If you don't know much about Bobby Mackey's, it's considered to be one of the most haunted places in the country, with many murders and sacrifices happening in the basement of the establishment. The well that is in the basement has been repeatedly called the Portal to Hell or Hell's Gate.
I'll start from the beginning and progressively tell you each story of the spirits as I went through the honky-tonk saloon. I was nervous going in to this place, #1 because it was my first ever ghost investigation, and #2 I had seen both Ghost Adventures shows that were filmed there and already knew what I was going up against. This is not stuff you want to mess around with.
As I walked in I did seem to calm down, I wasn't nervous at all. We were walking in around 9:00, just as one tour was about to leave, so Trey and I decided to just hang out in the bar for a while, which I was glad we did. We got to see OMEB (or the One Man Electric Band) which we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of.
After a short break, they brought in Bobby Mackey himself, to sing "Johanna." This is a song written about one of the ghosts that we will meet later on. I had heard the song plenty of times from the TV shows and knew this was going to stir up some stuff in the basement, and we were headed there right after he sang it. We also found out that the spirits do not like when hard rock is played in the club, which was what OMEB was singing. He even decided to throw in "Scott Jackson is a p*ssy," before Mr. Mackey came up (You'll hear about him later too).
We made our way into the front entryway to gather for the tour. The guides, including paranormal investigators Chris Dedman and Dan Smith who were featured on the TV special "Most Terrifying Places in America 2," pulled us outside to give us a brief history of Bobby Mackey's. I had already heard of every story there, so I just hung out in the back.
One woman that I seemed to automatically make friends with, Jo, walked out of the club and said, "Who are you, mysterious medium?" That kind of freaked me out because I've never had psychic abilities. Mediums can communicate with spirits, and to have her call me one, especially since later I found out she was one as well, was mind-boggling.
We made our way into the basement, and since our group was so large, we had to split up. Luckily I was still with Trey, Jo and her husband. My group first went to Robert Randall and Johanna's dressing rooms.
Johanna was a dancer at the club when it was the Latin Quarter in the 1950's and was the daughter of the club owner. She fell in love with one of the singers at the club, Robert Randall, and her father did not approve. Johanna's father then had Mr. Randall murdered. Johanna sought revenge in her lover's death, so she poisoned her father, then herself. Her father did not die, but Johanna, who was five-months pregnant with Robert's child, did.
The guides handed out EMF detectors and a thermometer. I was handed the second EMF detector, which had been used on Ghost Adventures plenty of times so I knew how it worked. Trey was handed the thermometer.
I was then told to walk in to Robert Randall's dressing room first, alone. This mildly freaked me out, especially when I first walked in to the room and heard a "bang!" Everyone thought I had jumped because of my reflection in the mirror, because apparently I was the only one to hear it. My digital recorder didn't even pick it up.
Just as I walked in to Robert's dressing room, I picked up an EVP that said, "very good."
Robert seemed to like girls, specifically, me. Even the investigator that was with us told me that Robert seemed to like me.
I'd never really had experience with cold spots or EMF, so when both started happening, it was awesome. I stood by the mirror at the end of the small room, and figured I would put the detector near the chair next to me. The EMF detector started jumping to a .8 or .9 mG, which is a detection there is a spirit nearby.
I handed the EMF to a man who wanted to sit in the chair, and the levels began to go down. Robert was responding more to me and Jo than any of the males in the room.
We began asking him to make the lights jump on the detector, which he continually did. We would be polite and thank him for making the lights turn on.
Then we headed to Johanna's dressing room, where she died. As soon as I stepped in the doorway, I got a huge whiff of roses, which Johanna was said to wear a rose perfume. Johanna wasn't as responsive to me as Robert was. I did capture an EVP after I asked the question, "What were you going to name your baby?" but someone was talking in the background and it wasn't clear what she said.
After we spent a few minutes in the dressing room, a lot of people walked out. Chris started telling stories about when he was on America's Most Terrifying Places and they captured an EVP that called him a "spirit stalker."
A few guys were still in Johanna's room inspecting a photo they took, so I walked back in and asked one of them to hold the EMF detector. As soon as I handed it off to him, it started to spike around 1.4 mG. Exactly what I wanted to happen. We didn't capture any EVP at this point, but we did get a lot of readings on the EMF.
As we were standing outside of the dressing rooms, Jo kept spotting spirits walking around the area. Then we headed into the Room of Faces. As soon as I walked in the room, I got a blast of cold air. Jo spotted something on the wall and stopped dead in her tracks. This was to be the most interesting room of the night.
As I walked closer to the group, the girl with the other EMF detector was standing next to one of the tour guides and he was positioning her around a table with BINGO cards on it. The story behind that is a lot of mobsters would play BINGO in the club in the 1930s, at the same time they would bring people into the room to torture and murder. Illicit BINGO gambling was the only thing that law enforcement could prove would happen there. The Wall of Faces at times has the patterns of faces, hence the name. It also has nicks from bullets, and blood splatter under UV lighting.
This is the point where I got my favorite EVP of the entire night. No one heard it with their naked ears, but on the recorder it is a distinct scream.
Then we started the communications with the spirits. The guide placed myself and the other girl with the EMF detector away from one another. The other EMF detector made a noise when it detected spirits, so that's how they would answer yes to things. The investigator that was with us asked if it was a male or female, and there was no response. So he asked if it was a demon, it went off. Then he asked, "Do you know anyone in this room?" It went off again. We kept asking questions and determined it knew someone to the left of him that was a girl. It then went off when it said that it knew the girl holding the meter. It said that it wasn't a family member, and that it knew her from when she was much younger. She freaked out at this point and left hysterically crying.
We kept asking questions while the guide was helping the girl outside. I asked if it was trying to scare her, and it said yes through the EMF.
We had gone over our half an hour time limit by almost 15 minutes at this point, which meant we were not going into the infamous Well Room. If you have seen Ghost Adventures you know that this is the room where Zak Bagans was scratched hard enough by an entity that it drew blood on his back.
The story goes that this was originally a slaughterhouse in the 1850s, and the well is where they put all the blood and parts from the animals. Eventually it evolved into a satanic worshiping room, where sacrifices were made into the well. One of these sacrifices was rumored to be part of one of the most infamous murders in Kentucky.
22-year-old Pearl Bryan from Greencastle, Indiana, had fallen in love with Scott Jackson, a student at a dental school in nearby Cincinnati. She was, like Johanna, five-months pregnant with Jackson's child. Jackson and a friend, Alonzo Walling, attempted an abortion with dental tools. When it failed, the men then murdered Pearl by severing her head. The rumors swirled that Jackson was part of a satanic cult that was based in the basement of now Bobby Mackey's and that Pearl's head was offered as a sacrifice in the well. The head was never found. Jackson and Walling were both offered life in prison, rather than hanging, if they were to reveal the location of Pearl's head, which they refused.
Demonic spirits tend to dwell in this room, which I did not have the chance to experience. I will return someday though and visit the infamous Well Room at Bobby Mackey's Music World.
If you want to listen to some of the EVPs or the entire audio I will be posting links to documents throughout this blog, including on this sentence. :) Enjoy!
If you have any other questions or want to see the rest of my EVPs, or even spot more feel free to comment or email me!
