Weekend number three of filming for The Spirits Of Bourbon Country took place at Bardstown’s historic Talbott Tavern. This location has been in operation since the 1700’s and is as rich with historical guests as it is with haunts. Some guests over the years include Jesse James, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, Gen. George Rogers Clark and French King Louis Phillipe.
I went into this location with my “crew” hat on, camera in hand, as opposed to my “medium” hat. However, seems that I chose the wrong hat to wear that day. This became evident as soon as we entered the dining room that was the original tavern.
There I encountered the spirits of three curious kids; a blonde girl in a pink dress with two boys close behind her. The little girl seemed to be the ringleader. They kept a close eye on what we were up to. Later on, I talked to the owner about my impressions and was told that these kids, but especially the blonde girl, were the most frequently sighted spirits. Many guests from all over the establishment have reported seeing her, or feeling like a child was jumping on their bed while trying to sleep at night. They seemed to be right at home. The owner also told me that the original owner of the building had many children, some that had died at the location. Maybe that’s who these three kids are. We have an investigation scheduled at the end of the month, so maybe I can get more information from them then.
Then we tackled the second floor. The first room I went into, I immediately asked “What’s with the bathroom door?” Come to find out many occupants of this room complain of the bathroom door opening and closing on it’s own throughout their stay. Upon entering the bedroom of this room, I got a stabbing pain to the back of my head that was so intense I had to leave the room. At first I believed I was attacked for some reason, but later on found out from the owner, that in that particular room a man had attacked and killed his mistress by some form of head injury. At this point I realized that it wasn’t an attack so much as an empathic pain left over from the tragic event.
After taking a small break on a couch in the upstairs sitting room, an employee brought keys to unlock the infamous Jesse James room, where Jesse himself spent many evenings. Still on the couch, I told them to go to the window on the left. Of course, I was asked “why?’, but I truly didn’t know. The information just popped in my head and flew out of my mouth before I had time to process it. When I entered the room, all the information I could attain was that something happened in that area. Upon asking the owner, she told us that many times since she’s been there, the window on the left will be found on the ground, unbroken, as if someone had gently set it on the ground. This is a very old and large window, so it is guaranteed that if it fell, it would have broken.
The final room upstairs I walked through was thick with nervous energy. I found myself pacing and speaking quickly. Even when I tried to stand still, my knees shook until I started doing laps around the room again. I didn’t pick up any particular spirit, but instead felt residual energy of someone waiting for a decision of some sort to be made, probably regarding a legal matter. Later on, an employee told us that at some point Lincoln and his family had stayed there while waiting for a land dispute to be resolved by a local judge in Nelson County. I wonder if I was picking up the energy left over from that particular event? I suppose I’ll never know for sure, but the parallel is at the very least, quite interesting to me.
The entire time we were there, though, I was drawn to the basement. I had actually had dreams of it before we went. The basement was somewhere most employees refused to go alone. And after going down there and experiencing the energy myself, I understood why. The first room of the basement was overwhelmingly “busy”. I became flustered with all the back and forth of the spirits. Unfortunately, the owner didn’t know for sure what this area was used for, but assumes because it had two fireplaces probably used for stoves, that it was the slaves’ kitchen.
As I walked back through to the back of the basement, the energy changed quite a bit. The phrase repeating in my head was “I want out”. After spotting the shackles used to keep the slaves, I understood what that was all about.
We spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing any employees of the tavern that had a story to share. And there were plenty of stories! It was so interesting to hear the experiences first hand from people who experience this type of activity on a daily basis. Most of them said that they didn’t believe in ghosts at all until they took a job at the Old Talbott Tavern.
Release of the Spirits of Bourbon Country DVD will be coming Fall of 2010.
Be First to Comment