken it over, and have completed renovations for turning it into a guest house. The renovation project was spearheaded by first lady Jane Beshear, along with former first ladies Phyllis George Brown, Judy Patton, and Libby Jones. Former Governor Martha Layne Collins has also been active in the process.

But whoever stays at this guest house may get more than they bargained for. As with many old Frankfort buildings, numerous ghost legends have been attached to the Old Governor's Mansion in the two centuries since it was built.

According to the Frankfort State-Journal:

Stephen Collins, son of former Gov. Martha Layne Collins, said according to legend, the Old Governor's Mansion is haunted. Collins is also chairman of the Historic Properties Advisory Commission and its members have discussed the possibility of using the mansion as a guesthouse.

Collins lived in the mansion with his mother while she was lieutenant governor between 1979 and 1983. According to legend, Margaret Robinson Robertson, the mother-in-law of Gov. Robert Letcher who held office from 1840-1844, still haunts the mansion.

Robertson moved in with her son-in-law after she was injured in a buggy accident that also killed her husband. She lived in the dining room on the first floor and Collins said she pledged to return after Letcher left office in 1844.

"They say if ever evil is about to befall the walls of the mansion, the ghost of Mrs. Robertson will return and the evil spirits will disappear," Collins said.

Gov. Christopher Greenup, who served from 1804-1808, held the first inaugural ball for his wife, Mary Catherine Pope Greenup. She died in 1807, and according to legend, her ghost walks the halls at night carrying a candle, Collins said.

The Heigold Facade

This is all that remains of the historic Heigold House in Butchertown, KY. The Heigold House was, in the 19th century, only one of many luxurious homes alongside this part of River Road, and the general area was known as "The Point".


In those days, this area was populated largely by wealthy French-speaking Cajuns from New Orleans who all chose to migrate here (not sure why). The Wikipedia has this to say:

Contemporary Louisville leaders of the time wanted the entire area depopulated and replaced with a park called Point Park Project, which was done to the extreme northern part of the area, now called Thruston Park. This remained the preferred urban public park throughout the 40's and 50's. The park was severely disrupted by the construction of I-64 in the early 60's and by the 80's, it was in a neglected and dismal state. The Harbor remained until it was closed by the city in 2005.

Today the only remaining structures are the decorated front facade of the Heigold House which was moved to its present location from the area of Frankfort Ave. and Padgett House, the last remaining of the riverfront mansions along Fulton St. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Heigold facade has been placed in a roundabout on Frankfort Ave. near River Road, while the fate of the historic Padgett House remains uncertain.

The Vest-Lindsey House

There's been reports that the Vest-Lindsey House, located at 401 Wapping Street in Frankfort, is haunted by the ghost of George Graham Vest.

I'm not sure how these ghostly identifications end up getting made. Did a ghost say, "hello, I'm George Vest"? Did an eyewitness recognize an apparition as resembling that of Vest's old photos? Or - more likely - did someone hear a weird noise late one night and decide that all of the people who occupied the home over the years, it must logically be the ghost of its most famous occupant, back to haunt his boyhood home for reasons known only to himself?

Of course, this whole area of Frankfort is filled with spooky old haunted historic homes, and I am not of the opinion that a ghost is required to stick to his own turf. I'm sure the area is crawling with spirits at any given time, but who knows whose they really are, where they're going, or what they're up to.

Vest himself was an interesting character, at any rate. As an attorney, he risked his life to defend a young African-American man from bogus murder charges. The man was acquitted, but a local lynch mob burned him at the stake anyway. Yet as a statesman, Vest sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and became a Confederate State Senator for Missouri.

Today, Vest is most remembered for having coined the phrase "a dog is man's best friend" during the Burden v. Hornsby trial, defending a man whose hunting dog, "Old Drum", was shot and killed by a landowner on whose property the dog had trespassed.

The Southgate House

Newport's Southgate House is a historic old edifice that is currently home to a rock club that has a strong reputation for being one of the region's best.

It also has something of a reputation of being haunted, but this is not so strong and not so well-founded. Reports on the web are sketchy and among people I've made inquiries to in person, most are of a highly anecdotal type: "Dude, a friend of mine said he saw a beer bottle fall over by itself", and so forth. If someone has some
seriously detailed and verifiable reports of paranormal hauntings, I'd love to hear them.

According to the bar's website, the Southgate House story is drenched with historical goodies: built in 1814, it has hosted Abraham Lincoln, John Taliaferro Thompson (he was born here, in fact) and troops of General Sherman's soldiers on their way to fight in the Texan War for Independence.

You can find the Southgate House at 24 East 3rd street, Newport, KY.

Whitehaven

Paducah's spooky old Whitehaven Mansion was built in the 1860s and then abandoned a century later, in 1968. It sat empty in a dilapidated state, heavily vandalized and falling apart, until a major restoration project brought it to its former glory in the 1980s.

Today Whitehaven serves as a tourist welcome center/rest area for I-24. It also houses a sort of mini-museum dedicated to the former Vice-president Alben Barkley. The collection includes his Vice-Presidential desk and chair, walking canes,
shaving mugs, his 1948 inaugural Bible, and more.

Supposedly a female ghost is occasionally sighted on the balcony of the second floor bedroom, and some versions of these anecdotes attribute the ghost to a woman who once lived there and bled to death during an appendectomy.

The Fake Fort Boonesboro

Coming into Boonesboro off I-75, you'll see several signs directing you towards Fort Boonesboro, leading you down into a valley off the right-hand side of the road where a huge and majestic fort awaits you impressively. Problem is, it's not Fort Boonesboro.

It's a somewhat fanciful "replica" of the original Fort, which no longer exists. This Fort is a strangely clean and pristine shaker-like community with many buildings containing profoundly unhappy-looking people in period clothing, giving capsule dissertations on soap making, whittling, wooden toy making, and other rustic stuff.

Historical accuracy here is, well, shaky. The setting looks and feels about as authentic as, say, the final season of Little House on the Prairie than the rugged primitive shelter the real Fort was. Everyone is clean and dapper in their machine-stitched polyester colonial duds. The plaque at the Fort's massive gates tries to give the impression that this is the actual original Fort, and only uses the word "replica" deep in the text.

The real Fort Boonesboro is depicted as being much smaller in size in this old idealized drawing - see below - which is in itself is believed by many historians to be already highly exaggerated.



Even the towering stone monument out front in the parking lot, which at a glance seems to be a tribute to the Fort settlers, is actually a self-congratulatory tribute to the people who built this Disneyesque simulacra, with a complete list of all their names. I'm not making this up.

As we were taking these pictures, a family from North Carolina rolled up and eagerly headed to the Fort, marveling at Daniel Boone's amazing handiwork. Far be it from me to pop their bubble. As a tourist attraction, I suppose one could do worse, but I'd like to see a lot more done with this Fort-replica concept to guarantee more repeat visitors to our state, and less disenchantment and disappointment.



Incidentally, the fake-Fort people tend to spell it "Boonesborough", which is kind of ironic, adding "ugh" to Boonesboro. We here at Unusual Kentucky prefer the more elegant shorter spelling.

The Real Fort Boonesboro

What's left of Fort Boonesboro is here, alongside the Kentucky River near Boonesboro Beach. This small square of foundation is all that remains, and even it has been reconstructed (it now has concrete holding the stones together) and altered (the stone stairwell is not original).


Although the nearby fake Fort Boonesborough "replica" was built in 1974, no one got around to recognizing the real one as a national historic landmark until 1996.

Elmwood Mansion

The stories are numerous about this huge mansion in downtown Richmond being haunted, and we believe them. There is a definite sense of a presence one feels when one is here. The house is empty now (Emma died in 1970) but the house is still furnished just as it was at the time of her death. The Richmond City Council holds occasional events in the front yard of the property, and gives tours of the home every Halloween. They refer to the mansion as "Elmwood", but in my childhood everyone just called it "The Emma Watts House".

According to rumor, Emma despised EKU with a passion and arranged to have it written into her will, in perpetuity, that EKU could never, ever get their hands on her property. Let us hope it will always be so. They'd probably turn it into a parking garage or a soccer field if they got half a chance.

There is another rumor that Emma is buried on the premises, but we found her grave in Richmond Cemetery.

The Pigg House of Berea

In 2003, on our original Unusual Kentucky site, we complained about how the Pigg House, a wonderful old historic log cabin, was being neglected by Berea College, and was becoming a haven for unsupervised kids messing around in it. We wrote:

This ancient log cabin (tucked away deep in the wilderness outside Berea) is supposedly being kept and preserved by Berea College, but the place is dilapidated and rundown, and evidently a popular spot for local idiot kids to come and party, leaving trash and graffiti everywhere. Some of these kids were stupid enough to write their full names on the walls, along with the date they were there.

Did anyone listen? Nope. Three years later, the place burned to the ground. Here's a squib from the Winter 2006 issue of Berea College Magazine:

The Frankfort Avenue Art House

Take a look at this amazingly decorated home on Frankfort Avenue near Butchertown in Louisville. We are unable to drive past it without slowing down for a long gaze at it, even if it means missing the green light. Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, we see something different in it every time we study it.


More images and information about this wonderful building can be found in the Weird Kentucky book.


You can sort-of see all the stuff peppered all over the property on Google Maps.

Vogt Reel Firehouse

Built in 1904, the Vogt Reel Firehouse is Fayette County's oldest continually operating firehouse. It also happens to be very haunted, according to the accumulated lore of several generations.

Some believe the ghost is that of Henry McDonald, a volunteer fireman who refused to retire and eventually died of a heart attack while on the job at the age of 68.

Others claim the haunting legend goes farther back than that, and that "The Phantom", as they affectionally call the ghost, has been attached to this land perhaps even before the firehouse was built. The property was a wooded lot until Lexington councilman Henry Vogt donated the land to the city, who in turn named the subsequent building after him.