the message stopped. Then it started back up again: “Four of us are here for work. The big man came to see us daily. He wants to make sure things are done right.” There was another break in the writing and then she continued again: “John, Amos, Fred, and Ralph.” Another pause: “There are secrets in this building. You can find them, but you must look carefully. I found them long ago and protected them. The stone walls are built to hide….” There, the communication stopped.
By this time most of us were about to pass out from the heat. I knew it would not be good for any of us to remain there any longer, so we concluded our investigation and returned to the gift shop below. It was a super experience for all of us. The best part was hearing all the stories and experiences of the employees that helped validate the data that we collected while investigating the distillery.
Colonel Blanton passed away in 1959, after spending over fifty-five years doing what he loved best, in the home he loved the most. During his time at the distillery, he went from being office boy to company president, and he was credited with preserving and enhancing one of Kentucky’s historic landmarks. It seems as though the Colonel has made Buffalo Trace Distillery a paranormal landmark as well.
CHAPTER 4
Colville Covered Bridge
RUDDELLS MILLS, BOURBON COUNTY
ONE AFTERNOON I DROVE to Collectors Gallery, where Chuck was waiting for me to pick him up for lunch. I went inside the building to get him, and while I was walking down the hall I noticed a new art photo hanging on the wall ahead of me. It caught my interest right away because it was a collection of old covered bridges photographed by one of my favorite Lexington photographers, Jeff Rogers. I have always found covered bridges fascinating whether they were haunted or not. Folklore is full of eerie tales about such bridges. It’s fitting to hear scary stories of unearthly specters appearing on these bridges because the bridges are a passage for crossing over to the other side.
While I was studying the photo of the bridges, I came across the name of the Colville Covered Bridge. I remembered one of my students, Eddie Rassenfoss, from Paris, Kentucky, telling me about this covered bridge. He claimed it was haunted. As Chuck walked up to me to let me know that he was ready to go, I said, “Road trip, it’s time to go and check out Colville Bridge to see how haunted it really is.”
In the late 1700s covered bridges were being built in small towns all over Kentucky. At one point there were over four hundred of these magnificent wooden, covered passages that provided protection for travelers, wagons, cargo, and cattle as they crossed a river or creek. Of all these bridges, there are only thirteen left, and of the thirteen, only four are still open to vehicular traffic. Most of these covered bridges were lost to fire, burned by troops on both sides during the Civil War. Today, all the remaining covered bridges are listed with the National Registry of Historic Places.
Stories are told about the bridges as stages for hanging a slave, or hacking off someone’s head, or losing control of a car and crashing into the water below. There are bridge stories about Civil War ambushes and unwanted babies tossed into the water. Such incidents are the source for many ghost stories. I called the Kentucky Heritage Council and State Historic Preservation Office and spoke to Patrick Kennedy. He was extremely helpful in providing me with the facts about the Colville Covered Bridge. It was built in 1877 by Jacob Bower, and it traverses over Hinkston Creek in Bourbon County. The bridge featured truss construction and a multiple king post style with a single 124-foot span. During this era the Kentucky wilderness was covered with an abundance of poplar trees, so the truss structure was built with poplar timbers. After many years, the bridge was in dire need of repairs and was restored by Louis Bower in 1913. His son, Stock, restored and raised the bridge to its present height in 1937. Sadly, the rough-hewn structure that served its community so well was dismantled in 1997 and had to be totally rebuilt. It didn’t open to traffic again until 2001.
I contacted Eddie since he knew about the ghost stories connected to the bridge, and he had conducted several ghost investigations there. I asked him to tell me some of the ghost stories he’d heard about the bridge.
Eddie said, “Back in the 1930s or so, a young woman and her boyfriend were driving home from their high school prom. It’s not clear if they had been drinking or if they just weren’t paying attention, but for some reason, the young man lost control of the car just before entering the covered bridge. He swerved and the car plunged into the waters below. The next morning it was reported that the two of them had drowned. Some time after their deaths, stories about travelers seeing mysterious and unexplained lights coming from underneath the bridge started to surface. These stories started rumors about the bridge being haunted. Curious youths began to come to the bridge to see if they could witness these bizarre lights appearing around the bridge. They would wait until dark and then drive their cars to the center of the bridge to see what would happen. After a while they would notice what looked like car headlights coming up from behind their car. When they turned around to see the lights, the lights would disappear. Moments later lights would shine through the bottom of the bridge as if a car had gone into the creek, and the car lights were shining up through the water.”
I asked Eddie what kind of evidence he recorded during investigations at the bridge. “I love to come here and get EVPs,” he said. He told me about one of his investigations where he parked his truck in the center of the bridge to see if he could witness the lights. His mini audio cassette player was recording in the seat beside him. As he patiently waited for something to happen, he thought he heard a rustling sound that seemed to come from behind his seat. He glanced in his rearview mirror and thought he saw something behind him and, for a split second, thought about getting the heck out of there. Then he asked, “Is there a sweet spirit in this truck with me?” He waited a few seconds, to give the ghost time to answer, and then he rewound the tape in his audio recorder to see if the ghost had answered. He played back the question, and within a few seconds he got a very breathy “Yeessss.” It sounded like a female’s voice, so he thought he might have captured the voice of the girl who had drowned on her prom night.
This experience ignited Eddie’s desire to find out all he could about the bridge. He began to ask people in his community if they knew of any death associated with the bridge. He was told by one of his friends that in the 1970s, a teenager had hanged himself in the middle of the bridge from one of the high rafters. The father of Eddie’s friend was ten years old when he heard police sirens heading out to the bridge one evening. Then he found out the next day that the police had discovered a teenage boy hanging from the rafters. Another story that Eddie uncovered was about an elderly lady who was walking across the bridge and fell ill and died before she could get across. Her name was Ms. Mitchell and the date of the incident was 1933.
Feeling confident that he had enough information to try another EVP session, Eddie and a friend went back to the bridge. To his amazement, he captured sixteen EVPs during his question session. Each time he would ask a question, he would stop the recorder to see if there was an answer. He continued this procedure for a couple of hours, and even though he did not get a response to every question, he got a lot more than he had anticipated. One of Eddie’s first questions was, “What was the name of the boy who hung himself in 1977?” After a few seconds he played the recorder back and heard a whisper that sounded like “Jonathan.” He stopped the tape and pressed record again and asked, “Is your name Jonathan, yes or no?” Again, he listened to his recorder to see if there was an answer and got another whisper, “Yes.” He continued with five more questions but didn’t get any more answers. Patience is one of the biggest assets a ghosthunter can have, and Eddie was quick to learn this lesson.
Eddie was pleased with the results he had gotten with this investigation and decided to return another night. On his return, he didn’t get any responses during his EVP session until he started home and decided
