America’s Most Haunted Honky-Tonk — Bobby Mackey’s Music World
There are places which can be called as haunted but there are some places which are hell itself. This is one of those places which is a direct portal to hell, conjured into being by the blood that has been spilled within its dark depths over the years.
Bobby Mackey’s Music World is a shady, smokey; dive bar and nightclub with a mechanical bull, line dancing floor, and a portal to hell located in Wilder, Kentucky, United States owned by Bobby Mackey, a traditional country singer. He was never a big star, but he had put out a few country albums over the years. He bought this place so that he would always have a place to play his music for an audience. He had a grand opening for his establishment in September 1978. But the nightclub soon became known for more than just the music. Strange things started happening soon after it opened. So much so, that the slogan for the place became, “Come for the ghosts, stay for the music”.
I guess he would have chosen a completely different location for his audience to listen to his live music if he had known more about the property and its dark history of murder, suicide, and rumors of human sacrifice. Sitting along the east bank of Licking River, the land had been used for centuries by Native Americans, who fought bloody battles over the rich and fertile land. When white settlers came in the 1700s the area came to be called Leitch’s Station, but by the 1800s it was renamed Wilder, after the railroad station that was built nearby. Once connected to the vast railway network, the small farming and manufacturing town grew and prospered.
Every good ghost story comes with its own origin, and Bobby Mackey’s Music World is no different. In 1850 the land that now belongs to Mackey’s was home to a huge slaughterhouse that supplied most of northwestern Kentucky and Cincinnati with beef. Back in those days, things weren’t really on the up and up, so instead of dispensing the blood, guts, bones, and cartilage properly, they dumped them into a well in the basement. The well, fed out into the nearby river turning the clear waters red with each new blood dump. Thus we can easily call it, the most epic sacrificial pit on this planet.
For unknown reasons, the slaughterhouse closed in 1890 and the building was left unused and abandoned. It is said that during this time, a satanic cult moved in, they were rumored to have used the well in the basement for rituals and blood sacrifices. Though such stories of satanic worship are often the lifeline of small-town legends but the abandoned slaughterhouse was soon the setting of a very real horror story.
In 1896, 22-year-old Pearl Bryan’s body was found decapitated in a field on the property. Pregnant at the time of her death she had been brutally murdered by her boyfriend Scott Jackson, a dentistry student who had tried to perform a botched abortion on her with the help of a fellow dentistry school classmate, Alonzo Walling.
For obvious reasons, the procedure went very wrong, and after Pearl died, they removed her head with the hopes of throwing the police off the chase. But they were soon caught and sentenced to death. Right before Walling was executed, it’s said he proclaimed he would haunt that land forever in revenge for his unjust death. Local lore also has it that the two men threw Pearl’s head in the basement well as part of an occult ritual, and in doing so created the portal to hell that Mackey’s would later become famous for.
For years the building sat abandoned until the 1920s when the slaughterhouse was torn down and a roadhouse was built in its place. During prohibition, it became a secret bar and casino called The Primrose. It became so popular, Cincinnati mobsters came sniffing around to muscle in on the booming business, and when the owner “Buck” Brady refused to sell the building the staff saw their fair share of threats, fights, and attempted murders. Soon he sold up and moved to Florida. By the 1950s, the building was transformed again when it became a nightclub called the Latin Quarter. It was during this period of the building’s history that Mackey’s most famous ghost joined the roster of spirits said to haunt the establishment.
So the story goes something like this, a young dancer named Johanna fell in love with a handsome singer named Robert Randall. She soon became pregnant and when her father discovered what had happened, he had Randall killed. Heartbroken and driven to madness Johanna attempted to poison her father before going down to her dressing room in the basement and killing herself. Her lifeless body was found lying next to the well, but her spirit is said to have remained, cursed forever to wander the haunted music hall in search of her lost love.
By 1978 the building has been witness to every form of death imaginable on a constant basis. So when Bobby Mackey bought the building and turned it into a music hall, strange happenings began occurring. Bobby’s wife was attacked by an unseen entity, contractors hired to renovate the venue were slapped, scratched and growled at. Grown men have been thrown across the room. A woman dressed in white is said to appear in the parking lot before suddenly vanishing into thin air. There have been numerous sightings of the headless spirit of Pearl Bryan and Johanna is well known to sing along to the music. Furniture moves around on its own and the sound of banging and nightmarish screams echo from the walls. However, for all the paranormal phenomenon that Mackey’s is world famous for, it is the activity that takes place in the basement that most have come to fear. People refuse to even be in the area of the well because it has such a strange effect on them. A mysterious cowboy lurks in the basement, and deep growls emanate from the well, leading some to claim that it is a direct portal to hell itself.
Though many people refuse to believe in all such claims because Investigations have failed to find public records of any such events, and research into property records, newspapers, and court files has failed to substantiate claims made regarding the history of the location. No connection between Bobby Mackey’s and the Pearl Bryan murder has ever been established, though according to many law enforcement officials, many events during that time were undocumented and often ignored because of the large volume of crime in that area.
According to science writer Sharon Hill, the nightclub is often publicized with tales of murders, curses, and hauntings, however “the current circulated legend has obviously enhanced and accrued additional details in the retelling over some 30+ years”. Hill states that claims of supernatural activity and a “portal to hell” are highly suspicious and debatable. But while investigating the place, many paranormal investigation groups including the very popular Ghost Adventures crew found some very credible pieces of evidence supporting the existence of the paranormal, including a video footage of an exorcism that took place, right inside the Mackey’s.
The crew even claimed that the divorce of one of their crew member was directly linked to Bobby Mackey’s Music World and it’s after effects.
Whether the stories, the claims, the hauntings are true or not, but this sounds like a bar you would like to visit or the perfect place for a future ghost hunt. They do offer nightly tours throughout the entire building, including the basement for those brave enough to test the hellish legends for themselves. Just don’t go near the well, invisible hands are known to push curious tourists towards the well’s edge and you may find yourself added to the long list of otherworldly patrons at America’s most haunted honky-tonk.
