Our Ghost Hunting Trip
Written by Rose: Click here to visit her site.
Well, I had my very first ghost-hunting experience last evening. I know, that probably sounds really improbable coming from me, but honestly, I’ve never went to a place before for the express interest of contacting the spirits that may be present there. This place was, however, QUITE interesting. If you’d like to hear more, pull up a chair and get comfortable:
Welcome to Bobby Mackey’s Basement
My friends and I made the journey to Bobby Mackey’s country bar in Wilder, Kentucky, which is about 30 minutes from my house. This was at the suggestion of our friend Angel, who is very interested in ghosts and haunted sites. I had vaguely heard of Bobby Mackey’s bar once–I remembered that it was supposed to be the most haunted bar in Kentucky, but I didn’t recall any stories about it. I didn’t even realize it was so close to Cincinnati. When Angel suggested going there to poke around, I said, “OK” automatically, having no idea of what we were getting ourselves into. She did send us the link to Bobby Mackey’s place on the web, but I didn’t look at it at all. I wanted to keep myself open to impressions I might receive once I was there and not be influenced in any way by what I read. For those of you who’d like to read first about the bar and it’s history, here’s the link to the ghostly ongoings at Bobby’s:
http://www.bobbymackey.com/hellsgate.html
For the record, I haven’t read these pages yet. I’ll do that after I finish typing and posting this message. Again, I want to record my impressions here and not get them mixed up by something I’ve read.
I made sure to take some time for meditation and protection exercises yesterday before we went there. For the past week, my spirit guide, whose name is Mara, has been telling me that “you’re not going to like it there” whenever I’d speak about our upcoming excursion. I knew instinctively that my pyschic defenses needed to be up so that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the place. I’m glad I took the time to do that, and to call in all of my protective spirit guides and angels, because this place…well, I’m getting to it.
We arrived at the bar around 8 o’clock, and it wasn’t very crowded yet, which was great. We had 13 people in our party (interesting number, eh?!), and one of them, Mike, had a video camera that Angel had asked him to bring. Several of us had digital or regular cameras to take pictures. We snapped a few in the bar, and on some, there are a few orbs of light visible. Orbs in photography are often thought to be spirits present. I can’t tell if these are just lights or really orbs, especially in our photos…we might be able to see more clearly when we load the pictures onto our new computer. While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, I jotted down the following notes in my notebook. These are impressions I was receiving while upstairs in the bar. The majority of the spirit activity is purported to take place in the basement, and this is the area we would be touring. This is what I wrote:
“–very cold inside, bathroom especially
–stomach upset–obviously lots of throwing up here (meaning the bathroom)
–strong impression of someone hanging by the neck or being choked somehow–something constricting around the throat
–guns and rifles–specifically shown a rifle–shooting? someone shot to death?
–impression of very large man who may have died here or is somehow connected
–Mafia or Mob”
This is all I had time to write down. As we were milling around, I was getting more impressions about those few things I’d written. I felt very strongly that there was a Mafia or organized crime connection to the place, and that whoever had been shot had been connected to that. I got the strong impression of the shooting taking place from behind or that the man shot had been ambushed or surprised when he was attacked. The very large man I was seeing appeared to have a large beard. The hanging took place somewhere in the building, and I felt it was self-inflicted, and that that was also connected to a male energy. There seemed to be a lot of male energies I was picking up on, and many of them seemed to be aggressive. I later learned that the men’s bathroom had been the site of some purported spirit activity–a man had claimed that something unseen had beaten him in the bathroom, and he had sued Bobby Mackey over it. The case was thrown out, but now, if you want to take the tour, you have to sign a waiver saying that you are responsible for anything that happens while you are in the basement.
Anyway, when we had all arrived, we signed up for the tour. Our tour guide, Amanda, took us outside and told us a little of the history of the bar. I don’t remember everything she said, but the place has QUITE a history. I’m sure some of it is recorded on the web pages. She did say that the building used to be a slaughterhouse. I remember her saying that a man named Buck had owned the place. I remember her saying that a woman named Pearl had been beheaded and thrown down the well in the basement, and I think this lady was pregnant when that happened. She is seen often as a headless ghost. There was another story about another pregnant lady, I believe, who also died in the place (or was murdered…I can’t remember which), so pregnant women don’t do well at this establishment. She also told us that the place had had Mob connections throughout its history, so I was right about that. She mentioned a hanging that had taken place, someone who was connected to the place and I think been convicted of something, which I thought might be the hanging I was sensing, but I really felt someone had actually been hung on the premises. More on that later.
As we were walking around to the basement door entrance, I sensed the large man again, the one with the bushy beard. I asked Amanda if she knew of any men connected to the building who might match this description, and she said that it sounded like Buck, one of the owners. I can’t remember if she said that he died there, but I felt he may have, since he was so connected to the building. I didn’t feel that he was a malevolent spirit, but may have actually hung around to watch over the place and to keep the other negative spirits in line.
We arrived at the side door, which Amanda unlocked, and we all into the basement. It was a very large place, filled with a lot of junk, and it was not very well-lit or maintained. I don’t remember the exact order of what rooms we went in first, etc, but I’ll try my best to recount what I was feeling.
As soon as we went inside, I felt opressed by the energy of the space. I got the instant, almost sick, feeling of blood being everywhere, which I’m sure is connected to the place being a former slaughterhouse. The energy was really overpowering, just a heavy, negative, not happy feeling. This was an immediate impression that did not abate much during the entire tour of the basement.
We went almost immediately to the well room, which they jokingly call The Gate to Hell. Let me just say this: I have never, EVER, felt energy like that before in a space. As soon as I stepped over the threshold into that room, I immediately felt sick to my stomach, so sick that I had to stop and close my eyes, because I really thought I might throw up. The well area was off to the right in the room, and I felt repelled by the energy at that end–I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. I started to back away to the other end of the room, and I felt repelled by THAT end as well. The opposite end had a small room off of it, which looked about as big as a phone booth, and I didn’t like how it felt, either. I had the feeling of being surrounded on all sides, being trapped in the energy, and I was extremely uncomfortable. One of our friends, Ron, kept asking me how I felt, and I honestly couldn’t even articulate how I felt. I just kept mumbling, “Sick.” I couldn’t hear anything the tour guide was telling us; I tend to be clairaudient, and I felt like there were hundreds of voices murmuring to me, not like a chant, but just a bunch of voices , almost like white noise, that were buzzing in my head. I tried to focus on Mara, my guide, but she wasn’t speaking… I couldn’t hear her voice, and that freaked me out a bit, too. But I did sense my protectors there, and they wouldn’t let me near that well on the one end of the room. I turned to look at the small box-y room, and I felt like there was something trapped in there. Amanda came down to that end and said that small room used to be used as a jail cell, and children used to be put in there to be punished when they were bad. Poor kids…I think I must’ve been picking up on their fright. I can’t blame them…I wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped in that terrible place either. I think I would’ve gone insane.
We finally left that room and went on to another. (Again, I’m not sure if I’m remembering the order of rooms correctly or not). We squeezed into another space that had another cell in it, and this cell was so far back in the corner of a room that it was hard to get to. Amanda walked one of the guys back there with a flashlight to see it, and while they were back there, I got a strong impression of someone dying in that space, that cell. Again, it felt like a male energy, and it didn’t feel especially negative, but he did seem angry that he had died in that way, like he was being punished, possibly for something he didn’t feel he did. I asked Amanda about that, and she said a man had starved in there.
Amanda took us into a long room that she called the room with the Face Wall, because one whole wall is covered with spots that look like faces. They say it’s probably water damage or something, but there are faces in the wall. I got a very strong impression in this room, again, of someone hanging by the neck. I turned to the far end of the room and walked to see if I could feel anything, and the energy seemed to be concentrated in the lefthand corner of the room. I asked Amanda about that, and she confirmed that this was indeed the room where a man had hung. I told her I thought it was this corner, but she couldn’t confirm that. I told her that I thought the man had taken his own life and was just very, very unhappy, but again, she couldn’t confirm that either. I also got the impression of guns again in this room, lots of guns, and the shooting of a man who was ambushed. Amanda did confirm that this room was often used by the organized crime guys, who I believe she said ran alcohol during the Prohibition. There was a lot of aggressive, pissed-off energy in that room, but I didn’t mind its energy nearly as much as the well room.
We went into a long, more open area, where there were old dressing rooms. Amanda took most of the crowd down to the end room, but I was caught and held by the energy in one room in the middle of the row. I could see someone sitting in the chair in the dark of that space, so I stopped to see what else happened. It was one of those now you see her, now you don’t, things, but I could still sense her in there even if I couldn’t see her. I felt that she was an unhappy soul, but she was not malevolent, and that she had somehow died connected to the place. This was interesting: I reached out my hand and put it in through the doorway in the room, and it was noticeably warmer in that room. The air also felt thicker, more condensed. Several of our friends noticed what I was doing and came over to try it, too. Several of them could also feel the temperature and atmospheric change in that spot. I tried to get the spirit to talk to me or Mara, but I couldn’t seem to communicate with her. She just had a very sad, very heavy energy. I do believe she touched my hand at some point.
I told Amanda what I was experiencing, and I told her that this was a woman who was not angry, just upset. I said, “It’s not the headless one. The headless one is pissed.” I’m not sure why I said that, but she nodded as if she understood. She said that Pearl (the woman who was beheaded) was often aggressive, but Johanna was not. I said, well, this one must be Johanna, and she confirmed that Johanna often hung around by the dressing rooms.
We were almost done with the tour. Ron asked if we could return to the well room, which Amanda took us back to. Ron wanted me to go in with him and tell him what I was feeling. Again, as soon as I walked over the threshold, I had to stop. Ron tried to keep me going, telling me not to be afraid, but I said, “Just give me a minute.” I really felt like I was going to throw up again. I couldn’t articulate to him that I wasn’t afraid. I knew nothing was going to happen to me physically, not with all of my guides there protecting me. I just didn’t like the feeling of the place. My guides would not let me get near the well itself, but this time, I got the very strong impression of people bringing bodies into this room and pitching them over into the well…disposing of bodies this way. This image brought a new wave of sickness to me. It was just awful. And the feeling was one of complete lack of feeling for these people, these souls that had been killed and then disposed of so dispassionately. It was just terrible. There was another impression of blood, lots of blood, a bloodbath, which was also very overwhelming. I told Amanda what I was feeling, and she confirmed that many bodies had been thrown down the well, including Pearl, the woman who had been beheaded.
Ron wanted me to check out the staircase that led off of this room. I went and stood in it with him, and I didn’t like the feeling in there, either. As I looked up into the darkness, I got the very strong impression of men dragging bodies down the stairs to be dumped in the well. I asked Amanda if she could confirm that, but she said that as far as she knew, those stairs had never led anywhere. I said I would dispute that, because I really felt they had been used at some point to actually bring bodies down there. I also got a strong impression of someone falling down the stairs, and another impression of someone breaking their neck. I couldn’t tell if the two were connected or separate impressions, but Amanda did say that a woman had died of a broken neck upstairs at the entrance to the bar.
As we were getting ready to leave the basement, I got another impression of the bearded man Amanda had identified as Buck, and this time, he had a large dog with him. I asked Amanda if Buck had kept a dog, and she confirmed that he’d had a large black dog.
That concluded our tour of the basement. We took lots of pictures, but many in the group had trouble with their cameras. They kept dying, or they couldn’t take pictures. Mike’s video camera went dead about seven minutes into the tour, and we were definitely down there for at least a half an hour or so.
We hung around in the bar for awhile, discussing our experiences. I tried to jot down what I had felt so that I’d remember it all. We drank a couple of beers, watched the drunk folks ride the mechanical bull (the actual bull from the movie “Urban Cowboy!”), and then we came home.
It was a wild experience. I’m not sure I’d ever want to go back, but I learned a great deal about myself and my own guides by doing this, so I’m glad I did it. Not everyone in our group experienced anything; Ron said he didn’t feel a thing. Even my own husband said he felt nothing, except for a small sensation of “the willies” the second time we went into the well room, over by the small cell used for children. That, however, is what is so interesting to me about stuff like this…you just never know how the spirits will touch you, and who they might touch.
Click page 3, below, to read Ron’s take on this experience.