Lexington, KY - Living in a house with "unexplained" (some would say "paranormal") activities, this historian has no trouble understanding there just might be a parallel world that, from time to time, might intrude on what we consider our reality.
Until last year, the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation conducted its "Gratz Park Ghost Tails and Tours," which chronicled several unexplained occurrences over the years within about a three block area. If these events are believable, and no one has posited otherwise, Lexington enjoys what must be one of the world's greatest concentration of spirits.
Beginning with the trust's own Hunt-Morgan House, the park bounded by Market and Mill streets between Second and Third, as well as some adjacent areas, is a veritable celebration of otherworldly activities. At the time the house was built in 1814, funerals were a family affair, there being no funeral homes as we know them. The women of the household were responsible for dressing the body of a dead loved one, which was then put on display during the time leading up to the funeral, typically in the front parlor where friends and family could pay their last respects. A genre of "funeral furniture" existed, including one designed for summer use, with wicker to provide airflow around the body, as well as troughs below to hold blocks of ice.
Ma'am Bette was the Morgan family's trusted nanny (a kind word for enslaved domestic). She had a particularly strong relationship with her young charges among the Morgan children. Sometime after her passing (the word "death" does not apply), one of the children became seriously ill. No ministrations could comfort the child, who lingered at death's door. Just as the family had given up all hope, a presence was seen near the child - one wearing Ma'am Bette's signature red shoes. The Morgans, not known for any irrationality, firmly believed that their beloved Ma'am Bette had returned from the grave to tend to the child, who completely recovered.
A few doors up the west side of the park, another, though sinister, presence has been observed. The address is 215 N. Mill St., but the structure has been reoriented and faces Third Street now. Known as the Maria Dudley House, it was built in 1879 in a Victorian style completely at odds with the other houses in the neighborhood. In more recent times, a boy was found in a rear room, suffering from a broken arm after falling over a stair railing. When asked how it happened, he claimed someone or something picked him up and threw him over the banister. A disturbing "presence" has subsequently been felt in the house. Even the dog was reluctant to go into that portion of the house.
Crossing Third and entering the ground floor of Transylvania University's Old Morrison Hall, we encounter a strange room for a college building: a crypt. Here lie the remains of two individuals. To the left is "Bon Fils," a pseudonym used by a nobleman who had escaped the terror after the French Revolution and landed a professorship at the college. To the right, a tablet reads "Constantine Rafinesque," the name of the storied botany professor famous for his "curse" placed on the school in 1825.
He later wrote that he left "the College with curses on it and [president Horace] Holly [sic]-"
Two years
after Holley fired Rafinesque, the president himself was fired by his board and died at sea of yellow fever.
Two years after that, the main administration building at the center of Gratz Park was destroyed by fire.
Truth be told, the body lying here is not that of Rafinesque, but of one Mary Ann Passamore, whose body was mistakenly removed from a potter's field in Philadelphia instead of Rafinesque's. The mistake was not discovered until tests were run several years ago that determined the body was female. A search of the Pennsylvania burial records confirmed Passamore's presence in the tomb.
(Don't get your Hallowe'en hopes up about the name of the university. It's Latin for "across the woods" and is the original settlers' name for the geography we know as Kentucky.)
Back down the east side of Gratz Park, one house is said to be haunted by the spirit of a Union soldier killed during the War Between the States. Robert Peter, a Transylvania medical professor who served as the Union Surgeon General during the war, lived in the c. 1812 house at 228 Market St. Perhaps this is the ghost of one of Dr. Peter's less fortunate patients.
At the southeast end of the block on the corner of Market and Second stands the Bodley Bullock House, which served as the Union headquarters in Lexington during the war (directly across the park from that hotbed of Rebel activity, the Hunt Morgan House). Today, it is a popular location for weddings and receptions. Many a hapless bride has received her wedding picture proofs, only to discover the presence of an apparition standing behind her on the grand spiral staircase. It's said to be the spirit of teetotaler Miss Minnie Bullock, who would be scandalized by the socializing going on in her former home.
One block east at the corner of Second and Upper sits the Gratz Park Inn. The main part of the structure was built for the Lexington Clinic when it opened its doors in July 1920. It was converted to a hotel in 1988, but some remnants of its use as a hospital remain, including the scuppers in the basement morgue. Other remnants include at least three spirits of former patients who met their demise here: John, who displays a sense of humor in his haunting; Little Annie, a quiet apparition who plays with her doll in the third floor hallway; and "The Lady in White" who is constantly looking for someone or something.
That makes at least seven spirits and a curse all within sight of a school named Transylvania. This time of year, you don't have to make up stuff like that.