Next door to Robbie Morgan’s office in Lawrenceburg stands the nearly century-old Anderson Hotel building, where in one of its past lives as a flophouse, more than a dozen people met untimely deaths. Now home to a seasonal haunted house, the Anderson claims a stop on Kentucky after Dark, a spooky statewide trail linking paranormal hot spots, cryptid habitats, and other spine-tingling locales. “We have all these creepy sites,” says Morgan, Lawrenceburg’s tourism director. Launched last year with money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the route leads folks to such places as the supposed stomping grounds of the Goatman, a creature said to prowl under a bridge in Louisville; an alien invasion site near Hopkinsville; and Sassy Trash, an allegedly haunted vintage and antique shop in Harlan. Morgan says she’s not quite sure why Kentucky seems to overachieve in the creepy department, but it could be the state’s mining heritage. “Some say when you open up the crevices of earth for coal mining, you release a whole lot of old gods.”
Southern Agenda
Give Up the Ghosts
Illustration: Tim Bower