Bobby Mackey's Music World

In Wilder, KY, just across the Kentucky border from Cincinnati, lies Bobby Mackey’s Music World, a nightclub that some have called Kentucky's most haunted location.

The building was built in the 1850’s as a slaughterhouse and meat packing plant. The well in the basement, where blood from the animals was drained, still can be found there. After the slaughterhouse closed, the building became a ritual site for occultists who supposedly sacrificed animals there. The occult group's activities were exposed in 1896 during a spectacular murder trial that made national headlines.

A young woman named Pearl Bryan, pregnant by the son of a minister, sought an abortion from a Cincinnati medical student named Scott Jackson, who was allegedly a member of the Wilder, KY occult group. Jackson knew very little about how to perform an abortion and ended up only mutilating the girl horribly. Jackson and the minister's son ended up murdering the girl by severing her head, not far from the abandoned slaughterhouse. The men were eventually caught but never revealed what they did with the head. They were offered a deal to avoid being hanged if they were reveal the head's location, yet strangely, they refused and took their secret to their graves.

During the 1920s to the 1970s, the place was inhabited by a number of sleazy nightclubs, and several murders took place here over the years, and ghostly activity in the building increased drastically. In 1978, it became Bobby Mackey's Music World. People have had every type of ghost experience here, from hearing noises and screams, to objects being moved, to actual sightings.

Photo Credit: Patrick Reddy