Want to see Kentucky’s spooky side? Don’t miss these haunted spots across the state

Last month the Kentucky Department of Tourism kicked off a new campaign designed to let visitors know there is more to the commonwealth than horses and bourbon.

“Kentucky After Dark” focuses on what happens after the sun sets in the commonwealth — and no, I am not talking about growlers and goblets, but ghouls and goblins.

The “After Dark” experience focuses on the state’s eerier attractions, and what better time to kick off than the month of October?

Twelve chilling sites throughout the state have been identified. If you want to know more about the Battletown Witch Festival, you’ll have to go to Brandenburg, or if it’s a Kelly Green alien encounter you’re hankering for, you need to head to Henderson.

However, the Bluegrass region includes two places so haunted they earned a spot on the list. This October, instead of watching “Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Friday the 13th” for the umpteenth time, check them out as a prelude to Halloween.

Lawrenceburg

This small town may be the scariest in the Bluegrass. It’s alleged to be the major stomping grounds of the elusive Bigfoot, whom residents have claimed to have spotted stomping around as far back as the early 1700s.

As if that wasn’t enough, the now-shuttered Anderson Hotel on Main Street has become a hotbed of ‘haints. So much so, that paranormal investigators from The Learning Channel and YouTube podcasts have ventured into its murky interiors to discover what lies within.

You can follow in their footsteps with local amateur historian and ghost hunter Jeff Waldridge on one of his tours during the Halloween season. If you have the courage, that is. Some past tour participants, according to Waldridge, refused to venture beyond the lobby.

Those who did claimed to have seen bloodstains in bathtubs; felt bite marks from invisible teeth and witnessed numerous apparitions gliding through the dimly lit halls.

Georgetown

Like Lawrenceburg, Georgetown seems a fairly benign small southern town. Until you start peeling back the layers, that is.

Georgetown is another of the 12 places specifically included in the “Kentucky After Dark” campaign, primarily due to the Ghosts and Goblins of Dead Man’s Hollow. Just the name is enough to scare away the timid. But if you consider yourself bold, just know it got that name because of its history of killings, banditry and other dastardly deeds.

One of the most dastardly befell a young man carrying a large sum of money from a cattle sale and the daughter of the man who had hatched a plan to rob and murder him.

As the two became lovers, she warned him about her father’s plans and they fled with daddy dearest and his murderous accomplices hot on their trail.

It wasn’t long before the vengeful mob caught up with and brutally murdered both, hiding the bodies in a cave along a stretch of the road. Many claim to hear mournful sounds coming from the cave entrance — perhaps from sorrow at a young love cut short.

If you want to pay your respects this Halloween, you’ll have to do it on your own as there are no organized tours.

If you’re still undaunted, follow U.S. Highway 25 out of town until you cross over Ray’s Fork, a local waterway. But don’t say you weren’t warned.

Frightful Frankfort

The capital city has had a grisly episode or two in its history. At the top of the list the assassination of the only governor in American history. (Check out the exhibit in the Capital City Museum.)

But this October, the museum promises another kind of scare with its “Beast of the Bluegrass” walking tour every Wednesday night throughout the month, leaving at 7:00 p.m. from Fort Hill.

Museum staff will provide lanterns to light the way; guests should bring comfortable shoes and a spirit of adventure.

If you are a female who prefers your experience to be bewitching rather than bewildering, don your spookiest witch costume and join the rest of the coven for “Witches Night Out,” a cocktail stroll through downtown Frankfort Oct. 13 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Finally, on Oct. 28, bring the whole family to “A Thriller: Trick or Treat & Pumpkin Lighting” from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Local businesses will provide Trick or Treat stations for the children before Frankfort’s inaugural Thriller parade takes to the streets.

Sinister Shelbyville

It’s hard to imagine a sweeter, more welcoming community than Shelbyville. Well, try harder. There have been some grisly goings-on in the town, from raids by Shawnee Indians, American Civil War troops and outlaw guerrillas.

You can find out all about a few of Shelbyville’s badly behaved former residents on a Historical and Paranormal Walking Tour offered every Friday and Saturday through Oct. 27 at 7 and 9 p.m.

At the corner of 6th and Main streets stands a building that once housed the town’s most famous hotel, the Armstrong. Once known for its impeccable lodgings and good food, it became notorious as the place where the fate of two men was sealed.

First up was Edwin Terrell, who acquired so many enemies during his tenure as captain of a Union counter-guerrilla force hunting Confederates following the Civil War that one of them fatally shot him in a gunfight while he was a guest at the Armstrong.

Nearly a century later, Lt. Governor Henry Denhardt met a similar fate after checking into the hotel. He had previously been accused of murdering his fiancée in what was a nationally publicized trial that resulted in a hung jury.

The woman’s brothers clearly didn’t agree with the verdict and shot him in the street outside the hotel.

The Armstrong burned to the ground a few years later and was never rebuilt. Today a furniture store occupies its original site and Caitlin Zoeller, who leads the walking tour, says paranormal activity is strongly felt here.

Should you wish a Halloween activity less nightmare-inducing, Shelbyville’s historic Grove Hill Cemetery will offer a 90-minute walking tour with volunteer actors portraying some of the local historic figures buried here. The tour is scheduled for Oct. 21 at 4 p.m.

Spine-chilling Louisville

You will have to go a bit farther afield for one of David Domine’s Victorian ghost walks in Old Louisville. Domine, founder of Louisville Tours and author of a true crime memoir, “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City,” has been leading walking tours through one of America’s most haunted neighborhoods for 15 years.

This year’s strolls (Oct. 20, 21 and 22) are not your ordinary tour, instead being a combination of walking tour and theater.

Local performers will assist Domine in bringing to life some of the neighborhood’s most entertaining ghosts.

You’ll meet Simon Kracht, the infamous resurrectionist who procured corpses for the medical college, Lucinda, the grief-stricken lunatic who crowned herself Queen of America in 1885, and millionaire Alfred Victor DuPont (son of the industrialist), who allegedly died by the hand of his scorned mistress.

Domine’s tour exposes the seamy underbelly of this beautiful and supposedly genteel Victorian neighborhood.

This story was originally published October 6, 2023 at 1:28 PM.