Folks claim that Kentucky’s Pilot Knob Cemetery is haunted by the spirit of young woman and her mother who were burnt to the stake in the early 20th century for suspected witchcraft.
This episode of Southern Gothic is part of our Campfire Tales, a series of daily podcasts released during Halloween 2022!
In 1891 Octavia Hatcher was twenty years-old. She was married to the most successful businessmen in the state of Kentucky and was awaiting the birth of her first child. There should have been nothing but excitement and hope for a bright future for the family, but that was not to be.
After the devastating loss of her child, Octavia became despondent, eventually becoming bedridden. She was pronounced dead on May 2, 1891.
Yet just days later, an odd sleeping sickness struck the town, during which the afflicted seemed dead for a time before reviving. Octavia’s husband, James Hatcher, fear she too may have afflicted with the illness. When the coffin was disinterred she discovered the horrifying truth— Octavia Hatcher had been buried alive.
Most legends are a mixture of fact and fiction, but in the the story of Octavia Hatcher the line behind history and legend is much more difficult to spot. For many in Pikeville, Kentucky, the story of Octavia Hatcher’s tragic death is complete fact, but as skeptics of the story point out, there is no known documentation to support such an event occurring.
On July 26, 1910 the Waverly Hills Sanatorium opened outside Louisville, Kentucky; the hospital on the hill was dedicated solely to the treatment of those infected with the highly contagious and often fatal disease, tuberculosis. During its forty years in operation, thousands would pass through the hospital doors, though most would survive, hundreds would not. Although modern medicine has largely made tuberculosis an illness of the past, the stigma of it lingered.
In the decades since the sanatorium closed and the site deteriorated, it gained a new reputation, as one of the most haunted buildings on Earth.
In 1925, cave explorer Floyd Collins discovered Sand Cave, not far from what would one day become Mammoth Cave National Park. Floyd, like many others in Kentucky cave country, had hoped to discover a cave of his own that he could profit from as a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, while attempting to uncover the secrets of his new found cave, Floyd Collins became trapped. The resulting rescue attempts fueled a media frenzy that stretched across the nation.
The Pope Lick Monster is an infamous hybrid creature that many claim lives under an old railroad trestle bridge just east of Louisville, Kentucky. Those who have seen him describe the monster as part-man, part-goat and part-sheep. He is covered in greasy fur, with sharp horns protruding from his pale white forehead and equipped with cloven hooves in the place of feet. The Pope Lick monster stands upright like a man, but this vicious beast is blessed with more than just inhuman strength, he also has supernatural powers.
The origin of the Pope Lick Monster varies depending on who tells the tale. Some claim he is the product of human-animal relations, others that he is the reincarnation of a local farmer believed to have sacrificed goats in a deal with Satan to receive immortality, but the most infamous tale says that the Pope Lick Monster is an escaped carnie out for revenge. He stalks the area surrounding his home near Pope Lick, either hypnotizing his victims or luring them onto the 90-foot high train trestle with his uncanny power to mimic the voice of those they trust. It is there, on the top of that bridge, that his victims meet their death-- often the result of an oncoming train.
While tales of the Pope Lick Monster have been around since the sixties, the monstrous archetype of the goatman has been a staple in lore as far back as the satyrs of Ancient Rome; but unlike these other mythical creatures, the myth of the Kentucky goatman has proven more lethal than the monster itself. The old trestle bridge crossing Pope Lick Creek is still part of an active railroad line, and unfortunately, over the last several decades dozens of people have either been killed or injured on it while searching for the fabled beast.
