The Slave House

I was 12 or 13 when I went to the house locals call "Flint Ridge" in Logan County, Ky, so it was 2004 or 2005. My family is interested in old houses, so when we went to Flint Ridge, it was just another old house my parents brought me to. My parents were acquaintances with the owners of the place. No one was living in the house, but it was in the process of being restored for future residence.

I knew nothing of Flint Ridge when we pulled into the tree-lined driveway, but I had a slightly sickening feeling in my stomach just as we pulled in. The old Federal house with its narrow widows rested at the end of the drive, and an expansive lawn lay in front of it. Everything was fine, and my family and the friends that came with us chatted and looked around the front yard. It was a very old house; for Logan County, a house from 1803 is ancient.

We walked on the front porch, and someone tried the front double doors and they opened. It had not been locked at all, and the owners did not know we were coming. We walked inside and the house was a treasure; everything was as it was in 1803 and was being beautifully restored. I may not mind living in such a lovely house, but an uneasy feeling kept creeping on me the entire time, and it became stronger and stronger.

We went upstairs and there was a little room. It was a room within a room, and a little door that led to a built-out area hung open. I couldn't go in this room; something didn't seem right about it, and a powerful feeling of dread came over me.

As I walked down the steps with my father, I felt somewhat upset. I had mentioned earlier to my mother I didn't really like it here. Everyone else seemed fine.

Right when we got into the van, it happened. I burst out in a frenzy of wails and sobs and screams. I dejectedly cried and suddenly started screaming, "That house is evil! Evil is there! A bad house! That house is evil! Darkness lurks there! Demonic! Evil! Evil! EVIL!" That was all I could say, and my parents and friends looked at me in a stunned manner. They didn't know what to say. I was engulfed with an overwhelming feeling of terrible dread and anguish when I stepped out of that house. Though I felt a little bit of sadness, a force of great evil made itself known to me. It was evil that I felt, and more than anything else, if evil is too broad a word, then a great feeling of wickedness, immorality and wrong.

I was weeping as if a loved one just died in front of me. My mother tried to calm me, but it was no use. My uncontrollable tears poured out of me, and I know, to this very day, that something very dark and sinister lurks in Flint Ridge.

But that is only part of the story. As I noted earlier, I knew nothing of the house before going to it, nor did my parents. But my parents asked some locals about the history of Flint Ridge. Flint Ridge had been built by a very wealthy man in 1803, so wealthy that he also had town house in the town of Russellville about 15 minutes north of Flint Ridge's location--it is called the Washington House (in early Kentucky this is humongous wealth). This planter had many slaves. It was at Flint Ridge where not only he had his plantation, but slaves were sold and auctioned there.

The current owners of the house also found an outbuilding with shackles in it where people would have been chained to the walls. All of this information was known to me after my experience, and is only a hint to the atrocities that would have occurred there. All the torture, rape, murder, and degradation of people, as is what came with slavery.

After the fact, I also heard about ghostly experiences of others. A man who claimed to have been doing restoration work on some scaffolding on the house said he saw an elderly African American man on the front lawn. The old man carried a cane. For literally two minutes, the man said, they silently looked each other in the eye. The he jumped down from the scaffolding to confront the man, and he was gone.

Another worker on a different occasion said he saw an old cane in the very room I didn't want to go in. He said that evening the cane had disappeared.

Some ghost hunters also went to Flint Ridge one night, and as they stood on the front lawn and had locked the doors, the front double doors literally blew open as if a gust of strong wind had pushed them.

I attest that my experience is true, and I am convinced that I was feeling the horrible things that must have taken place at that house. This event disturbed me so much that I am still having nightmares about it, and I hope to never go there again.