Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky by William Lynwood Montell

Author:William Lynwood Montell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

The haunted Cocanougher House. (Photo by James Roberts)

Matt grew ill with fever, and doctors could do nothing for her. She died nearly a year later at the age of seventeen. The year was 1878. Presumably, she died in the house. But it doesn’t end there.

According to Johnson, there was no shortage of odd occurrences in the house. “There were all kinds of things that went on,” she said. “All these years, that house was supposed to be haunted.”

The haunting may have begun when Jacob Cocanougher, the original landowner, began to sow his garden. “From the moment his plow point lay the first furrow in that chosen field, he realized he had disturbed the site of an ancient Indian settlement and most likely their sacred burial ground,” Cocanougher said. There have been hundreds of Indian artifacts found on the land. Some also claim to have heard sounds like the beat of war drums off in the distance. Others have heard the sounds of heavy footsteps and dragging chains on the stairway. Cocanougher says this could be sounds of the ghosts of slaves. “It is said that slaves who disobeyed or misbehaved were severely punished in the north upstairs room.”

On October 7, 1862 a regiment of Confederate soldiers came to the Cocanougher house looking for water in the midst of a drought. They were directed to a limestone spring where they drank the water and filled their canteens. One soldier left a cup as a token of appreciation. The next day 7,500 soldiers died in the Battle of Perryville. Since then, the ghost of a Confederate soldier has been seen in the house. “A Confederate soldier has been seen in the old house as recently as June 1954 when one of my sisters awoke and saw him at the foot of her bed,” Cocanougher said.

But not all of the supernatural goings-on at the house can be explained. In the late 1920s, Bill Cocanougher and his brother Herman were working on the highway crew. They had to get up early enough to walk the four and a half mile trek to the work site. Awaking one morning to daylight and noting that the clock had apparently stopped at 3:00 A.M., the two men rushed to get ready.

As they began walking down the road, they noticed a bright glow like a fire below the house. As they grew nearer, the glow began to fade until it was gone. It was now totally dark outside. The two stumbled back to the house, realizing that the clock was indeed right and that the glow had fooled them into thinking it was morning. The next day they investigated the area where the light was and found everything was completely burned and scorched black. Bill, Ruby, and their children moved out of the house in 1958 and into one just below it. No one has lived there since.

Shortly after the move, daughter Scotty Cocanougher Clenney and a sibling returned to the old house to get some things left behind.

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