Whether or not you believe in ghosts, there are some things that just can’t be explained. This is when we start to look at the possibility of paranormal activity and hauntings. With Halloween just a couple weeks away, now is the time to plan your next haunted excursion.
Owensboro has more than a dozen locations that have been documented as “haunted” by witnesses and paranormal experts. You could spend an entire weekend visiting these places that are scattered throughout the city and county.
From stories of a ghost that pushes people down the basement stairs to the mysterious “Lady in White” that haunts the RiverPark Center, we’re not saying Owensboro is the most haunted place in Kentucky—but it’s definitely one of the creepiest!
Haunts of Owensboro Walking Tours
Owner David Wolfe II has been sharing the city’s local hauntings since 2007. You’ll hit a handful of the haunted places on this list by taking Wolfe’s tour, which is convenient. Wolfe engages his audience with not only stories, but enthusiasm. I took Wolfe’s tour in 2018, and one of his creepiest stories involved a couple that lived above The Crème Coffee House on the second floor.
“That second floor is so haunted, literally, they could put it on a movie or a documentary itself,” he’s said.
That building first opened in the 1800s. The current coffee shop has been using the upstairs floor as a rental space for years. On the very first night of the first tenant’s stay, Wolfe said, the girl experienced the front door opening and shutting on its own, as well as a series of “clomping footsteps” walking from the first floor to the second. Upstairs in her living room, Wolfe said the young girl heard the sound of someone sitting down on a squeaking couch cushion in her studio apartment.
She was so scared she called the cops. Then she moved out. A second person moved in, experienced the same series of hauntings as the first girl, and moved out too. She documented her experience and submitted it to Wolfe. He said it was the real deal.
Other haunted places on Wolfe’s tour were the front lawn of the Daviess County Courthouse—where Wolfe talks about the “lynching tree” on the back lawn–and the Famous Bistro on 2nd Street, where people have reported seeing a ghost in the living space above the restaurant.
Owensboro Museum of Science and History
The building that houses the OMSH in downtown Owensboro has a lot of history, and reports of sinks turning on and off on their own just adds to the mysteriousness. There are also stories about a young man who loves playing in the “shadow room.” If you watch long enough, you might just see his shadow.
Ghostly Productions Building
Located at 203 West 4th Street, this building houses a local business focused on all things scary, but the really scary thing about this haunt are the reports of “multiple sounds” that can be heard…and not from the living.
Now called The Cupola Club, this restaurant at 521 Frederica Street has been referred to as one of the most haunted places in Kentucky. One of the most popular ghost stories from the club involves Chef Matt Weafer, who told Wolfe that he noticed a pretty young lady sitting and peering out the front window of the building. He asked fellow staff members about her and, when they went to talk to her, she was gone. Vanished into the night.
Wolfe has called TWO “one of the most haunted sites in western Kentucky.” According to legend, there are five spirits haunting the Old Trinity Centre (now TWO). Many people have reported seeing a young lady who allegedly took her own life by hanging herself in the shower. As the story goes, when a priest walked into the church and saw her corpse, he took his own life in the basement as he was so traumatized by what he saw.
To this day, people report lights constantly flickering on and off, the sound of a ringing bell (where there no longer is a bell) and cold drafts that come out of nowhere. Even scarier, you want to be cautious standing in front of the basement because you might get pushed down the stairs. Many others have in the past.
Daviess County Middle School
This is actually the former Daviess County Middle School as no reports of ghosts have come from the new DCMS site…yet. But at the old location, sounds of screams and slamming doors were enough to scare students and staff alike. And how about reports of a dark figure that roams the premises? We wouldn’t be caught walking those hallways alone.
According to legend, a girl was burned at the stake for alleged witchcraft in the 1700s. And now, her spirit haunts the very woods in which she was killed. It’s true what they say about Ben Hawes…it’s hauntingly beautiful.
Civil War site in Deanefield near the Daviess/Ohio County line
Anytime you can hear shots fired in the middle of the night at a former Civil War site, it’s pretty much a guarantee the place is haunted. The place to check is located at Highway 1414, where confederate soldiers hid from the Yankees behind a small cliff. Rumor is, the Yankees found those soldiers and…you guessed it. They killed them. On nights when the moon is full, you can hear gunshots, sounds of laughter, a fire crackling and horses galloping. Sounds haunted to us.
Owensboro Catholic Middle School
From “mysterious red stains” on the floor to reports of creepy laughter, screams and doors flying open, it feels safe to say there’s something peculiar happening at OCMS. Multiple reports have come from student and staff regarding the incidents and, so far, nobody has an explanation as to why.
The Turley Building
The Turley building, located at the corner of 2nd and Daviess streets, used to house the International Bluegrass Music Museum. Now, it’s rumored to house ghosts. The Turley building was built in 1873 and RiverPark Center Executive Director Rich Jorn told the Messenger-Inquirer that it’s one of the five most haunted buildings in Owensboro.
Even creepier, Sherriff Brad Youngman told KET a story a few years back about his experience with the haunted building. When Youngman was a detective for the Owensboro Police Department, he investigated a report of alarms going off inside the Turley Building. While he and his officers were looking over security footage, one of them saw a shadow figure float across the screen. When Youngman asked where she’d seen the figure, she said it’d gone across the wall directly behind them.
After that, Youngman and his officers began to hear noises coming from the control room where the alarms were located. They realized the sounds were coming from the elevator. This particular elevator remained on the first floor unless it were being summoned from one of the floors above, Youngman said. With guns out, he and his officers watched the elevator descend from the third floor, to the second, and finally, the doors opened on the first floor in front of them. There was nobody there, Youngman said, but the officers felt a rush of cold air from inside that made “the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.”
At RPC, you’ve got your classic, “Woman jumps from a catwalk into the Ohio River to her death” haunted building story. This happened in 1927. So, it’s more than a little weird that, 100 years later, you can see a woman in white—water dripping from her clothes—walking over the edge of the catwalk to the river below.
According to Jorn, there was a certain spot in the RPC lobby where—when it was time to close up shop and turns the lights out—he’d hear music. The music was so faint he could never tell what the exact tune was, but he said it happened about 30% of the time while he was locking up. He told the MI these experiences were “very creepy.”
The spirit of a little girl is rumored to haunt the local eatery and loves to play with a ball she bounces up and down the restaurant’s wooden staircase. While she doesn’t sound like a malevolent spirit, per se, it’s still beyond creepy.
Some people call Elmwood the most haunted cemetery in Kentucky. It’s very beautiful in the daytime, but at night is when the tables seem to turn. It’s been reported that the ghost of Rainey Bethea—the last person to be publicly executed in the entire United States by hanging—haunts “Potter’s Field” at Elmwood, where Bethea is buried at an unmarked grave. Allegedly, the ghost has been spotted carrying its own head in its hands. Others have reported being touched or grabbed as they walk past graves throughout the cemetery.