This last death convinced people to stay away. Many bodies were removed and reburied at other locations because nobody wanted to visit their loved ones with Carl Pruitt nearby. Eventually, Pruitt's grave became overgrown with weeds. He and his wife were childless, so there was nobody to tend the grave. In 1958, a strip-mining operation covered the grave and the body forever.
Was Carl Pruitt really an evil ghost who reached out and killed the people who disturbed or mocked him? We will never know for sure, but we do know that these stories persist. There is enough evidence to convince many people that some spirits are not to be laughed at or bothered.
The Ghost of Cumberland Falls
We especially love stories from towns near us. Relatives in Somerset told us of a haunted place nearby.
Cumberland Falls State Park, located in the Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky, draws more visitors than any other park in the state. It's known as the Niagara of the South because of the 125-foot-wide falls that plunge 60 feet into a gorge below, which makes it the second largest waterfall in North America. It also has the Western Hemisphere's only Moonbow, a phenomenon that occurs on a clear night with a full moon by the mist of the falls. With such magic, Cumberland Falls naturally has its share of legends and ghost stories.
A favorite ghost story of the area dates back to the 1950s. Like many young couples, a bride and groom came to Cumberland Falls State Park for their honeymoon. With so many wonderful things to see in the park, the couple decided to visit all the sites in the park before going back to their room in the lodge.
There were many spectacular views that they wanted to remember, so they took lots of pictures to put in their album later. They especially wanted to get some shots with the falls in the background. After a short search, they found an overlook just a few hundred feet from the falls that would work perfectly for the photos they wanted.
The groom wanted to get some shots of his beautiful bride first, so he selected a spot for her to pose. At his direction, she moved to a position on the Pillars, a spot at the edge of a 75- to 80-foot cliff. In the excitement of posing for him, the young woman unknowingly moved too close to the edge. Suddenly, she lost her balance and fell to her death below. The place where this terrible tragedy happened is now known as “Lovers' Leap.”
Since this fatal accident, there have been many reports of sightings of the ghostly bride. Sometimes she is spotted on the bridge. Some people report that they are driving around the last curve before the site of her accident and they hit a woman in a wedding dress. When they stop to look for her, she is gone. But evidently, she doesn't stay gone. She returns again and again to the place she was supposed to experience her greatest happiness. Maybe she hopes that on one of her ghostly visits, things will go as they should have done back in the 1950s.
Ashland's Paramount Art Center Ghost
The story of the Paramount Art Center came to our attention a few years ago while we were telling stories in eastern Kentucky. Members of the audience at the college library shared it with us.
The art center, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was originally planned as a theater called the Paramount Center in Ashland, Kentucky. Plans called for it to be three times its current size, but construction plans were cancelled because of the Great Depression. An Ashland-based company scaled down the plans and built it anyway. The Paramount Center opened on September 5, 1931.
The ghostly action at the Paramount started during its construction. The crew members went on their usual lunch break one day, but one of the workers, a man named Joe, chose to stay behind to finish up some work. When the crew returned from lunch, they were shocked to find Joe's body in the auditorium, hanging from the curtain rigging above the stage. No one has determined whether his death was an accident or a suicide. Since his death, Joe has remained in the theater in ghostly form.
Joe's ghost has been seen on a few occasions, but mainly he prefers to be heard and felt rather than seen. He is believed to be responsible when things go missing, when the lights go off and on mysteriously, when cold spots appear and disappear, and when unexplained noises are heard. He is friendly, though, and sometimes helps by opening doors when he is asked.
The most publicized account of Joe's presence happened in 1992 when singer Billy Ray Cyrus was filming his “Achy, Breaky Heart” video at the Paramount Center. He signed eight-by-ten photographs of himself for each of the female staff members as well as a special one made out to “Paramount Joe.” These photos hung in the box office until the walls got so crowded with other pictures that the executive director asked the women to take some down. They only removed the photo addressed to Joe. They soon learned that this was definitely the wrong thing to do.