Bobby Mackey’s – the Country Bar on the “Gateway to Hell”

When

since 1896 traditional date – cannot be verified · first known record: 1991

Where

Verdict

Legend

A country music bar in a former slaughterhouse on the Licking River is said to be haunted by the headless victim of a notorious 1896 murder and a dancer named Johanna.

What happened

The building on the Licking River in Wilder, across the river from Cincinnati, has a colourful past. Around the mid-19th century a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant stood here, then a roadhouse, a gambling speakeasy in the 1920s and, in the 1930s, a nightclub called The Primrose, which the Cleveland mob took over and renamed the Latin Quarter. After several shootings the police closed it in 1977, and the following year country singer Bobby Mackey bought it. Legends link the place with the most notorious crime in the region’s history: in February 1896 the headless body of Pearl Bryan, a pregnant young woman from Indiana, was found in nearby Fort Thomas. Her killers, dental students Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were hanged in 1897, but the head was never found. According to the stories, the killers belonged to a group of Satanists who held rituals in the abandoned slaughterhouse, and the head was dropped down the well in the basement – the “gateway to hell.” Regulars speak of a headless apparition, the ghost of a dancer named Johanna and a scent of rose perfume, of being pushed on the stairs and even of a caretaker’s possession.

Witnesses

Staff and customers; in his book about the club Doug Hensley gathered statements from 25 people who said they had experienced supernatural events there. The story was publicized in 1991 by the TV programme “Hard Copy.”

Explanations and hypotheses

The murder of Pearl Bryan is well documented, but nothing connects it to the building – the body was found several kilometres away, and the tales of Satanists and the well are rumours that grew later. Historian Raymond G. Hebert found that the legend of the haunted club took hold after the 1991 “Hard Copy” segment and Hensley’s book. Bobby Mackey himself has repeatedly said he does not believe in ghosts, and sceptics suspected from the start that the story was good for business; sources also differ on when the slaughterhouse was built.

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)