A look at some of Lexington’s ghost stories through the lens of public history, with Jonathan Coleman, Ph.D.
Lexington historian Jonathan Coleman might not believe in ghosts – but he certainly has an affinity for Lexington’s spirits.
“The past is always making an impact – it always has relevance,” he explained. “And ghost stories – just like all myths, just like all folklore – help us think through those things as a society.”
An academic historian whose career has been mainly focused on public history – history presented outside of a classroom – Coleman finds satisfaction in sharing knowledge directly with people. He currently serves as curator and assistant director of the Mary Todd Lincoln House, a position that allows him to demonstrate the relevance that the past has on the present. But for several years, he operated a local history tour business called Dr. Coleman’s Lexington History Walks, where he had a different opportunity to interact with the public on the topic of Lexington’s history. The company offered two standard tours: the Grand Tour, a walking tour through downtown looking at general history, and a second tour called Spirits, Scandals, and Sordid Secrets, which focused on those particular aspects of Lexington’s history.
Historian Jonathan Coleman used to run two downtown walking tours focusing on Lexington history, one called The Grand Tour and a notably more popular one called Spirits, Scandals, and Sordid Secrets. Photo furnished
“I quickly realized one [tour] was way more popular than the other,” Coleman said, laughing.
Of Spirits, Scandals, and Sordid Secrets, Coleman says he had one rule when coming up with ghost stories to highlight: They couldn’t be stories he had made up – all the featured tales were existing ghost stories. And despite whether he believes in ghosts, as a historian Coleman found these stories almost always contained at least a kernel of truth.
“It’s fascinating the stuff you find, the stuff that gets forgotten,” he said. “The oldest ghost story I could find, it was at least being told in 1920… but it actually relates to a story from the 1860s and 1870s. That’s typically how these ghost stories get [passed down].”
This particular story featured the ghost of Bouviette James, a woman enslaved by the Hunt-Morgan family, who died in 1870 and is buried to the side of the Hunt-Morgan family plot in the Lexington Cemetery.
“If you know that plot, it’s in concentric circles. They are all buried generations out. Bouviette James is buried cattywampus to that circle, and she is given a child’s headstone,” he explained, adding that the gravestone is marked ‘Bouviette James Col’ – for colored – with the epitaph of ‘Ever Faithful.’
“There are other small headstones in that plot that belong to infants or young children in the Hunt-Morgan family who had died,” he added, “but Bouviette James was actually an adult.”
Hunt-Morgan relative Basil Duke wrote about Bouviette James in the magazine Southern Bivouac, a publication now noted for having helped mythologize the Confederacy.
“Basil is the one who writes all these grandiose stories about John Hunt Morgan...but he also writes a lot of stories about Bouviette, and they are not stories that sound like a real person,” Coleman explained. “They are very much based on stereotype – the ‘we loved her, she loved us’ kind of story. This is where you get the tale of John Hunt Morgan bringing her red shoes to wear and that she wears them the rest of her life.”
The story of Bouviette James is one of Lexington’s most famous “ghost stories.” A former enslaved woman living at Lexington’s Hunt-Morgan home, James died in 1870 but her apparition was reportedly sighted in the nursery of the children for whom she cared, for years after her death. Historian Jonathan Coleman says that the myths and legends that get passed down almost always reveal something about the society that’s telling them. Photo by Jonathan Hampton
The ghost story of Bouviette James goes like this: A generation or so after she died, another branch of the Hunt-Morgan family was living in the home, and they had a very sick little boy in the nursery. They hired a nurse to keep watch over him, and deep in the night she falls asleep and wakes to the sound of humming. She sees an apparition over the cradle of the child, and when the apparition notices the nurse is now awake, she walks away and disappears. The little boy takes a turn for the worse and by morning he is out of this world. Part of the nurse’s story, when recounting to the family, was when the ghost walked away she was wearing red leather shoes. And so the family knew it was James, who had returned to make sure their boy made it safely to the other side. James was said to have continued to appear in the following years, especially in the third-floor window, where she would look out to make sure everything was all right.
Coleman said this tale is probably Lexington’s most famous ghost story. “In the 1920s, when this ghost story is appearing, white Southerners are in the process of mythologizing the Civil War and certainly mythologizing the institution of slavery,” he said. “Here you have a ghost story that really plays itself into this idea of ‘we were all like one big family.’ … It’s part of the larger way that the United States is dealing with its past.”
Coleman said that historians are increasingly looking to ghost stories as a way to better understand the past. The myths and legends that get passed down almost always reveal something about the society that’s telling them, he added.
Stories of Mary Todd Lincoln “haunting” certain buildings in Lexington have been passed on for years. This famous 1870 portrait by “spirit photographer” William Mumler shows the grieving widow with an apparition of her deceased husband, Abraham Lincoln, resting his hands on her shoulders in a comforting gesture. (Mumler later came under scrutiny and investigation for falsifying his images, though no one could officially debunk his process.) Digital image © Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library
“Ghost stories are actually historical artifacts in and of themselves,” he said. “Ghosts require us to remember – they are inherently a product of the past, not of the present. How societies grapple with their past, how societies grapple with their history, things that they may be inherently uncomfortable with, things they would want to change or explain away – and of course it also deals with death and dying and the other scary stuff that we as human beings have to deal with.”
The Spirits, Scandals, and Sordid Secrets Tour took place weekly for close to four years and highlighted ghost stories connected to famed Lexington madam Belle Brezing, Transylvania University’s resident cadaver and former president Constantine Rafinesque, and locally known downtown mansion the Thomas January House. Also on the tour were multiple homes said to be haunted by Mary Todd Lincoln herself.
Although Coleman no longer guides Dr. Coleman’s Lexington History Walks, you can visit Bouviette James in her final resting place at the Lexington Cemetery with Coleman’s most recently created tour, A House Divided: Lexington Cemetery and the Civil War. This self-guided tour, which is available via the Mary Todd Lincoln House website (mtlhouse.org) also includes stops at the Todd family plot, the Henry Clay Monument, and the National Cemetery, and can be downloaded from the Mary Todd Lincoln House’s website.
When asked if he had ever had personal run-ins with any of the spirits featured on his tours, Coleman says no – he doesn’t believe in ghosts, after all.
“But I do believe we are haunted,” he added with a smile.
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Photo by Jonathan Hampton
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Photo by Jonathan Hampton
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Photo by Jonathan Hampton